"The city upon the hill" is a biblical phrase that symbolizes a city’s innocence and purity. The early migrants from Europe, who felt its religious conflicts, borrowed the phrase after seeking salvation in the wilderness and untouched plains of America.
Over the centuries, the phrase has had different connotations. Conservatives (even before political parties) believed that its singularity stemmed from the fact that it had been far from the eyes of the world and its evils. Meanwhile, liberals believe that it had a guiding mission, to spread the lights of freedom across the globe.
What does President Donald Trump represent in this biblical symbol? The man is not known for his religiosity, but most evangelical Christians support him, and this time, many Catholics have joined them. Commentators insist that Americans prioritize the economy and have the cost of living on top of their minds, and they voted for Trump, hoping things would get better for them during his second term.
However, he was elected against the backdrop of a political context that has been taking form since President Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s. Reagan had religious premonitions of the end of the world - not just the end of the Soviet Union or the "evil empire." Again, Trump, who is very much a man of this life, does not seem to have any mystical visions, but religious groups and others could impose their religious concerns, not just their economic ones. We should not forget questions about family issues, gender issues, sex changes, and abortion, on which Trump clearly shares and supports these conservative values.
For decades, both the right and the left have railed against the values and arrangements of European and American Enlightenment, upon which the post-WWII had been built. New French (and American) philosophers have emphasized the flaws of these principles and values, arguing that they served as a cover for the colonial era: from the age of liberalism and market economy following the fall of the Soviet Union, to the evangelization of the final victory of democracies in the age of globalization, communication, and artificial intelligence.
Figures such as Edward Said, the Subaltern Studies group, neoconservatives, and neo-evangelicals believe that these principles have led humanity to misery, alienation, environmental destruction, and the senseless wars of the United States and its adversaries, Russia and China. Prominent economists and thinkers joined in after the US real estate crisis, which became global (2008 - 2009).
Emmanuel Todd and others have spoken about the collapse of the West. Some are thinkers of the American system or the American century, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Joseph Nye, John Mearsheimer, and even Fareed Zakaria. These thinkers measure the state of the world through the state of the United States, finding deep internal divisions and revolt against its dominance around the world.
America - ironically a proponent of the ideology of soft power - has faced emerging challenges with wars and the use of force or the threat thereof. Traditionally, a short or long war would be followed by temporary or sustained peace. However, the past two decades suggest that the American wars waged under the pretext of establishing democracy or building stable states, are followed by disorder and the proliferation of militias, or bone-crushing conflicts like the war in Ukraine, Israel's wars, tensions around Taiwan, and the South China Sea, and extremist militias in West Africa, where armies are very different from militias.
So, is it true that the crisis of the United States resembles that of empires in their final stages? These alarming phenomena are not limited to the US, nor did they originate there; they began in Europe. Today, in the old continent of the Enlightenment, right-wing governments prevail, denying those values, "social capitalism" and the open society, while showing hostility towards immigrants.
Thus, the gains of the right (albeit to degrees) in the US, Canada, and Australia, point to a broad trajectory in the Western world and changes that will start from the West, which shaped the world over two eras: the Cold War era and the short-lived era of Western dominance.
All American intellectuals and media outlets were alarmed by Trump's rise and victory. Indeed, the world order that Americans and their allies created in the 20th century and the early decades of the 21st century, is now expected to change as balances and equilibriums shift. The most important of these developments include the emergence of new power centers, sharpened conflict over resources and strategic areas, and thus, new disputes.
The "city upon the hill" has lost control, not power. This is no longer a unique or isolated phenomenon, and it cannot impose itself on others by sheer force. However, Trump remains a symbol of the new phase, despite the panic of intellectuals and media. As Ibn Khaldun says in the final chapters of his "Muqaddimah,God has concerns in His creations!"
