平和
和平
평화
ASIA
21 August 2023
Why so many people feel “There is nothing for you here.”

Why so many people feel “There is nothing for you here.”

Bob Harris' comments on “There is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century” by Fiona Hill.

Why so many people feel “There is nothing for you here.”

Fiona Hill served as an advisor to three US Presidents. She wrote “There is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century” after leaving the Trump administration. Her appearance as a witness at the televised hearings of the first Trump impeachment proceedings took her out of the relative anonymity of public service and research institutes into the glare of public media.

Dr Hill’s book is both personal and profound. The daughter of a former coal miner and a nurse in Yorkshire in North Britain, she moved from the coal house to the White House, by taking opportunities to study. Fluent in Russian, she gained a deep understanding of Russian society and co-authored an earlier book on Vladimir Putin.

The essential point she develops in the narrative of her own journey is that three nations she knows well – Britain, the United States and Russia – have in common the existence of entire regions left behind by economic and social change. The people of those regions in all three nations feel there is nothing for them; and they respond readily to the empty promises of populists. For Hill, having observed both Putin and Trump up close, they are both of a kind in their cynicism and readiness to manipulate. Her account of the infamous Helsinki summit would be amusing were it not so serious.

Hill develops a compelling case for the fundamental importance of education in enabling young people from all the strata of their societies to find opportunity in this 21st century of rapid change. Along the way, she cites some alarming statistics about how methodology used in the UK during the covid pandemic took away educational opportunities from those for whom public education systems held out their best hopes.

Hill’s book was published as I wrote the final chapter of my book ‘Dancing before Storms’, wrestling with the question, after tracing the history of five revolutions that shaped today’s world, as to why elites keep on ignoring the obvious. Why do they keep ‘Dancing before storms’?

I also asked the question at the end of my book: ‘What is to be done’? Hill endeavours, with considerable authority and solid research, to propose a series of solutions, outlining what individuals can do wherever they are in each of their societies. My only thought was that she could have stated more emphatically the need for people to act collectively through organisations and movements of civil society. My guess is that she would not disagree.

Dr Fiona Hill has just taken up office as Chancellor of Durham University.

Note: Just read John West’s review of Martin Wolf’s new book: ‘The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’. John West writes: ‘At the heart of Wolf’s book is a symbiotic relationship between democracy and the market economy which is failing. And because it’s failing economically, it’s also failing politically, leaving us open to profoundly antidemocratic forces… Wolf notes that democracy is only a recent phenomenon in world political history, having only appeared in the past century or so. He sees it as a product of the industrialisation, urbanisation, and rising education standards associated with the Industrial Revolution.’

West continues: ‘One factor has been a long period of de-industrialisation, weak economic growth, and, in many countries, rising inequality. These trends disadvantage the working class and lower middle class in many societies, which have become disaffected….. Wolf regards democracy as one of the great inventions of humankind, as it offers prosperity, freedom, and human dignity in contrast to other politico-economic systems. [But] democratic capitalism has only been with us for a very short period of human history’.

Fiona Hill story of her personal journey and the lessons she drew from it made the same essential point. My book addressed the same issue from the angle: ‘if you keep dancing, you risk losing your heads’. But are any of these messages getting through?

Acknowledgements

Bob Harris is the author of "Dancing Before Storms: Five revolutions that made today's world".
Tags: asia

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