Let’s look back at world history for a moment. If you reach back to your high school or college history class, you may remember the term, “The Dark Ages.”
Reaching back further, you may recall that the Dark Ages were a period of time lasting about a thousand years (from roughly the 5th to the 15th centuries) when life was especially bleak. They were characterized by an economic downturn in which trade declined and barbarian tribes invaded the “civilized” parts of Europe. There was also a prevalence of disease, such as the infamous Black Death, often caused or exacerbated by poor sanitation and nutrition, and a decline in intellectual thought.
The Dark Ages crossed my mind recently (although I’m apparently supposed to be thinking about ancient Rome) as I watched the second Trump Administration swing into high gear. You may wonder what the connection is, and it’s tenuous at this point, but what if we are witnessing the beginning of another dark age?
We have come to take peace and prosperity for granted. Sure, we’ve had the War on Terror and other low-intensity conflicts in recent decades, but it has been about 75 years since America and the world experienced a major war. World War II was a singularly unique conflict in world history, but it wasn’t the first time (or even the second) that much of the world had been embroiled in a large and lengthy fight. To cite just a couple of examples, we usually think of the American Revolution as a war between the colonies and the British with France in a supporting role, but the truth is that the Revolution was a global war that involved most of Europe’s major powers. The Napoleonic wars a few decades later, didn’t involve the United States but included almost everyone else.
We might stop to ponder why we’ve had such a long era of peace in the wake of World War II. The answer is in the name of the period: “the Pax Americana.”
The world owes its current golden age to both hard and soft American power. America became the world’s policeman, and like many policemen, we were both resented and appreciated depending on which side of each individual international mugging you happen to be on. Policemen aren’t always liked and you don’t always want them around, but when you’re in trouble, you’re glad to see them. And like the presence of other policemen, without America at the forefront of world affairs, life over the last half-century would have been, as Thomas Hobbs famously put it, “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Enter Donald Trump and MAGA. The former and current president’s rhetoric has tapped into American fatigue with the War on Terror and concern about government spending and “foreign entanglements.” Trump has taken action to back up his rhetoric.
It may or may not be intentional, but in Donald Trump’s policies, I see frightening parallels to many of the worst aspects of the Dark Ages. First, let’s look back at why the Dark Ages occurred in the first place.
Generally, the Dark Ages are considered to have begun following the fall of the Roman Empire. (I guess maybe I was thinking of Rome after all.) Like America, Rome was a stabilizing influence on the world. Rome’s control, while often brutal and self-serving, did prevent large-scale conflicts for several hundred years. Also like America, Rome is the namesake of the period of peace known as the Pax Romana.
Rome fell after a period of decline and the rise of authoritarian caesars. There is much speculation and discussion about whether Donald Trump intends to cross the Rubicon and become an American caesar, but regardless of his plans along those lines, his policy is to effectively remove America from world leadership. Trump is the most isolationist major political figure since before World War II and if America, the only viable democratic superpower, is not the leader of the free world, the Pax Americana will end, not only in name, but in the absence of peace.
There are wars going on right now, the Russo-Ukraine War is the foremost example, but aggressive nations have been contained both by Western support for the defenders and the very real possibility that America and NATO could intervene directly. Mutual Assured Destruction has helped maintain a fragile peace. Donald Trump threatens that status quo on two fronts.
First, Trump wants to cut off American aid to Ukraine. Second, Trump is threatening the integrity of NATO, the world’s most successful military alliance, first by considering a direct withdrawal and second, by fomenting infighting among its members. The Trump Administration has done this both by threatening to annex the territory of fellow NATO members Denmark and Canada as well as by attacking the internal affairs of NATO countries and implying that it will not honor the mutual defense clause.
Fracturing NATO may not only enable Vladimir Putin to successfully complete his conquest of a democratic neighbor, it will also embolden China to move on Taiwan. If the US is unwilling to fulfill its commitment to NATO and Ukraine, why should China believe that Trump would defend a lonely island in the western Pacific?
It isn’t just the rise of barbarian states like Putin’s Russia that makes me concerned about a looming dark age. Another obvious parallel is Trump’s disruption of international trade through tariffs. International trade has raised standards of living around the world by increasing access to goods and services that would otherwise be unavailable or unaffordable. Trade also frees up time by allowing specialized producers to provide these goods and services more efficiently. As trade falters, economies will shrink and standards of living will decline.
Trump’s anti-trade policies have already begun impacting markets. Prices are rising for some products. Ironically, this includes MAGA gear and clothing, much of which is manufactured in China. Appliances and lumber are two other areas where prices have already started to rise.
The upcoming economic decline is also reflected in the stock market, which while not in a total freefall, is experiencing a sharp decline. Major indexes like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have fully erased their post-election “Trump bumps” and are continuing the slide on an almost daily basis. The upcoming recession will be unique in American history as a downturn that is attributable to one man’s hubris and misguided ideas.
In a parallel to Dark Age diseases, the Trump Administration has launched attacks on healthcare and science as well. The probably-unconstitutional DOGE cuts have resulted in the dismissal of scientists across the federal government. These include researchers at NASA, NOAA, the National Institutes of Health, and a myriad of other prominent agencies that include defense researchers.
Part of the United States’ preeminence in the world has been based on our scientific leadership. That status is threatened by the massive layoffs and cuts that affect our ability to do everything from maintaining our edge in advanced weaponry to predicting the weather to seeking cures for disease. As a survivor of prostate cancer, I want the government to help find a cure for that disease and others. If you or a loved one has suffered from diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s, cures and treatments are tantalizingly close, but firing mass numbers of researchers will waste time and cost lives. Medical research is costly but cures for deadly diseases would be money well spent.
And then there is RFKJR, our erstwhile Secretary of Health and Human Services who is working to undermine proven medical technology like vaccines. Kennedy is a fount of medical misinformation that includes skepticism of the measles vaccine, a tried and true vaccine that has been available since 1963. It is no accident that measles, once eradicated in the US, is seeing a resurgence after the recent spike in anti-vax sentiment.
Many of us don’t realize just how much the world depends on America. Our foreign aid budget, often in partnership with religious organizations, was about one percent of federal spending yet the world got a lot of bang for our bucks. Food aid provided both markets for American farm products and sustenance for impoverished people in what Trump might call “shithole” countries. American medical support helped to prevent and treat diseases in poor nations and saved countless lives. One of the most underrated and successful aid programs is George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program to combat AIDS, which has been doing more with less for more than a decade.
A Muskian accountant might argue that pennies can be saved because if more people die from lack of medical care then less food aid is required, but the truth is that America benefits from world health and stability. Healthy and prosperous countries make good trading partners for American producers (at least they did before Trump’s tariff wars), and less disease elsewhere means fewer diseases to infect Americans, a particularly important point with an anti-medical science Administration in power.
In the Dark Ages, there was no dominant world power to impose order. That won’t be true in a new dark age. The vacuum that MAGA policies leave will be filled by someone else, probably China, although there may be a series of wars to determine who becomes the new top dog.
The one thing that I can say for sure is that whoever fills the America-shaped hole in world affairs won’t be as benevolent as we were. China may fill some of the gaps in food and medical aid to poor countries, but it will be at a cost. And the cost won’t be liberalization and the advancement of personal freedoms. China is an expansionist power rather than a capitalistic one. A Chinese hegemony would more closely resemble the Roman Empire than the American trade network.
Hopefully, we won’t enter a new dark age. The MAGA policies may not take root and voters and Congress may be able to reverse Trump’s wrongheaded actions before too much damage is done. There is no counterargument to Trump and MAGA like watching the destruction of the federal government with your own eyes and experiencing destruction of the economy with your own wallet. Nevertheless, the parallels between Trump policies and the Dark Ages are more than a little unsettling.
The great Ronald Reagan once told Americans, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”
But when Reagan referenced a new dark age, he had no idea that it would be his own party that would abandon its tried-and-true principles for isolationism and economic decline.
As an aside, I also want to note that readers of the Bible may recognize the trio of war, economic collapse, and death from famine and disease from Revelation chapter 6. Do with that information what you will. I’m not making any claims, just noting another parallel.
One of Leonard Cohen’s last poems was titled “What is Coming“.
Report
I think most historians disagree with the idea of the dark ages and even the dark ages were seen as a thing, they were assumed to have ended around 1000 rather than the 14th century. The period between the 11th and the mid-14th century were seen as a Medieval boom time with lots of innovation.Report
When I was getting my history BA the distinction they made was low medieval (approximately 410-1066 i.e. Alaric to William) versus high medieval (approximately 1066-1400). The low medieval period is characterized by breakdown of central authority in the early years followed by slow re-establishment of governments based around vassalage and the church. I don’t see anything happening now as a parallel.Report
My personal pet peeve was ‘Early Modern’ starting in 1500 and going to 1800. Felt like it was leading the witness.
410 to 793 is about as long as I’d go for an ‘era’ … 793 to 1071 is the Varangian era … Vikings/Byzantium/Carolingians
At any rate, Empires coming and going have nothing to do with ‘Darkness’ and there’s little to be ‘learned’ about Rome’s fall in 476 – especially since it survived and thrived until 1453. In the ‘Dark Ages’, the dominant powers were Rome and Persia (and China)… and those darned Steppe Peoples. And…Report
My recollection of the survey is that we talked ‘fall’ of Rome as prologue, spent 5 minutes on Byzantium and Clovis, then Einhard acting as the center of gravity for basically everything else from that (sub) period. A lot of reason to to question whether this is really a distinct era but I’m also not sure there’s an obvious alternative approach at the 100 level. Gotta go to the 200 and beyond for the rest.Report
This is Ravenna and Belasarius erasure!Report
Also, at least after it became the center of the Muslim World before 1000 CE, the Middle East, trade with which made the Vikings and Venice great powers, while shaping Eastern Europe (including Russia), and intellectual exchange with which made the great European advancements in philosophy and science of the late Middle Ages possible.Report
Heh in fairness to my wonderful professor the course was Medieval Europe. UMD’s history department had plenty of courses on the Islamic world. My concentration was Europe and there were courses that got into those kinds of topics, including Scandinavian history and Germanic Mythology (for which I got credits both for my major and my German citation).Report
I knew virtually nothing about the history Near, Middle, or Far East until fairly recently, when I read a couple books with a reading group, became fascinated, and read more. I really feel like Persia, the Silk Road, and China/Southeast Asia were huge holes in my formal education, and I’m trying really hard to fill them.Report
Oh for sure. Even with my degree I would classify myself as having not mere holes but gaping chasms.Report
I’d start the early modern period at sometime in the early to mid-17th century and end it around the American/French Revolutions.Report
The basic problem is that the global right is cooperating internationally in ways that that global left is not. This is both at the formal state level with Vladimir Putin being very close to people like Trump, Netanyahu, Modi, and others and at the informal level. The various rightist online communities talk and help each other. The global liberal and left side of politics is filled with people that make each other retch and aren’t talking or cooperating on a formal or informal level.
At the other blog we had long talks about the past few days on what the actual data shows from Harris’ loss and what it means for the Democratic Party. There was naturally a lot of heat rather than light but contemporary liberalism and leftism might be an electoral loser. People seem to like center left policies but not the aesthetics of liberalism or center leftism. It’s too feminine, bougie, namby pamby, etc. We might be looking at a Poland like situation where the best counter to the Far Right is a sane Center Right party.Report
The only thing that the global right seems to agree upon is that “Open Borders” is not a good policy.
Yeah, yeah. “Nobody is arguing for open borders!” but remember this article from just last month? In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning?
As it turns out, the answer is that Denmark’s Liberals are against Open Borders.
The answer just might be “abandon open borders as a policy”.
Which, you’d think, would be easy if nobody is arguing for it.Report
It’s dishonest to demand that people abandon policies they aren’t advocating for.Report
There are official policies and de facto policies. Chances are way lower that Trump is president if from the beginning Biden had approached the border the way he did in the last 8ish months of the administration. It’s also the common thread in every important European country from UKIP to National Rally to AfD to Brothers of Italy.Report
Obama deported more people in his first four years than Trump did. Ditto Biden. Both of them also tried to get Congress to fix the system. It’s was never about immigration policy.Report
That is not how the issue is understood by the voting public and I think you know that too.
Obama was in a defensible place, constantly and prominently asking for security the GOP in Congress refused to fund while being careful to champion the cause of only the easiest, most sympathetic cases. Biden was a total disaster. As soon as he took office he ended remain in Mexico and reversed the other Trump EOs that were creating some breathing room. Then he sat for over 3 years while the asylum system was made into a total mockery. It’s night and day.Report
The system was already a mockery precisely as you describe. Remain in Mexico was always framed as a COVID response so once the pandemic ended keeping it in place would have made a mockery.Report
Yeah, maybe that play will work. “Open borders?” you can ask with wide eyes. “But nobody is even pushing for those!”Report
I don’t want to do too much projecting of intelligence but it seems to me that the GOP’s slight edge comes from apparent willingness to make trade offs and even take hard lines with their constituencies. The big business wing has gotten a big middle finger on immigration and tariffs. A quieter but still firm ‘shut up’ seems to have gone out to the pro-life movement. Which doesnt mean they aren’t still very off-putting and alienating. There’s a reason they’re in charge only by a thin margin. We have yet to see the Democrats do anything quite like it, in the sense of picking some sides for the sake of getting/holding power.Report
I don’t even think that arguing “hey, we need one billion immigrants” is necessarily a *BAD* play. “The Haitians are making Ohio better. Here’s the factory owner praising how they’re better workers than vintage Americans!”
But this whole thing about how we have a massive influx of immigrants and use new and novel ways to get them into communities who don’t get a vote on it and then pretend that nothing happened when there are objections is, seriously, going to turn off more people than a full-throated “READ THE STATUE OF LIBERTY POEM AGAIN!!!”Report
I think there are multiple angles to it. One is ‘law and order.’ One is the perception of government dysfunction. One is that we have more foreign born people as a proportion of the population than any other time in history, plus fertility decline of the native born citizenry, plus the larger ‘late capitalism’ malaise and disenfranchisement driving a bunch of cultural panic.
As you note there are lots of ways you can play it that might work but the one thing you probably can’t do is occupy the middle of a ven diagram that says ‘nothing is happening,’ ‘we don’t care that this is happening’ and ‘you are a racist.’.Report
I don’t get a vote on who my neighbors are, and they don’t get a vote on me. Is it different where you live?Report
See? Isn’t that better than “but nobody is arguing for open borders!”?Report
“Better” for what?Report
Well, if you want to pretend that you can’t tell, I’ll let you continue to do so.
But I imagine that it doesn’t feel better when you do that.Report
You didn’t answer my first question, so I’m not surprised that you didn’t answer the second. But why, after all this time, would you think I’m pretending about not understanding you? It’s the normal state of affairs around here.Report
I agree with the business stuff but not necessarily the pro-life stuff. The social reactionaries are definitely getting more bold with different policy preferences they have like anti-DEI, transphobia, etc.
Also the Democratic Party has done this as well. The police reform faction is definitely not in control anymore. Law and order Democrats trounced them easily and the national party is going along. So at least the police reform/defund the police faction has been told that they are losers.Report
So at least the police reform/defund the police faction has been told that they are losers.
Was it a mistake to run a candidate in 2024 that argued for defunding the police back in 2020?
Because if we can’t get people to say “holy crap, we never should have run Kamala”, I’m going to say that you’re making stronger statements than those that would more accurately describe the facts on the ground.Report
I dunno. Omitting a national abortion ban from the platform for the first time in 40 years is a pretty big deal. Especially if you’re looking to give cover to socially moderate women in swing states open to voting for you.Report
The actual policies have not changed though.Report
Well, yes. But it works. And that’s good enough for far too many people.Report
Just because the global right only agrees on no “Open Borders” doesn’t mean that they aren’t communicating or cooperating with each other. I’d also argue that there is plenty of stuff that they agree on besides even if it doesn’t rhyme completely.Report
We’d probably benefit from definitions here. “They’re engaging in commerce!” is one definition of communication/cooperation but it strikes me as trivial.
Like, if we’d not find it particularly notable for “the global left” to do the things we’re talking about when we say “communication/cooperation”, we may be doing the thing where we’re complaining about humans but saying that it’s “the global right” doing it.
You know, the way that kids these days conflate “entropy” with “capitalism”.Report
There are many problems with using the Dark Ages as an analogy, not the least of which is that the Dark Ages, to the extent that they were really a thing, took place in a part of the world that, outside of the Italian Peninsula, Greece (and the surrounding areas), and Turkey, had effectively been a global backwater since the extinction of the Neanderthal. Sure, Rome had conquered much of it, but it’s not like Roman technological, military, or political advances were coming out of Gallia, Hispania, Germania, or Britannia (or to the extent that they were, they were coming from Romans campaigning there). Things looked very different for much of that thousand years in, say, Persia or East Asia, where the world was doing just fine.
Since the end of the world, the West has seen the rise and fall of more than one great power, and the East has seen its millennia-old great power fall and rise again. There are likely better lessons about the end of a great power in a highly globalized world in the last 600 years than in anything before it. We’re not Rome, as much as we’d like to think we are, because the rest of the West is not merely barbarians.
I’m sure I’ve recommended it here a few times before, but The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times by Giovanni Arrighi is a great look at the cycle of the decline of a great Western power, the interegnum, the ascendance of another power, and its reign, since the late middle ages (starting with Renaissance Florence). There’s much to disagree with in there, and he gets predictions about who will come after the U.S. wrong, but it’s full of great historical insights.Report