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They say the eyes of history judge harshly, and it is true. But it is also true that the eyes of history are always changing, and therefore what is seen – and how it is perceived – changes yet again. Immensely popular people in their own era are examined more objectively through the lens of time and distance and perhaps brought down to earth, while underappreciated figures are eventually given their due. And while the perspectives of each historian are colored by the era in which s/he writes, time and distance usually paint a balanced picture of persons and events in a way that is virtually impossible for most to see as they happen.
The 2030s were, by all accounts and by any objective measure, a catastrophic period. Few historians, even the most stolid, would call that description hyperbole. The world teetered on the brink of utter annihilation, our collective toes over the edge of the abyss. One could easily argue that we toppled off that cliff, only to catch a hand on an outcropping of rock, before scrambling back to the top, not unlike an action movie (the non-interactional, visual medium that was a primary source of entertainment at the time).
Much has been written of that period, including Daniel McCollough’s magnificent 2076 work Desolation Averted. The wars, the political maneuvering, and the sheer scope of human struggle of that decade have not been better captured so succinctly, so eloquently, or so completely. What McCollough writes about are events that are firmly engraved in the minds of any and all aware citizens of the world. The 2030s were a watershed moment in human history, rivaling the rise and fall of the empires of Rome or China, with the suddenness and the impact of the Second World War from 1939-45, and McCollough covers it brilliantly. I will not attempt to rival his work here.
Instead, my focus will be on the events leading up to that monumental conflict, one which has dwarfed all previous conflicts in size and import. It is instead my intent to examine the late 2020s. Despite the fact that all of the seeds of what was later reaped were clearly sown in this decade, it is underrepresented in the field of academics. Some of this is due to the sheer volume of propaganda that an historian must sift through in order to find the objective (or at least less subjective) truths of what occurred. A totalitarian state is difficult to pierce from the outside, whether as a contemporary or when looking backwards across the expanse of time. The decades since have both served to open possibilities and to cloud facts, and so, while a fascinating period and a case study for human behavior, this era is less attractive to many historians and, frankly, to most readers.
The average reader, even an intelligent one, seems to be more drawn to the compelling narrative that is the 2030s (and McCollough’s stellar prose only accentuates this tendency) than the more complex one of the previous decade. The wars of the 2030s, once engaged, shed much of the ambiguity of what led to the fighting on all sides, seemingly providing a clear picture of good versus evil, and that is a story that humanity has always embraced. However, a careful examination of the 2020s reveals as stark a division between what we contemporarily see as right and wrong as existed in the wars that followed. The division lurked beneath the immediate surface of a nation that had enjoyed a dominance not unlike that of Rome two millennia prior, only to ultimately suffer a fate not dissimilar.
“The past is prologue” is a well-travelled adage, but here it is doubly true. When one delves into the question of how a world superpower – very briefly the sole world superpower – became a nationalistic dictatorship, the answer lies in the past becoming the present. In truth, the first and easiest parallel is the historical path of Rome herself in which a successful, longstanding republic was supplanted by a megalomaniacal leader who inspired his followers to unfaltering loyalty and replaced that republic with an emperorship that lasted another 400 years. Thankfully, the American dictatorship more closely resembled the brief tenure of England’s Oliver Cromwell than the Roman example. But if you were to say to anyone in the world as late as 1800 that the metaphorical phoenix of the Roman Empire would rise out of a small nation in the “New World,” a former colony which had only achieved its independence due to French intervention...well, you would have to forgive the look of utter disbelief that would meet your prediction.
And yet, the United States rose to the status of world superpower and, once you correct for changes in civilization in the roughly thirteen hundred years since its western demise, mirrored the Roman Empire in a plethora of ways. Along with China, the United States between 1830 and 2030 is among the pantheon of truly powerful nations. And while the argument exists that Rome lasted almost eleven hundred years, it was at its zenith for only a portion of that time, and one must account for the speed at which the world changed (or did not change) in ancient versus modern times. Clearly, there is a case to be made that the United States was a modern Rome, or as close as it is possible to be.
But there is a second, more recent parallel to the rise of American prominence (and nationalism) that is unavoidable. While the ethnocentric belief that the United States was the country that defeated Nazi Germany in the Second World War conveniently ignores or undervalues the much longer and more impactful efforts (not to mention sacrifices) of the First Soviet Union, there is no doubt that, much like the First World War, the entry of America into the war effort swung the tide and forced the eventual Allied victory. With this in mind, and coupled with the fact that the national psyche of the United States remained steadfastly convinced for three quarters of a century that it had defeated Nazism almost singlehandedly, it is particularly ironic that this nation would ultimately serve as the ashes from which that hateful movement would rise once more.
How much should the public have seen coming? Were the early indicators of ego and a disconnect from reality in the President’s first term warning signs that the populace should have keyed upon? Would the surge of white supremacy, coming immediately on the heels of the nation’s first black president, have occurred without the initial, tacit encouragement from the new president? Is there any argument that the rebranding of Nazism in all but name became a political tool for the president to solidify his power base, ultimately leading to the repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment to American Constitution and allowing a president to serve more than two terms?
It is at once difficult to blame those who were in the moment for what could be perceived as their blindness and equally difficult to forgive their apparently reluctant, sluggish response to the rapid changes made to the nation’s fabric. Admittedly, it is difficult to see one’s own time clearly while simultaneously being part of it, but most historians who study the era tend to agree that American apathy played a significant role. Never considered the worst of sins, the truest lesson of what followed might be to revisit apathy and its true venality.
Much like Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler before him, the last President of the United States rose to his position within the legitimate confines of the existing structure by capitalizing on a disaffected, disillusioned political base, and used that powerful minority to usurp that structure and create a dictatorship. And while at least the Roman example is replete with those who actively opposed Julius Caesar (indeed, those who eventually assassinated him), the German example is sparse in this behavior. A large majority of the population at the time simply went along with the minority that had seized power, trading some measure of normalcy and peace for their feigned or self-imposed ignorance of actual events that were happening around them, and regarding how terrible some of those events were. In 1940 Germany, you would be hard pressed to find someone who publicly criticized the Fuhrer.
By 2028, in the United States of America, things were very much the same.
— From the Introduction of An Unlikely Phoenix by Reed Ambrose, published by Oxford University Press. First Edition, 2081.