By Aly Kamadia, Editor-In-Chief, iDose

American democracy has been saved – at least for now.

After four years of a narcissist megalomaniac occupying the White House, tens of millions of Americans and people across the planet have breathed a long sigh of relief.

While I share this sentiment, we mustn’t allow the intoxication of the moment to detach ourselves from reality.

Lest we forget, roughly 75 million Americans who experienced four years under Mr. Trump voted for him in November’s election. The fact that the second largest number of votes in the Republic’s existence was casted for a man who lacks any patriotism, and who harbors the moral compass of history’s ugliest villains is an indelible stain on American history. 

Moreover, the divisions in the country are not merely stark, but have manifested themselves into a threat to US national security.

The attack on the Capitol earlier this month (January 6^th, 2020), ordered by a sitting president (Mr. Trump), could have led to the assassination of multiple members of congress including high ranking senators and speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, even (then) Vice President Mike Pence’s life was at risk.

Given the challenges that lay ahead, it’s worth noting three myths that are timely.   

Myth 1: President Biden will save America

Far too many headlines across the world and broadcast journalists are obsessing with the question of whether President Biden is up to the task of restoring America.

This framing is troublesome not least because it assumes an immature idea of how much power and influence any single American president has. Unlike the fictional image that Hollywood adores to project, the president of the US is neither a king nor a dictator.

The executive branch (i.e. that the president is the head of) is checked by the legislative branch (e.g. congress) and judiciary (e.g. courts all the way up to the supreme court). Moreover, the awesome powers of the Federal Reserve, Corporate America, Civil Society and numerous other actors all play a role in determining the country’s fate. (Not to mention factors such as luck and events beyond human control. One would think that the pandemic would have reminded us that we hardly control everything, though I’ll leave this topic aside for today’s comment).

The idea that “Biden”, or any single individual can save America is absurd.

Yet the narrative that superman can arrive on the scene, assume the powers of a deity and save the world seems to be deeply embedded in many peoples thinking.

Thus today’s polite reminder that notwithstanding the astounding powers of the American presidency, they hardly put Biden or the Biden administration in a position to “save America”.

Myth 2: Returning to the pre-Trump year of 2016 is the general goal

After a distinctly chaotic presidency, what should America’s goal/s be?

In addressing this question, it isn’t difficult to come across Americans who close their eyes and imagine a time machine that can transport them back to 2016 – the year before Trump assumed office.

Such fantasies reveal the people dreaming them up to often mistake a symptom for a cause.

On one hand, it can’t be disputed that Trump caused many horrors while he was in his office. With regards to monumental challenges such as climate change and rapidly declining American ‘soft power’, Trump very well may have inflicted irreversible damage.

But what were the very conditions that allowed for Trump to be elected in the first place? Can we ignore the fact that America’s conditions were so toxic that it permitted the rise of a reality-tv-treasonous-clown to be elected to the highest political office? Is it a coincidence that similar ‘populist’ leaders and movements are emerging far beyond American shores and democracies are in retreat?

Twenty Sixteen revealed itself to be a year in which toxic conditions were ripe for a man like Trump to be elected to the highest political office. The fantasy to return to 2016 is therefore both odd and fails to acknowledge that Trump not only caused horror, but was a symptom of it (e.g. the criminal degree of income and wealth inequality).

Myth 3: It is America’s duty to run the world

In a foreign affairs essay that Biden recently wrote, this author was pleased to note some of his observations.

As an example, it’s important for Biden to acknowledge that the “challenges that will define our time [are] climate change, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and disruptive technology.” (While I fundamentally question whether ‘disruptive technology’ poses the same threat as the preceding challenges, I will leave the question aside in this commentary.)

It is long overdue for an American president to acknowledge the “existential threat” of “climate change”, and explicitly keep noting that if “we don’t get this right, nothing else will matter.”

But it is also long overdue for an American president to understand that we don’t live in a world that is inevitably marching towards liberalism, with America leading the charge. Biden affirms his belief in this faith when he states:

“No army on earth can match the way the electric idea of liberty passes freely from person to person, jumps borders, transcends languages and cultures, and supercharges communities of ordinary citizens into activists and organizers and change agents.”

It is this fanatical faith in the “electric power of liberty” and the inevitable march of liberalism (underwritten by the US and its specific brand of neoliberalism) that has led to a number of catastrophic US foreign policy decisions over the past few decades. Far too much American blood has been spilt for incompetent and unnecessary wars (not to mention, the devastation inflicted beyond America). It is utter lunacy that the United States has spent 6.4 trillion dollars ($6 400 000 000 000) in post 9/11 wars (according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs). For a 6.4 trillion dollar price tag, what strategic goals have been accomplished?

While it is welcoming to hear Biden state that he will not engage with ‘endless wars’, a new direction in American foreign policy is desperately needed. That new direction needs to incorporate a realistic mindset vis-à-vis the limits of democracy promotion overseas, and the understanding that no country in the world, including it’s most powerful one, has the capability to dominate it.

Failure to acknowledge so runs the risk of accelerating declining American power (relative) in an increasingly multipolar world.

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Aly Kamadia is Editor-In-Chief of iDose. To read selected articles by Kamadia, click here.