Answering for America’s Madness
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/answering-americas-madness.htmlYves is overall a brillliant person and I have also experienced exactly what Ann Jones describes in my years of wandering the world. One can hardly disagree with the sentiments they express and it is indeed hard to answer the questions one is posed as Jones and Yves describe. But it is not that I have any trouble figuring out what the answer to the questions are, I am always trying to take into account whether it is wise to give the questioner the real answer.
Yves here. This post by Ann Jones discusses the difficulty that Americans have in answering questions from foreigners about large swathes of our policies. I had enough trouble explaining (mind you, not defending) the Iraq War when I lived in Sydney from 2002 to 2004, when Americans were generally still well tolerated around the world. I can’t imagine what it is like now.
Some readers will no doubt beg to differ, but it appears that our supposed leaders are operating out of a mass delusion and trying (and for the moment succeeding) in imposing it on the rest of us.
Americans who live abroad — more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) — often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world........
Europeans understand, as it seems Americans do not, the intimate connection between a country’s domestic and foreign policies. They often trace America’s reckless conduct abroad to its refusal to put its own house in order. .........
It’s hard to know why we are the way we are, and — believe me — even harder to explain it to others. Crazy may be too strong a word, too broad and vague to pin down the problem. Some people who question me say that the U.S. is “paranoid,” “backward,” “behind the times,” “vain,” “greedy,” “self-absorbed,” or simply “dumb.” Others, more charitably, imply that Americans are merely “ill-informed,” “misguided,” “misled,” or “asleep,” and could still recover sanity. But wherever I travel, the questions follow, suggesting that the United States, if not exactly crazy, is decidedly a danger to itself and others...
America is certainly to be feared. But it is not hard to understand basic US policy and actions. As soon as one sets aside Denial and accepts what it is all comes pretty clear. America is the modern version of the British, Roman, etc empires. It is all about us and everyone else is here to either support us (for which you will get a minor share in the take) or you are going to get used rather roughly for impeding our collection of wealth which is going to be moved to the center where it rightly belongs. Yeah we do a lot of stupid things outside the country but so has every other empire as it passed peak and began the long decline. One continues to grasp at straws and every idea however foolish (Iraq War anyone?) has some carrot in it which seems so attractive that it cannot be resisted. When Dick Cheney stated that the American way of life was not negotiable he was not joking and his words resonated with great force throughout much of mainstream America. Americans may be ignorant of the outer world and the intricacies of foreign relations and how others live, but they are not confused in any way about what they think America "is" and it's "value" in the world. I am not kidding here. Your average American has no doubts that their country is the greatest and most exceptional country to have ever existed. That it occupies not only a special place in history but also in the eyes of God. It is unique in human history and nothing will be allowed to stand in its way. Those who oppose it are bad people if not evil. Many Americans despise Socialists and Communists (they see no difference between them) and have no respect for those who are weak and can be taken advantage of (this is part of our internal culture as well). In religious terms Americans are most like Muslims - fundamentalist Americans are very much like fundamentalist Muslims. Muslim terrorists kill innocent civilians up front and personal while Americans use drones and F18's, but that is only a minor difference.
Our internal culture is not only defined by our clawing our way to the top of the heap of world power (such a thing stamps one with a certain outlook on the world - see British attitudes over the last 150 years) but also to a major extent by the outlook of the people who populated this country over the last 400 years. We are made up out of those whom you did not want - never forget that. You sent your failures here, your troublemakers, your criminals, your poor, your weak, your discards and so on. My first relatives to come to America were taken from an English prison and put on a ship and told not to return. Americans largely carved their world out of the wilderness on their own. They had no one other than each other to manage this task and because of the kind of people they were to start with and how they were stamped by the experience this is where we ended up.
Many Americans are not ignorant of the social systems described in the article. They are just not interested in them because they consider them vehicles for the weak and would rather die than take such assistance. If you cannot figure out how to work hard enough to pull yourself up and support yourself you have no value to society. Americans admire those who are strong and take what they can grasp. Thus our cultural fascination with outlaws (I have a famous outlaw in my family) and the successful ultra wealthy free market capitalist (I have one of those as well). People see nothing wrong with accumulating all one can get ones hands on and admire them as well. It is better to be on the winning team as just a soldier than to be an equal on the team which takes orders from the strong. It is a dog eat dog world and we all know which side of that equation it is best to be on.
Now the above is clearly overstated - to some extent. But I am trying to make a point about how to think about the US as we contemplate the future and what can be accomplished in dealing with climate change. That is, not much, unless you are willing to acquiesce in the US maintaining its relatively superior position in the world. Our leaders and citizens are not at all prepared to discuss anything if our 'way of life' is on the table as a bargaining chip. We will double down first. Just two days ago I had a gentleman who seems to be very nice and treats everyone kindly tell me straight up that we should send the US military into the Middle East (yes he meant all of it) and to just exterminate anyone who opposes us and convert everyone else to a 'real' religion and civilize them until they were like us (??!!). He got angry with me when I demurred and since that conversation has been very stiff with me.
