Pedro Lilienfeld

What has happened to these United States in the last decade, or so, has gotten me to reflect on how I feel about this country of adoption. Adoption that has gone both ways: I have tried to become part of it and it has, perhaps, attempted to adopt me. Neither has become completely fulfilled notwithstanding that I lived here for over 65 years.

When I grew up in my previous country of adoption, Ecuador, a minor, largely underdeveloped, relatively peaceful enclave in northwest South America, I viewed the U.S. with a certain derision. My image of that imposing country to the north was tinged by negative impressions. I have painted some of these in my autobiography. My encounters with Americans in Quito were invariably fraught: drunken and boorish diplomatic attachés, evangelizing desiccated women, dismissive U.S. embassy functionaries. My impressions about this country were degraded even further by McCarthyism, the shameless propagandistic tone of the Voice of America transmissions, and last but not least, by my growing intellectual awareness of the potentially dire consequences of the repeated rejections by American consular offices of our desperate pleas to immigrate amidst our life-threatening perils in WWII Europe.

So, it was with a certain reluctance and with misgivings that I decided to transplant myself, although mostly temporarily, to NYC enrolling at Columbia U. for graduate studies. I still intended to eventually return to Ecuador. My experience at Columbia did little or nothing to improve my impressions, I found that I could only relate to a few foreign students, a Jamaican and two Englishmen. My exposure to a pamphlet issued by the DAR ignoring pre-Mayflower America, the chauvinist religiosity of my immigration officer, and the surprising support for the Vietnam War by engineering colleagues at my initial employer, only confirmed my contempt for what this country represented.

As I have mentioned, I would have eventually returned to Ecuador and my friends there were it not for having fallen in love with another adopted American, Evelyn. We had in common that she too ill-fitted the U.S., and all her friends, to whom she introduced me, were foreign students.

My first electoral participation was in 1964, Johnson vs. Goldwater. I disliked the former because of his stance in the Vietnam war, but the latter was simply abhorrent (“Nuke them all”). Subsequent presidential elections were often disappointing, Nixon, Reagan, and eventually the Bushes. The nadir was reached with Trump. When the latter’s candidacy was first mentioned in 2015 I was actually elated because I firmly believed that his participation would ensure the sinking of what I viewed as the despicable republican party. Notwithstanding, and partly through the absurdity of the electoral college system, he was enthroned.

Trump’s ascendancy, however, has proven to be far more than a mere passing folly. It is, unfortunately, a symptom of a deep rot in American society. A rot that has grown over the years and did not originate with Trump. He is merely the crowning manifestation and distillation of a wide- spread intellectual pathology in this country. And what is the main cause of  that deviant mentality? In my view, it is the inevitable result of a woefully deficient system of education. It is a system that is, at best, uneven and at worst, disastrous. Education is often under the control of people who, themselves, are insufficiently educated, driven by extremist and irrational views, and religious dogmatism. These educational shortcomings created fertile grounds for the proliferation of fanaticism, intolerance, conspiratorial thinking, distrust of science, acceptance of authoritarianism through ignorance of history, patriotic chauvinism, xenophobia, racism, misogyny, etc., etc. This is the toxic brew on which Trumpism feeds.

It would be unpalatable already if this cult-like cohort were to be restricted to what we now call Trump’s “base”, i.e., some 30% of the electoral body, but the reality is that we now seem to have to contend with about 50%, or so, of the electoral body. To me, this means that one half of Americans are intellectually rotten, a veritable disaster, a horrifying conclusion.

I’m writing this piece three weeks before the 2024 presidential elections. I fervently hope that the Harris/Walz ticket wins. The alternative is worse than dire. However, I have come to the depressing inference that even if the democratic ticket prevails, my views about the deep rottenness of this country remains unaltered. There will still remain that 50% which, so aptly, Hillary Clinton had labelled as “deplorables”.

In this context, I need to address a related observation. When listening to and reading the copious comments and statements by politicians, political leaders, pundits, editorial writers, etc., I have identified a common denominator: a systematic denial of my above stated conclusion that this country is permeated by a moral and intellectual rot. Case in point: On October 18, 2024, with the presidential election around the corner, I listened to an interview by Margaret Hoover on NPR of the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. Hoover is incisive in her questioning and she asked her interviewee why he thought the expect results of the election were so much in doubt in his crucially important state, given Trump’s unending production of nonsense, lies, distortions, criminal behavior, etc.

Shapiro’s response was, as expected, totally evasive. Hoover’s question has been asked repeatedly but, to my knowledge, nobody has dared to respond with the truth. In fact, an honest answer would be nearly unthinkable, it could have dire consequences for its author.

To be fair, the U.S. is not alone in the world of 2024 in being infected with fascist and authoritarian tendencies. The list of countries with highly questionable regimes is, of course, well known. Here are just a few: Russia, China, Iran, Hungary, Turkey, Belarus, Egypt, etc. However, I believe what would distinguish America from than coterie, if Trump were to be enthroned again, is the absurd solipsistic pretension of this country of being the paragon of freedom, of democracy, of equal rights, the City Upon A Hill, the beacon of hope, the shining example for the world to emulate,.  

Do I want to remain in such a country? If I were a bit younger, I would seriously consider decamping to a more “civilized” abode. Age and family, however, preclude such drastic move. I will be forced to grit my teeth for the foreseeable future which, in my case, may not last that much longer.

Note added the morning after the 2024 elections:

Disaster has struck! Trump has comfortably won the presidential election.

The Senate will have a republican majority and the House may follow. Trumpism will be unchecked and unrestrained.

My dark assessment of the rot that permeates this country is now enshrined. If anything, this putrefaction is deeper and wider than what I had implied in my writing above. The enthroning of Trump in 2016 could be attributed, in part, to an insufficient understanding of his defects. No such excuses can be proffered today. The people of this country are either fully aware of the miscreant they have elected or, are in denial. Either constitutes an indictment of the majority of Americans. My final assessment is that those of us who are horrified by this development must now face the fact that we are surrounded by no fewer than 77 million morons.

I never dreamed, after so many years, having to live in a country of which I feel so alienated. The only silver lining is that my family and I live in New England, one of the few islands of sanity in a swamp of irrationality. It brings up one of my unorthodox opinions: Abraham Lincoln’s greatest mistake was to fight for the preservation of the Union. That Union is now being dragged down into the cesspool by the Southern Confederacy states joined by several similarly contaminated states.

What an example to the World!