America and the bearable loneliness of losing the West

What the West meant to us has diminished and all we're left with is its legacy of winding cobbled ways

- MANU JOSEPH

nce, what did we want our nation to be? Like the West. What did we want to be? To enjoy life like people in the West, but with better food. Where did we want to be? The West. Where did we want our children to be? Okay, you get the idea. To many of us, the West gave a moral and aesthetic direction. We have lost that. This has been happening over the past few years.

When I was a kid, I believed the West was a place. Then I realized that all of the West was not entirely the West. The West was an idea, an invention. When you put it this way, it looks as though it is some kind of subterfuge to overwhelm human instincts. But I like that about the West—that it was an invention. What is so great about nature and human nature anyway? We worship nature without thinking. Human intervention against our own animal biology is probably the very meaning of human wisdom.

What is happening in America will help us understand the meaning of the West—through its collapse there. A lot of what Donald Trump is doing actually makes sense. Or let us say it makes logical sense; it is even familiar. A powerful man is setting out to consolidate his power, to do what he wants without the inconvenience of being resisted. He favors his rich friends, and a gang of rich people are trying to see how they can benefit from his rule. Together, they want to convey that falling in line will be rewarded and fighting them painful. This makes sense because this is how leaders behave in most of the world. Now America is beginning to appear like any other country.