The comment thread attaching to this post grew rather more warm than we are accustomed to. It’s to be expected I suppose, even if the title of the post hadn’t been a touch ironic – perhaps a touch too lightly ironic it seems.
There are probably few things quite so off-putting to the world outside our borders than that innate sense of “American Exceptionalism” with which we face the outside world. It is a notion which is both ancient (by our standards, anyway) and culturally embedded. As others have remarked, it is not enough for us to think of ourselves as a “great country,” we must also be “the best.” Nor is it sufficient that our form of democracy is good, it must also be the most authentic – or, considering how much we moan over our own political class – it must at least be immune to outside criticism.
And it isn’t even merely an international phenomenon – we play Exceptionalism as an intramural sport as well. One my favorite bumper stickers from the days when I lived in Mississippi was the one that said, “We don’t care how you do it up north.” Although the south may have lost the Civil War, they never – for better or worse – entirely lost their southern culture. Knowing that we were disdained by many northrons for our backward ways, we were taught to return the favor with interest. “New York is a wonderful place,” said my father – who had spent many years there between his studies at Kings Point and his time in the Merchant Marine – “or it would be,” he would add, “if it weren’t for all those damned New Yorkers.” While simultaneously – and this is the really interesting part – standing cheek by jowl with the detested Yankees whenever someone from abroad tried to pick a fight.
A lot of us grew up during the Cold War and during most of that time we “pledged allegiance to the flag” and read the novel “Animal Farm” in most high school English programs because an allegorical novel written by an English socialist on the perils of socialism was considered morally instructive. Now that that’s over, Animal Farm has (for the most part) been replaced by “Romeo and Juliet,” at least in our local schools and the effort to vanish that godbothering pledge down the memory hole continues apace.
Which is fine, I’m rather more a fan of Shakespeare than Orwell anyway. But there has been a larger deconstructionist movement inside our educational and political orthodoxy over the course of the last decade or so. The dominant narrative of our westward expansion used to be one of Brave Citizens and Recent Immigrants Embarking on a Bold Journey in Search of Freedom. Which it was. But that part of the story was at first balanced and then increasingly overcome by the parallel narrative of a brutal native American genocide. Which, while there is certainly an element of truth to that, is not and ought not be the whole of the story. Similarly, although roughly 300,000 Bluecoats died in an effort to rid my ancestral lands of the “Peculiar Institution,” the dominant narrative that emerges from that time is not one of hard fighting and sacrifice to free a cruelly oppressed race, but rather it is racism and the “legacy of slavery.” We grew up being taught to celebrate our national “melting pot,” but modern political and cultural currents agitate us instead towards ever more narrowly drawn divisions of identity-based grievance associations, muscling around a finite, zero-sum trough.
But while that sort of mythic deconstruction serves a usefully deterrent purpose to our wilder excesses in carefully measured doses, it can definitely be taken too far: Nations that are not tied together by romantic visions of “blood and soil,” like most of “Old Europe,” or ethnic homogeneity like Japan – and both models come with significant drawbacks, by the way – must instead be held together by a Big Idea. Label it a “narrative” or a “national myth” if you prefer, but it is the necessary coagulant that prevents all kinds of social horrors, including the Cold War alternative of politics by class warfare – not as a metaphor, but with actual guns and bullets, corpses and concentration camps.
And our “Big Idea” is a kind of exceptionalism, that “shining city on a hill.” A place where anything can happen, where no one is cursed by birth or station, but where anyone with a good idea, some common sense and the drive to see it through can realize their dreams. A place where even poor people get fat. A place where, if you’re not careful, you might get elected president.
It is composed in part of an often crass but always energetic mercantalism which helps to generate the luxury of thoughtful ease – there are no big ideas where peoples live from hand to mouth. Atop this we ladle a generous dollop of what can sometimes be construed as preening moralizing, but which we prefer to view as virtue. I think it is the combination of natural self-interest, cultural energy, multi-spectrum capacity and presumption of good faith that so offends the rest of the world – any of these by themselves would be inoffensive, but taken together? Toxic. If only because it is relatively unique.
Every last element of our ongoing culture war is a battle over who will own the cultural narrative going forward, by the way – whether citizenship is an individual entitlement, with individual rights and responsibilities, or whether in the future it ought to aggregate to group identities and collective visions. And this is just the intramural scrum.
In the international sphere, we spent most of our first century disconnected from the rest of the world, isolated by our oceans, wholly absorbed with affairs of our own. Although it’s difficult to believe for a foreigner used to seeing US businesses, movies and yes, soldiers all around the world, there is an enduring element of isolationism which calls to us, an ever-present siren singing, “You don’t understand those people. You can’t. Come home.”
A secret part of us would love to disconnect from a world “outside,” a world we only dimly comprehend – a world which has often scourged us with its contempt in times of ease but which has all too often beckoned to us in moments of peril or existential need into costly and bloody conflicts whose antecedents are far too complex for us to understand with our foreshortened sense of history, not to mention our predisposition to self-absorbed navel-gazing – we have never been much of a backward-looking breed.
In choosing sides in these quarrels we were often forced to simplify because “analysis” sounds too much like “paralysis” to us, and history – not to mention current events – all too often reinforces our admitted bias to action. We even seek to personalize the matter – we fought against Hitler, not Germany; Tojo, not Japan; Saddam, not Iraq – because our fundamental belief that People are good, even if certain people are not. Our message to the world has too often been, “We cannot know you as well as you would like us to.” At times it seems we scarcely know ourselves.
But there is always something that needs being done in the world. After our Western European fore bearers bled themselves white in decades of internecine warfare during the last century, there was no one else left with the capability of doing what needed to be done – rebuilding the industry and infrastructure of a continent while manning the barricades against an exterior menace. Our fathers shrugged, took up the burden and went into the wide world, hoping for the best, willing to please and expecting to be pleased in return – an expectation that was routinely disappointed.
Americans fundamentally believe that it ought to be possible to “do good while also doing well.” Combine national self-interest – no crime throughout the rest of the world, but always suspicious in those who have the unique capacity to act – with a reason to feel as though we are doing the “right thing” (the will to go along with the means) and action is nearly inevitable. Not always to the good, but, it must be admitted, generally so – only contemplate the last 100 years absent American involvement. And yet this contains a kernel of why we are regarded with such ambivalence on the world stage – we are as necessary as we are all-too-often clumsy – even before we factor in economic envy and Gaullist pique. People would like us to be “us” but also more like “them.” Or failing that, at least do what they would like us to do rather than what we ourselves think best.
Worst case? “Somebody tie that man’s hands.”
This will not last forever, nothing does. Our secondary schools have lost their lead in important fields of study, we train foreign students at our best universities and then deny them residence, and even in the area of technological innovation our dominance in important ways has reportedly evaporated. Our moral authority – the will that fuels the engine of capability – has worn threadbare with the burden of fighting what many of us believe to be an existential struggle, but one whose very existence our natural allies (not to mention many of our own countrymen) do not deign to acknowledge. In another 20 years or so, if current trends continue, the Peoples Republic of China – a country that holds much of our national debt – will also overtake us in purchasing power. After that, who knows? One thing is certain only: The world will be a very different place.
When that end arrives, there will be many who quietly celebrate – not least those tender souls who fear us as a warlike, insufficiently contemplative race, but also those whose confident will to power has been held in check by the calculus of national and personal risk – two groups that share little else in common.
I wonder, between the two, who will celebrate last?
Certainly not an unexpected, thoughtful post, but…you are most certainly in a mood to contemplate the huge issues of all time in this one.
Somehow, as an envelope around it all is a certain element of humanity the chafes at the thought of someone else doing well. The envy/jealousy factor then weighs in, as one person/group/nation perceives someone else has received (regardless of the sweat equity involved- even when it is apparent) what should have been theirs, even without any investment of finances or labor.
Look to the disdain for one Bill Gates. Then also look how many will dislike him, yet approach him to ask for his riches to help them get ahead/catch up. Much like the amount of foreign aid we distribute. If we did not, we would be more soundly spoken badly of in the World’s circles, yet we send money forth for far more than militaristic support, and they still love to hate us.
So, some of it is a human condition, as old as Cain and Abel, long before either the Vikings, Columbus, the Chinese or the Pilgrims (or any others who may be staking a claim for their ancestors to the creation of the place we call “America”) this nation began, and now has history in it’s wake.
But we are here now and what matters is how we do the Rodney King thing, as the planet grows ever smaller due to the blessings (and often thought of as curses – depending on who you are and where you are) of modernity.
Oh, yes, let me quote a very wise man:
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
It’s just all about the context of the timeline in which “it” is being discussed.
You say that this will not last, and that may be true, I hope you are wrong. I think we have an ability to correct this course with a firm hand on the helm, we just have to embrace some harsh realities of our culture, and get past the past. One thing that I feel we have lost is our initiative. Our drive towards achievement. In the first 100 years that this country was growing, most had endured hardships beyond comprehension to get here and stake their claim. That drive to achievement was passed down to their children. As our country found ways to make life easier, that initiative and drive slowly trickled down to an imperceptable ripple. We have to recapture that drive. That competativeness that made us the country we are. Not sure how to do it, but, I am trying with my three children…
I should probably stay out of the pool for a while having almost drowned in my last time in. But what the heck………..
I think there are 3 issues that are at play here.
1) Americans do view themselves as different from the rest of the world. It is a cause of satisfaction and frustration for ourselves and for others. However I think its a safe bet that if Americans just said they were the same as Europeans, they would immediately run to the head and be sick to their stomach. Its tied up deep in the American history and psyche. We believe deep down that the nation has been given a special mission in the world.
2) That said, however, as the economy grows more global and power becomes more distributed around the world, it will be increasingly hard for Americans to influence events to go the way they want. You could say in that regard, the American mission is being accomplished. The children are growing up. Problem is that it will make the US just another competitor on the world stage-not the dominant power. India and China, the EU, Russia and other nations are chomping at the bit to be on equal footing.
3) It is not something the people of the US are really ready to hear. The world has changed and it is impossible to stop the process in listed in the previous paragraph. It is the natural result of significant choices the US made in the 50’s and 60’s-particularly with respect to Europe and the liberation of their colonies-that the effects of which are now coming home to roost.
I’ve never encountered real hostilty to being an American in travels overseas. However there is considerable resentment of the US success, and I would submit to you that outside the US, the President is even less popular than he is at home. Any efforts to provide rapproachment are exacerbated by the backdrop of the conflicts overseas. It would probably be less visible if they were not going on. But they are and they will into the future.
It may not be such a bad thing though, because in the brave new world, the US does not have to shoulder all the burden-it may in fact be able solve some of its internal problems, like figuring out how to admit those engineering students without ending up looking like some of the other nations.
Welcome to the Federation………….
The one’s with the most bullets, skill, and strength to use them of course. The former group will set up headquarters in Saskatoon.
Funny, I would have thunk it would it have been Paris.
Shipmates,
Well, if we are headed down a path to the “Federation” I am glad I will be long dead before that day arrives. I am all for national interests, and placing the United States ahead of any other consideration or people.
If it is indeed to be our future that such a thing come to pass, then let’s start the ball rolling by dissolving the united nations, a black hole of money and responsibility if ever there was one.
However,
I’m not too worried about China or India at present. I suspect that both will be at war with eachother sooner rather than later, and that several cities will be lost to nuclear conflagration. When it’s over, the victor will have to deal with an inrushing tide of Islamic Militants who will flow, like water, down the path of least resistance to a conquest of those now-blighted lands.
Our trick will be to stand aside and let it happen, to remain standing while the rest are driven to their knees. That’s why energy self-sufficiency is so important. We can feed ourselves, that’s not a problem. We can reopen our factories and mines. What we will need is the energy to run them, to continue to protect our nation and increase our strength while the rest of the world tries to crawl out of the slag-heaps of of an apocalyptic war.
Respects,
Paris is already encircled by les zones sensibles. The champagne will run out in time.
Lex,
Heh… I can see it now: Do to the lack of tourists, the Parisian waiters were forced to sit around and insult each other…
Respects,
The answer to Lee’s (comment #3) question is obvious, allow immigrantion into this country.
Tim, lol.
We have a long tradition of sending our traitors north. It goes all the way back to the Revolution, when the Torys found themselves in quite a pickle after backing the wrong side. Let’s just say, there were hard feelings, not of the good kind. In any case, they’ll be able to drive their SUV’s and talk on their mobile phones most of the way.
Sorry, … late to this discussion. And I unfortunately missed the earlier one containing Michelle’s extraordinarily insightful and perceptive post.
Especially surprising was how many of those opposing responses to her post, unintentionally and ironically supported and underscored her observations.
Michelle may not be the proverbial canary in a coalmine, but her message should nevertheless be considered and heeded, rather than ignored and scorned.
American Exceptionalism makes for fascinating study. . . and debate.
A convenient mixture of mythos and geopolitical circumstances, American Exceptionalsim does much to explain who we are as a nation; our roots, development, and accomplishments.
It is also our American Exceptionalism that is the object of envy, fear, admiration, hate, amusement, respect and perhaps even pity among many of our world partners. But we don’t really care, do we? And therein lies a serious flaw of our American Exceptionalism.
Hubristic nations are not only more ‘easy-to-hate’ nations; they also contain and nourish the seeds to their own eventual downfall as in, “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Times and circumstance ?
Sorry, … late to this discussion. And I unfortunately missed the earlier one containing Michelle’s extraordinarily insightful and perceptive post.
Especially surprising was how many of those opposing responses to her post, unintentionally and ironically supported and underscored her observations.
Michelle may not be the proverbial canary in a coalmine, but her message should nevertheless be considered and heeded, rather than ignored and scorned.
American Exceptionalism makes for fascinating study. . . and debate.
A convenient mixture of mythos and geopolitical circumstances, American Exceptionalsim does much to explain who we are as a nation; our roots, development, and accomplishments.
It is also our American Exceptionalism that is the object of envy, fear, admiration, hate, amusement, respect and perhaps even pity among many of our world partners. But we don’t really care, do we? And therein lies a serious flaw of our American Exceptionalism.
Hubristic nations are not only more ‘easy-to-hate’ nations; they also contain and nourish the seeds to their own eventual downfall as in, “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Times and circumstance – both nationally and internationally- are changing. We are no longer quite as “exceptional” as we once were. Unlike our revolutionary or hardy pioneer days, we have become flabby and materialistic, and increasingly arrogant. Our once exceptional middle class is disappearing. Once isolationist, we have become capricious in our foreign policies. Our international stature is greatly diminished.
We are changing, just as the world around us has changed. Yet we are not seemingly changing for the better. And many (most?) of us are still in denial, still happily thinking of that “shining city on the hill” dream of so long ago, that is now beginning to be in some jeopardy of disappearing altogether, forever.
We are deluding ourselves, by intermixing nostalgia with analysis, and adding to it jingoism – all the while ignoring any and all criticism. We rest on our past, our laurels, while we ignore the warning signs ahead. What we believe and have long believed, will not always be true. That much is true.
We risk becoming what we once railed against. Once rebels, we now overwhelm against the slightest “rebellion”. Once against aristocracy, we are becoming an economically bifurcated society; a nation with less class mobility than a generation before. Our middle class is over-taxed, and disappearing. Elitism is far more common today than a generation before. Our ethnicity is rapidly changing. Our centers of commerce, power, and education are changing. Labor unions have mostly disappeared. The strident divide between Red and Blue states increases. Our national discord rises. Everything is changing.
Yet re-reading our past impressive history, we still believe we are just as “exceptional” as we always have been.
But that may be no longer the case. Like the middle age man pondering his former virility and abilities of his twenties, we are no longer quite the same nation. We are approaching a national, middle-age crisis. No longer the same nation – nor the same world as before – we cannot continue to do the same things as before and expect the same exceptional successes. How we handle these changes will determine our future. And there is help available.
Again, as Robert Burns told us in his didactic poem, that if God would grant us the gift to see ourselves as the other “Michelle’s” of the world see us, it would save us from many mistakes and foolish thoughts…. it would change us for our betterment
Unfortunately very few want to even listen to any of that helpful advice, much less heed it.
wjfc67t21ftwph- I asked that???
I thought I made an observation on our decreasing drive, coupled with our increasing susceptability towards the easy path. And if I did ask it, I didn’t mean to. I have strong isolationist views, base on an increasing anger at the rest of the world. My father came from immigrant stoop labor parents, and my wife performed that type of laobor in her early childhood in the Salinas Valley to survive… and I still want a wall built along our border. For that matter, build one on the Southern border as well…
No, I don’t think we need to add more turnstiles…
Our melting pot bubbleth over.
I think the value in American Exceptionalism is the willingness to go forth in spite of fears, self-doubts, and the envy and sometimes hostility of others. Their envy is just a mirror and projection of their own inadequacy. Or sour grapes that our choices are not the choices of our self-appointed critics. We have dared to think and act [mostly act] without their approval, and must be chastised. It didn’t matter what we did, or didn’t do. Our real crime in their eyes was not asking their permission first.
Ungrateful louts that we are, we yawn and thank them for sharing. And keep on keeping on, again without permission.
American mistakes are not hidden, but open for all the world to see. And American success is not bragging–especially when its true. If we stupid Americans can do it here, why can’t other smarter peoples do it better elsewhere? The open secret is that there’s nothing to stop them but their own assumptions of what is possible. It is our gift to the world.
Find any archived paper since before the founding of the nation and ever since, and you’ll read breathless editorials about how the whole country’s going to hell in a handbasket. There must be lots of hells and lots of handbaskets, because we’ve apparently jumped in and out of all of them so far. It’s mostly just the talkers bleating about constant change, while the doers keep quietly doing.
Humility is listening respectfully to valid criticism. Humility is also knowing when critics don’t have a better idea. Humility is knowing that your own imperfect efforts are all you got.
But they’re yours. And history shows they’re all you need.
Fliterman: Cart before horse or after? We’ve been in worse situations. We’ve been told how bad and savage and declass?ɬ
Fliterman: Cart before horse or after? We’ve been in worse situations. We’ve been told how bad and savage and declassé and not fit for polite company we are before we had a republic, if we can keep it. Your “advice” sounds like a litany of national failings and weaknesses. So be it; however, the optimist tends to win the elections for a reason. I see nothing in your comment to conclude optimism.
There is nothing new under the sun; things are always not as good as it could be; every dog’s day must have an end…
But not yet.
Skippy: Federation, eh? Not without Empire–that “thousand ship Navy” ain’t gonna happen when the 800 other ships want to do something else. $30B didn’t bribe the Turks for access; I can read that wall writing. I also see the desire to have a system of global governance that is based on negating any American advantage on general principles. I’ve got a different idea, but that’s on the fringe and not going to ‘take’. It’ll be interesting, these next few decades, it will…
Feh. Link broke. Try http://eurojournal.org/comments.php?id=P194_0_1_0_C
I forgot about the Federation and Empire trilogy. Being a devout trekkie I was thinking of The Federation. The US is Earth, the Vulcans are Japan, Romulans are China and so and so forth. Cardassia is Iran………
For Chap in #15:
The successful navigator would never consider “optimism” (nor pessimism, for that matter) as one of his essential, or useful navigational tools while in treacherous waters.
Neither will our individual optimism nor pessimism have much real impact on the enormous world changes that we face, and will inevitably occur during this still young millennium. But our actions certainly will have impact, if not our misplaced optimism.
True, we have indeed been in worse situations. And we have mostly, and wonderfully prevailed. But the world of this new century will be far different than the last. And I believe our “greatest generation” is sadly, long behind us – the one of the 1940’s. We are no longer they. We are no longer as “great.”
Is there another, “greater generation” ahead? I hope so! And I am optimistic that there might well be. And if so, I hope they can prevail against the new and much greater threats of the new millennium ?
For Chap in #15:
The successful navigator would never consider “optimism” (nor pessimism, for that matter) as one of his essential, or useful navigational tools while in treacherous waters.
Neither will our individual optimism nor pessimism have much real impact on the enormous world changes that we face, and will inevitably occur during this still young millennium. But our actions certainly will have impact, if not our misplaced optimism.
True, we have indeed been in worse situations. And we have mostly, and wonderfully prevailed. But the world of this new century will be far different than the last. And I believe our “greatest generation” is sadly, long behind us – the one of the 1940’s. We are no longer they. We are no longer as “great.”
Is there another, “greater generation” ahead? I hope so! And I am optimistic that there might well be. And if so, I hope they can prevail against the new and much greater threats of the new millennium … (threats that are as much internal to our nation, as external).
Nevertheless, while optimism is fine, unbridled optimism is usually disastrous. To merely assume we will always prevail, as we have in the past, is foolish. And such provincial thought will surely help to sadly seal an ignoble fate.
Cut your engines, and listen! Listen to your changed environment.
Our glorious and successful battles are long astern. There are new and more dangerous shoals ahead. You cannot see them in the darkness. But if you only briefly remain quiet, and abandon the arrogance for just an instance, you may hear the breakers on the dangerous shoals ahead. Listen, and learn.
Others, here and in other lands, hear it. They try to tell us, to warn us. But our arrogant and nationalistic engine drowns out the warnings.
Cut the engines of your arrogance; so you too may you hear of the dangers. And may we all well avoid them, and prevail in our new world.
Steaming full ahead, unheedingly and arrogantly, with unbridled optimism built upon past glory will make us easy fodder for the many treacherous and titanic “icebergs” looming just ahead in our future.
All of this nostalgia for an idealized past, fliterman. It sounds so… conservative.
I just read the link to “The City on the Hill”.
Interesting but it struck me that it must have taken awhile to get from there [no one allowed to live alone, mandatory church attendance, etc.] to a society whre freedom to do or not do … whatever … is the watchword of the day.
Not as strange as you might at first think, Michelle – the pilgrims were first and foremost a religious movement, yes. But it was the radically egalitarian Christian doctrine that each person is is equal in God’s sight that led them to reject both the divine right of kings and the state-sponsored religious orthodoxy of the Church of England by moving to the New World.
A surviving strain of this puritanism was found in the anti-slavery agitation prior to our civil war – this was again, a fundamentally religion-based movement.
Once you start down the path of individual freedom there will always be people who extend the notion to libertinism.
I recommend the book “Albion’s Seed” to anyone who wants to understand how the United States got to be the way they are. M’self, I’m kind of a hybrid; Mom’s family is all Scots-Irish (they have all the Marines) and Dad’s is more Anglo (all AF,) with some weird folks.