Things Still Fall Apart

Many years ago I read the now famous novel Things Fall Apart, written in 1958 by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is considered one of the great literary works of the Twentieth Century. That may be because it was one of the first novels to come in European style and yet from the pen of a native African, but still others believe it is simply a great story that needed to be told from a native perspective about the conundrum of the dark side of tribal culture and the dark side of imperial culture. The story is about the life of Okonkwo, a native leader of the fictional Igbo tribe. Okonkwo is a feared warrior who opposes colonialism as well as the efforts by Christian missionaries to proselytize and convert his friends and family to their western religion. The novel takes its title from a verse of the poem, The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats. In it, Yeats basically predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as we know it, is about to be undone. Yeats wrote the poem right after World War I, seeing it as a global catastrophe that killed millions of people and a breakdown in the structure of the world order as he knew it. Clearly, Achebe saw colonial rule as a similar breakdown in the social order that should exist in West Africa. The entire conflict at issue involves masculinity, local culture, tribalism, religion and colonialism and it is unclear which of the paths is the truest path, much less the better societal path for the long run.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere…The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst…Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the Second Coming is at hand.”

I am drawn to my recollection of these great works because today I read about the hew and cry of the incoming new administration which has brought such a combination of angst and joy to the nation. In a few weeks, half the country will be celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump with “passionate intensity” in his “second coming” as #47 in the succession of American presidents. The other half, as the poem by Yeats describes, “lack conviction” and cannot decide whether to hope for the best or fear and decry the worst. But it seems that the red versus blue divide is no longer the operative battlefield. Now it seems that civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republican ranks. This pits the traditional MAGAs, who are generally white, anti-immigrant, and less educated such that they believe that the protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America and they want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. On the other side are the true elites (as opposed to the faux liberal elites who constituted the enemy during the campaign). They are led by Elon Musk and his merry band of tech billionaires, who are far less dogmatic and very practical. A recent favorite meme I was sent shows Sam Elliot saying, “If you elected a billionaire who’s appointing other billionaires to fix the system that made them billionaires, you must be a special kind of stupid.” MAGAs must be feeling that special kind of stupid right about now.

The two sides do share a commitment to the destruction of the current government, but that may be where it ends. Trump sparked the fight when he appointed another Indian immigrant (Sriram Krishnan) as a senior policy advisor on artificial intelligence. It turns out he wants to remove the cap on green cards for workers from certain countries and has also called for making it easier for skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S. on H-1B temporary visas. This is treasonous talk to the MAGA faithful who want less, not more immigration and care not at all about educational standards. The MAGA purists are suddenly awakening to the reality that many of these tech billionaires are jumping on the Trump bandwagon just to enrich themselves and get DOD contracts and the like. My favorite attack from the MAGA world was from Laura Loomer, who said, “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third-world invaders from India.” Musk then took a stand against Loomer and posted on X that we need these foreign engineers. Musk furthermore posted the ultimate anti-American comment that, “Investing in Americans is actually hard. Really hard. It costs money and time and effort to make a person productive. It’s a short term net loss. It’s much easier to bring in skilled workers who might not do quite as good a job, but will work for a fraction of the cost and be happy just to be here.” Boom! Suck on that, MAGA. Loomer responded with, “We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi JinPing.” Double Boom!Vikram Ramaswamy jumped into the fray with “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long…. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” He called for “[m]ore math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’” That’s quite an indictment on all that the MAGA faithful love about America.

The gloves then came off further with Loomer saying, “Hey, let’s convince the peasants that we are saving them money as we enrich ourselves!” Then it got super-interesting with Musk appearing to limit Loomer’s ability to use X…this from the man that championed bringing back First Amendment free speech via the opening up of Twitter/X for all. That, of course opened even more floodgates of racist anti-immigrant sentiments. Musk shot off that “those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.” What is louder than a Boom!? Then Musk took a chapter out of Trump’s playbook as various MAGA supporters on X started complaining that he had not paid them, as promised, for their participation in his “free speech” petition during the campaign. And finally, Steve Bannon went on another right-wing social media platform to warn his supporters that Musk is showing his “true colors” and to demand that the H-1B visa program be “zeroed-out.”

Trump who may already be realizing that he has lost control over the world’s richest man wrote to Musk on his social media site: “Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT.” This is all going on over the Holidays while Senate Republicans are publicly complaining about the dysfunctional “shit show” and “fiasco” in the House of Representative.

Chinua Achebe has been dead for 11 years and William Butler Yeats has been gone for 85 years, but they would both be pleased to know that their theme of Things Fall Apart is still operative…and that sometimes it works even before things can come together properly, so Things Still Fall Apart.