21 Mar, 2025
The “Land of the Free” is all but dead. The “Land of Fear” is here
Bangkok – On 19 March, I spent a scintillating evening at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) listening to Nirmal Ghosh, author of “Backlash: Donald Trump And The Remaking Of America”. He was joined by Keith Richburg, a former foreign correspondent with the Washington Post. Moderator Dominic Faulder of Nikkei Asian Review introduced the panel with a surprise guest, Steve Herman, chief national affairs correspondent for the Voice of America, who has just become a victim of the shutdown of the US radio service.
My core takeaway from the discussion: The “Land of the Free” is all but Dead. The “Land of Fear” is here, probably to stay.
Published in January 2025, the month of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mr Ghosh’s book is about the “Remaking of America.” Since January 2025, the staccato of unfolding events is more reflective of an “Unmaking of America”, with ominous implications for democracy, human rights, freedom and justice worldwide.
If the United States, the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”, can dismantle the pillars of everything it has held sacred, so can other countries. With the Donald Trump regime only three months into its four-year term, all those who stand for democracy, human rights, freedom and justice need to start thinking long and hard about the implications of that.
The FCCT discussion has set that ball rolling.
Mr Herman said he was accused of “treason” by a high ranking official who dug up one of his comments on the USAID shutdown and told that as a “foreign service officer”, he had to parrot the partyline. He described how the suspension of the multi-language radio service would impact on communities worldwide, particularly in many repressive regimes.
He said the atmosphere in Washington DC was one of “sadness, resignation and a little bit of paranoia”. There is also a perception of a “chilling effect” as a result of the narrowing of the space for free speech.
In turn, in his opening comments and responses to questions, Mr Ghosh said the United States in experiencing an “unimaginable toxic divide.”
“If you look at the data from internet dating sites you find increasingly fewer and fewer people want to even meet and date with someone who has opposing political views. So this divide is just getting more acute and while I think America is not about to sort of erupt into civil war tomorrow and I think some people like predicting it’s a terminal decline, I think it would be a fatal mistake to write it off. I think the potential for more violence is becoming more and more real and more acute now.”
He outlined how the political perspectives are now split between “patriots” and “traitors”. Economically, too, the rich-poor income gap is growing with high levels of poverty in a country that has more billionaires than any other.
Mr Ghosh talked about the implications of the rise of “straight, white, Christian nationalism”. He noted that the anti-immigrant actions are rooted in demographic studies showing that the US white population will become a minority by 2045. He pointed out how the US had swung from electing its first Black President in 2008 and again in 2012, which was supposed to mark the start a new era but now, just 12 years later, has swung in the other direction.
The role of the mainstream media has diminished as attention spans become shorter and people seek simple answers to complex questions. Mr Ghosh narrated his personal experiences covering political rallies where people would warily ask him if he was also speaking “to the other side” and then becoming more open and relaxed after being told that he was reporting for a foreign newspaper in Singapore.
Mr Richburg asked him, “Do they even know where Singapore is?”
Mr Ghosh noted the ineffectiveness of the protest movements, not just currently but dating back to the anti-globalisation protests of 1999 in Seattle, the anti-Iraq war protests in 2003 and more recently the Occupy Wall Street protests. The anti-Israel protests in the universities are facing the same fate.
Warning about the rise of McCarthyism, he said, “I don’t think we learn much from history unfortunately and history just keeps repeating itself. I think McCarthyism is a good thing to keep in mind seeing what we are seeing now.”
“Many Americans alive today do not know what it is to live under dictatorship. They do not know what a fascist regime looks like”, he said.
He likened the tariff-wars to Trump exploiting the “politics of grievance”, similar to what is playing out in India with the Hindu right-wing.
Questions came from people who identified themselves Canadians, Americans and a 16-year-old Australian asking about nuclear arsenals and its implications. The teenager’s concern was that whatever crisis ensues, as a 16-year-old, “I am going have to live through it.” A comment well worth noting by those who claim to be working for the benefit of the “future generation.”
This session should be watched carefully, several times over, by everyone in Travel & Tourism. The industry is already feeling the heat. And it’s going to get worse. As I have said many times before, much to my own detriment, sweeping it under the carpet would be an exercise in stupidity.
AI, ChatGPT and climate change are no longer the only games in town.
The second quarter of the 21st century will be Age of The Ugly American, for sure.
Both Mr Richburg and Mr Ghosh are now retired in Thailand. It would be well worthwhile inviting them as speakers at future events.
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