We have all seen it, and sighed. A spoiled child is in the park or in a playground. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” The child will keep this up until the exasperated parent pays attention while it does something terrifyingly complicated and daring like, oh I don’t know, get onto a swing. Moments later, the process is repeated and then again moments after that …

You can feel sorry for the parent, but don’t. The parent, wittingly or not, created this narcissistic terror and is now reaping the rewards of overly indulgent parenting. Harsh? Perhaps, but as I said, we’ve all seen it.

The American media created the terror that they are now attending to. The problem is that it is difficult for the rest of the world to look away. The demands for us to “look at me” are incessant and seemingly without end. If this situation was from Belize or Bhutan it wouldn’t matter, but it isn’t. It is the United States of America and like it or not, we need to watch because there is such an oversized influence of America in most cultures around the planet (or at least in the West). Should we pity America? No. They brought this situation about willfully. If anyone is to be pitied it is us Canadians and the Mexicans. That said, we may be observing what the Germans call a Zeitenwende. A historic turning point.

America became a hegemon after World War II by creating a new world order. They rose from their isolationism and created a world bank, a new international trading system, seized control away from a dying British empire and slowly began to remake the world in its own image. For decades, this was a peaceful grasp for world domination and most of us enjoyed Pax Americana. Certainly, the Americans made mistakes, but we were all convinced that those mistakes were made with good intentions and when viewed in the reflected light of other, older empires, it is true that the American Imperium was mostly benign. Mostly.

For various reasons that are too complex to discuss here, America began dismantling this peaceful imperium several years ago. (2016 perhaps?). The self-immolation is now dialled up to “11” and many who thought they understood what they had voted for are awakening to the reality of what they have done to themselves. And increasingly, they are not at all happy. They wanted closed borders. Now they complain that foreigners don’t visit. They wanted a radical solution to immigrants. Now they complain that crops are rotting in the fields. They wanted the rest of the world to give them more respect. Now large swaths of humanity are turning their backs.

Meanwhile, the child continues to shout “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” Is there really peace in Palestine? Is the economy really booming with trillions of dollars being paid by foreign countries? Are decades-long friends and allies cheering them on — or are they all looking to sidestep this nonsense and failsafe their economies so that they can no longer be held hostage by the whims of a solipsist who gains access to the levers of power? As an historian, I can point to plenty of examples where countries imagined that the nation in power would always be there to guide them through the chaos of the world. The Pharaohs, the Caesars, the Medicis, the Holy Roman Emperors …. They all had good runs and then they were gone. Dust in the wind.

I am reminded of the unofficial motto of the Prussian Army: “Better no officer than a bad one.” I am not a futurist and use the past as my guide, but we may indeed be seeing the last gasps of Pax Americana. Who can say?

One of my favourite quotable journalists has always been HL Menken. In 1920, he wrote:

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.

Menken may have been a journalist, but he certainly seemed to be an astute observer of the American Zeitgeist.