I am currently two hours into our ten hour flight from New York to Santiago, which means I’m still in the heartland of America somewhere. When booking these flights, I was mildly concerned about flying a “local” airline like the LatAm flight that we are on. Granted, LatAm is partnered with Delta and is, indeed, 25% owned by Delta, but that only serves to provide so much comfort that the flight standards are up to our exacting American standards. What nonsense. In every aspect of the flight so far, LatAm is far superior to any American airline (Delta, American, United, Alaska, etc….even my old favorites, TWA or PanAm) in literally every aspect of service I can see. The boarding process was somehow more organized and efficient, the plane is a modern Airbus 387 wide-body, with a Business Class cabin fit for a modern king. The amount of space allocated per person is easily the best I have ever seen short of the wildly expensive Asian and Middle Eastern First Class couchettes. These are two person pods that consist of the seating section and a footrest that doubles as a guest seat forward section. They are attractive, functionally advanced, chock full of storage bins, and roomy, both length-wise and width-wise from top to bottom. Most international business class service providers present you on arrival with a nice menu for your dining and drinking pleasure. But this was as complete and professional menu as I’ve also seen, and it was printed like the best menu from the best cosmopolitan restaurant of the moment. While not a wine drinker, the offering of fine wines seemed to be quite amazing. But was at really stood out was the level of service offered and given by the onboard staff.
I recall my early travels to Eastern Europe and Russia forty years ago. These people were just in the midst of Glasnost and had not allowed themselves the indulgence of good service for seventy years since the Bolshevik uprising. I was shocked to find that even in the finest boutiques, offering the very best luxury goods (which were few and far between in those turbulent days), the concept of client service simply did not exist. They were happy to seek patronage, but not at the expense of their pride of independence. They all seemed beholding to no one, and exuded that indifference to service in an almost surly manner. That may have improved a fair bit since then, but I also believe that some people have a genetic arrogance and are not meant to serve.
Being of service has been an almost puritanical part of the Christian heritage that has dominated the development of this country. It has been repeatedly regenerated through events of national unity. Wars and especially attacks upon us have provided the biggest part of these unifying events. I wish it was otherwise, but of late, thanks mostly to Trump and his disdain for people who make sacrifices he cannot imagine making, being of service has begun to be likened to being a chump.
Earlier today (or was that yesterday? … I am in time zone hell), we got into our pick-up Uber at 4:15am to get to the airport. The driver (who had a 5.0 star rating) engaged me in a conversation, mostly about where we were going. What started as a simple discussion about Chile blossomed into a broader geopolitical riff. For reasons that will not surprise anyone that knows me, I took the bait and we spent some time talking about the nature of dictatorships and authoritarianism in places like Chile, Argentina, Panama, Venezuela, Russia, China and even the Third Reich. He was a very inquisitive listener, so the conversation covered all my favorite theories of where dictatorships lead and how they play out eventually without fail. Places like Chile, Argentina, Panama and Venezuela are not really on the dictatorship screen at the moment, despite either being governed by one (Venezuela) or moments away from one (Argentina) and that’s because of the rise of authoritarianism on the larger stages of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and…even… the United States. The phenomenon of people embracing and/or abiding by this oppressive form of governance is clearly the major geopolitical trend of the moment. Where in the past this has been mostly in the province of smaller republics that are easier to flip, the combination of our 8 billion-person world and the use of digital media (especially social media) has driven authoritarianism into the main tent.
We are already so deeply into this new cycle that to my thinking we are starting to see the exit ramps, which are usually surrounded by war. Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan are clear signs of how authoritarians try desperately to cling to their power base. It is hard to have that discussion without extrapolating about the American Dictatorship off-ramp that will eventually come. This may be wishful thinking on my part, but then again, Americans have always shown themselves to be less compliant and tolerant and more impatient. That suggests that we need to brace for some pretty stark swings in the coming few years. Those swings are a form of uncertainty (notice the market swings based on the on-again, off-again tariff wars with Canada), and uncertainty is always conflated to risk.
By the time we were onto exit ramps for dictators the Uber driver was on the airport exit ramps heading to the departure drop-off. He asked me if I had studied political science and I told him I had, but that it was long ago. I explained that my themes around these issues were more a function of traveling the world, seeing the machinations up close and personal and talking through the issues with people like him. I think its fair to say that I left an impression on this one Uber driver. That may be the highest and best use of my thoughts at this stage of my life (other than perhaps writing this blog).