Pres Trump’s Toynbee Rating C+

Pres Trump’s Toynbee Rating C+

The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote a number of history books examining world civilization (s) that was titled ‘A Study of History. In that work he examined 23 civilizations that had existed and developed a thesis regarding similarities in their structures and why they rose and fell. In that context I would like to consider President Trump’s work so far in light of Toynbean criteria regarding the United States. The Toynbee S-R criteria of challenge and response for a civilization is examined with the political leader's work in mind.

Toynbee provided several salient features of civilizations with which one may consider the U.S. situation. It has an internal and external proletariat of Mexicans. It has a (nearly) former majority transitioning to become a repressive minority. It has a wealth class that invests far beyond its borders and lets the nation be flooded by the external proletariat and foreign investors owning business and collecting rents.

Those are not the sole elements of Toynbee’s paradigm the U.S.A. shares with civilizations such as that of ancient Rome and possibly the British Empire among others. The leadership is also unable to change from its old economic infrastructure of fossil fuel transportation and move to the new (such as electric lines in freeways to power electric cars) and thus become surpassed by economic leadership and competition abroad.

President Trump rates a C+ for trying unsuccessfully to defend the border against an inflow of cheap labor from the external proletariat. He rates a D for reinforcing too much the overly mature fossil fuel technology and downgrading electric personal transport vehicles, and a B for trying to stop the loss of American capital investment abroad.