Social Responsibility

So now that the “Great Game” is lost in Washington, how is Washington responding to the overall situation? The answer is that Washington is responding in two basic ways. For one, Washington seeks to irritate and stonewall China. And second, the aim is to throw as many people in prison as possible in order to avoid the responsibilities towards the people that are mandated by international law. It is cheaper to throw as many people into prison as possible than to meet the responsibilities towards the people that are mandated by international law. Moreover, the American state does not have the energy or the resources to meet those responsibilities towards the people which are mandated by international law because so much energy and resources were blown on the failed “Great Game” over the last few decades. 

Thus, it is no coincidence that America wields 25 percent of the entire world’s prison population, even though America’s share of the global population stands at just 4 percent. When you consider a poor education system and the refusal on the part of the American state to educate and socialize the population, along with the lack of energy and resources on the part of the American state after decades of global hegemony, the inability of the state to co-opt everyone for the “Great Game” and for the advancement of the policy of global hegemony, and the fact that the policy of global hegemony has essentially failed, you can then understand why the basic response of the American state to the crisis which has emerged as a result of the aforementioned conditions has been to imprison as many people as possible on one hand and to irritate and stonewall China on the other hand. 

The two-pronged strategy of throwing everyone in prison on one hand and irritating and stonewalling China on the other hand has even gone as far as seeking to imprison a former president who speaks very uncomfortable truths and is yet again a presidential frontrunner. Will the strategy even work? The answer is perhaps a resounding no. For one, China cannot be contained. And on the other hand, the containment of one’s own population and the demonization of one’s own population can lead to a political and social crisis at home. On one hand, we have forces who want to keep things as they are in the international system, and on the other hand, there are those who seek change. And the need for change is an uncomfortable truth for certain folks. 

But it is social responsibility which is perhaps the main issue, even though we seek to overlook social responsibility as being at the heart of the matter, and no one can avoid social responsibility for too long. And if imprisoning the whole population and deflecting the focus towards irritating and stonewalling China is thought to be a sound and valid replacement for social responsibility, then it is an erroneous idea and thought. Moreover, we now have an oligarchy ruling the Western world who does not want to assume social responsibility either. And in a broader sense, we are passing through or have been passing through a set of stages, namely, the sequence or the stages of aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, populism, and tyranny which Plato had highlighted. In turn, disenchantment (anomie) increases the likelihood of tyranny as opposed to diminishing the likelihood of tyranny. In short, the prospect of one-man rule in the West taking root sometime in the future is a real one and the prospect or idea of one-man rule in the West is not as farfetched as it was before, for a number of reasons.