What went wrong with America?

A reorientation failure at the end of the Cold War has deeply damaged the US.

US election chaos, already worse than we’ve seen in over a century, is symptomatic of a deeper problem; the US has suffered catastrophic damage to the nation’s foundational elements;

• Cohesion. Fragmented. Tribal. Polarized. Low trust.

• Legitimacy. Lies. Misinformation. Systemic corruption. No accountability. Tribal alignment.

• Competence. Repeated failure. Can’t fix problems. Throws money at problems.

The damage to these foundations is so severe;

• It’s unlikely that this erosion is due to any single crisis or individual.

• This degree of damage, done so quickly (decades), can only be attributed to a cascade of bad decisions affecting all areas of American life.

• The only explanation for this cascade of bad decision-making is that America has suffered an orientation failure.

Orientation

John Boyd, America’s most significant strategic mind, maintained that orientation is the focal point of decision-making since it shapes how we observe, decide, and act (the four steps in Boyd’s OODA loop).

Orientation is a pattern of understanding informed and constrained by experience, training, culture, education, means, capabilities, desires, aspirations, etc. It is the step in decision-making that shapes sense, goal, and path-making to navigate a complex environment successfully.

With a solid orientation, every decision, regardless of its success, yields advancement through attentiveness, focus, hard work, and incremental improvements. Moreover, with each advance, new advances come faster and more easily.

In contrast, a broken orientation converts every decision into damage regardless of the effort's apparent success. The longer this failed orientation persists, the greater the loss in cohesion, coherence, etc.

Examples of broken orientation; nation-building in Afghanistan, Blockbuster Video, etc.

While orientation is tough, reorientation is tougher, as the US found at the end of the Cold War. In that case, reorientation was particularly difficult because of the success of the prior orientation.

Examples of reorientation failure; successful executive —> retirement (there’s a reason heart attacks spike in the first year of retirement), successful single —> marriage (divorce if they can’t reorient to married life), etc.

What Went Wrong

At the end of the Cold War, the US reoriented itself to meet the challenges and opportunities of a world without an existential foe. To simplify things, we can boil it down to a choice between two orientations;

• National. A focus on America and the prosperity of America’s citizens. Lead the world by example. Invent the future (tech). Reluctant to use military force, join alliances, or intervene in foreign wars. Fair trade. Maximize independence and minimize dependence. Trust busting. Constrain financialization. A return to America’s traditional orientation. Nationalism, moderated by democracy. American citizens. Pragmatic idealism.

• Global. The manager and enforcer of a global system. Focus on the world's prosperity. Open trade. Open borders. Actively intervene militarily to shape global outcomes. Welcome dependence. Welcome foreign entanglements. Be willing to sacrifice to ensure the system's success. Financialize everything. Massive multinationals. Double down on Cold War globalism without the requirement to guard against communism subversion by advancing domestic prosperity. Democracy replaces nationalism. Global citizens. Utopian idealism.

Flush with hubris due to its victory in the Cold War, the US chose the global path, and everything began to unravel.