Am I an Anglo-Saxon or an Anglo-Norman this sixth of June?

Gone are the days when, shortly before the Normandy invasion, General George Patton let slip an off-the-cuff remark at a public gathering in Knutsford near Chester to the effect that the American and British peoples were destined to rule the world, much to the chagrin of the Russians and General de Gaulle. The times have changed and with them the prestige of the United States and the United Kingdom. Only recently the President of the European Commission, Donald Tusk, said in a speech that with friends like Donald Trump you don't need an enemy. This statement like few others shows the disrepute into which President Donald Trump and, over and above any one person, the United States have fallen in many minds.

I was brought up on the belief that for all its blemishes associated with such names as Al Capone and My Lai, the United States provided the mainstay of the free world, Western democracy and economic liberalism. This decline concerns more than current global politics, for it raises a fundamental question about the course of world history in teleological terms.

History can be interpreted as a series of recurrent cycles. Trump’s real or apparent relapse into protectionism finds a precedent in the isolationism that prevailed in the state policy of presidents Hardy and Hoover. Should we then patiently wait for the present cyclical phase to run its course? But then it is hard to find any precedent for the shift from the urbane and painstakingly politically correct speech and style of President Obama to the coarse Rabelaisian image of President Trump. One might cite in this connection the ribald language of President Nixon that was caught on the infamous White House tapes, but this language was contained within what Nixon intended to keep in the private sphere. What about the crudities of General LeMay, who used bouts of flatulence and the slamming of restroom doors to signal his disapproval ? But then he did not occupy the White House, did he? Theodore Roosevelt held a big stick but at least he spoke softly when holding it. At no previous time in American history have religious and ideological fundamentalists dictated the tenor of United States policies. McCarthyism eventually fell into disrepute and President Reagan, who in some way anticipated aspects of Trump’s economic philosophy, at least exuded a certain bonhomie that avoided offending allies in a gratuitously abrasive manner, No, we are beginning to sense that the governance of the United States is moving inexorably into uncharted and, all too possibly, much troubled waters. Are we witnessing something like the fall of the Roman Republic after the assassination of Julius Caesar? Some have even noted parallels between the violent deaths of the Gracchi brothers and the assassination of JFK and Bobby Kennedy,. all doughty defenders of civil rights in the face of despotic encroachments. I remember reading an article in The New York Times in which the author retracted from his earlier opinion that President Trump and the mad emperor of Rome Caligula were equally bad. He apologized for being too hard on Caligula. Perhaps one can take Trump bashing a little too far. Let’s cross the Atlantic.

To say that Britain is in a chronic state of decline is like repeating a stale joke. Dean Acheson’s celebrated adage “Britain has lost an empire and not discovered a role’ is a truism that now seems to have gained new relevance. Let us also recall those words in the title song of “Dad’s Army” telling “Mr. Hitler” not to assume that old England was done for. Look how that most revered British institution, the monarchy, is making a comeback, especially with the wedding of Prince Harry and Meagan Markle. Where there does seem to be some truth in the postulation that Britain is spinning into decline lies in the zone of party politics, especially as far as this concerns the thorny issue of Brexit. Even more perplexing than the complexities of this issue in its own right is the very poor lack of judgment on the part of David Cameron and Theresa May that has led to the possibility of a Brexit in the first place in view of the fact that both of them were “remainers.”

What about the voice of the people? “It be ‘aving ‘em referendums that does the trouble, it be!” I think it was Harold Wilson who introduced this very un-British instrument into Britain. Referendums – or is it ‘referenda? – played a decisive role in cementing the regimes of Napoleon I, Napoleon III and Hitler. These rulers were no gamblers in this case and “saw to it” that the desired result of the process came about. David Cameron, a greenhorn in this game, was rash enough to leave it to the popular will, a bare 52 percent of it, to be precise. There are philosophical and intellectual objections to holding referendums in any case. Why determine the course of a nation’s destiny over future generations on the basis of something so erratic and ephemeral as a nation’s mood on a single day?

One possible reason for the disappointing performance of British and American politicians could simply stem from erosion. The order that emerged from the turmoil of the Second World War is crumbling, the fate of all orders in world history. It would not be so bad if leading politicians and the electors who place them in power had some notion of what the coming order, state of affairs, call it what you will, may turn out to be.

A parting thought. The title contains the word “Anglo-Saxon,” a term Napoleon III used to denote the English-speaking world in distinction to the “Latin” world composed of Iberians, Ibero-Americans, Italians and the French, in which vast domain the French Empire should exercise the leading role. General de Gaulle, like intellectuals generally, favoured this term as a way of conflating countries that share English and basic cultural assumptions rooted in Anglo-American history, and not without a soupçon of benign condescension with the deference due to the Venerable Bede, King Alfred and Saint Boniface.

In view of President Macron’s offer to lend the Bayeux Tapestry to Britain, it might be appropriate to update ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to ‘Anglo-Norman’ in recognition of the effect the Norman invasion of 1066 had on the English language, which contains a greater amount of words of French and Latin origin than those of Germanic origin. With notable exceptions English words take the French s-suffix to form the plural and the ee-suffix to turn verbs into nouns as with ‘employee’ and ‘refugee.’ Had there been no successful Normandy invasion, a return trip if you will, the European Union would not have come into existence. C’est la vie, c’est la guerre!

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