I have a default assumption about causing harm. If a person, group or nation causes harm and later expresses concern about that harm, I assume that their core goal is to act to heal that harm as much as possible, and to not do it again.
My default assumptions often prevent me from clearly seeing all of what is going on. For this reason, I sometimes get all detailed and explicit on things that may be really obvious to other people.
In this spirit, and given discussions of torture and various other things floating around on my radar screen, I am trying to make explicit a pattern that does not fit my default assumption about public expressions of "we have done harm" -- a dynamic in which the goal is to repair and maintain a good image, and in which image maintanance takes the place of action-focused morality.
So I made a flow chart. It's below the fold.
The United States has over and over and over again done such a tremendous amount of harm to such a variety of peoples, it seems to me that violence toward others is core to this nation's existence. At the same time, this country is part of a larger cultural system that promotes itself as more civilized and moral than "less developed" peoples and nations.
When maintaining a "good" image is the goal, underlying patterns are different than in other contexts with other goals (though some of the surface patterns may look the same).
Here's a flow chart trying to lay this out (it's a little blurry but am trying to keep the size small so I can hotlink):
I have three things to say about this flow chart, for now.
First, I myself personally think it's interesting to plug in various harmful actions of the U.S. and see if or how they fit.
Second, I suspect that some of the the current energy around torture and bringing responsible parties to justice may well fit into the Good ones show goodness by publicly punishing and/or repudiating the bad ones box (after some other traveling around the flow chart).
Third and most importantly, I am struck by how in this chart the goal of SUCCESS! is reachable by various means, and none of them actually requires by its core definition that the harm caused is actually healed as much as possible or that the nation does not do more harm from here on out. There may be arguments and assumptions about how doing some things will prevent harm in the future, but those are indirect assumptions rather than direct requirements.