By David K. Shipler
For we must
consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are
upon us.
--John Winthrop, 1630
The stirring
phrase “city upon a hill” was coined not as a description of the United States
but as an aspiration, a challenge, applied to the Massachusetts Bay Colony by John
Winthrop in a sermon probably delivered at sea, before arriving in New England.
Since then, as quoted by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, it has
morphed into a mirage of self-adulation—not a hope but a supposed achievement.
“I've spoken of the shining city all my
political life,” Reagan declared in his farewell
address: “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than
oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in
harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and
creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the
doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I
saw it, and see it still. . . . And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for
all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who
are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”
You want to
weep when you read these words today. Even putting aside Reagan’s own failures
to keep that beacon bright (he opposed the monumental civil rights acts, for
example, and slandered the poor on welfare), the metaphor imagined the best of a
complicated America. It was accepted globally, though not unanimously, as modeling
democratic freedom and economic opportunity. Millions from around the world have
struggled to climb up to this shining city on a hill.
Now it is becoming a fortress. In
merely one year, President Trump and his minions have recast the model. It is
no longer a robust democracy but a semi-dictatorship fueled by a cult of
personality supported by a critical mass of Americans. No longer is the rule of
law its bedrock. No longer can the public’s discontent be reliably translated
into political change. No longer does free speech flourish under a government
that regards dissent as punishable. No longer do its officials or many of its
private institutions embrace that essential American idea: the din of many
ideas. No longer is it entirely safe for “the people peaceably to assemble . .
. for a redress of grievances,” as the First Amendment provides. Whatever
harmony the country enjoyed among “people of all kinds” has dissolved into
discord under a government driven by the ideology of white supremacy.
No longer are the doors open. No
longer will America be the world’s leader in medical and other scientific
research, whose grants Trumpists have summarily shredded, and whose foreign
researchers are increasingly afraid to enter the United States. No longer is it
a benefactor of assistance to the suffering populations of poorer countries. No
longer does it hold membership in scores of critical international
organizations that do good globally. No longer is it a champion of democracy
and human rights worldwide. No longer is it faithful to facts and truth and
respect for the power of pure knowledge.
The country is being walled off
from an outside world it seeks to dominate, a peculiar paradox. It is both
isolationist and imperialist, retreating from humanitarian interactions and relying
on brute force for its foreign policy, trashing its treaties and alliances, and
projecting warfare into countries of Trump’s choosing—restrained only by “my own
morality, my own mind,” he told
The New York Times. Trump’s disregard for international law and
norms in his seizure of Venezuela’s president; his unilateral declaration of
ownership of its oil; and his designs on Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even
Canada, reinforce Russian and Chinese propaganda, which has long cast the US as
a neocolonial power. That propaganda has had traction in many developing
countries; now it cannot be denied.
So, the United States can no longer
be counted on to uphold the peaceful order that has prevailed since World War
II. It cannot be seen reliably as a global power, for Trump favors carving up
the world into spheres of influence, apparently ready to concentrate on the
Western Hemisphere and leaving Europe to Russia, and Asia to China. The world,
and America itself, is a much more dangerous place under Trumpism, and America will
be much less great.
Of course, as honest history knows—not the sanitized
history that Trumpist authoritarianism is trying to impose—John Winthrop’s exalted
hilltop was eventually tainted by great crimes: the displacement and slaughter
of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the indentured servitude that
helped lay the foundations of the country’s prosperity.
Myths can be stubborn, though, so
it remains to be seen how soon the uplifting mirage of America will dissipate,
how quickly it will be replaced by the menacing fortress being constructed.
Some overseas express sympathy for Americans living in a dying democracy; some express
fear and disgust. Some at home and abroad see merely a temporary aberration in
a society that has proved self-correcting; others see an embedded, authoritarian
restructuring designed to survive Trump. And some who do not regard the old
America as divinely given see the new America as the inevitable turning of history’s
wheel: Nothing is permanent, not even a shining city upon a hill.
