Every sanctimonious blowhard in the world is united by a single fallacy: The subconscious belief that their values are immaculately conceived, lacking prior cause. What follows would be hilarious if it weren't so monotonously corrosive to progress - people condemning the roots of a tree as failing to live up to the standards of its own leaves. If they must judge a culture, a people, or a system, rational people go by what follows in the context of what preceded it, not the other way around. It is a special kind of madness, of cheap moral narcissism, that condemns humble roots as an unworthy cause of spectacular achievements.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
Based on my incomplete acquaintance with the Bible, the above is one of my favorite quotes - one of the few statements wholly and completely in line with modern concepts of decency. Like all philosophy, it is inherently flawed and conditional - e.g., ends do not justify means, although they certainly clarify them - but its basic truth is nevertheless profound. Cynical or self-righteous plans must both ultimately surrender to uncontrolled nature, and it is at that point that intrinsic qualities are revealed both in a society or an individual.
I. Anti-Americanism - The World's Most Ironic Religion
A recent Rec Listed diary on Daily Kos, Why Germans Think We're Insane, basically claimed that the American people are teabaggers - a less-than-irrelevant fringe of a fringe, manufactured by corporate lobbyists as a disinformation tool and marionetted across a Fox News soundstage - and that Dinesh D'Souza (whom I had never heard of until that diary) is the voice of American politics. It further appeared to claim that a Der Spiegel editorialist is the voice of Germany, and that Germans not only can't tell the difference between reality and their own media, but can't distinguish the United States from our media seen through their media.
It was an incredibly stupid diary by an intelligent diarist, but it could just as well have been a brilliant piece of Republican propaganda that affirmed their most destructive false narratives in the guise of preaching to the choir on healthcare. Every word of it practically drips with the idea that America is not only a right-wing country, but a virtually fascist one wherein reason and decency survive only as an ideological insurgency:
Why does anyone listen to vile, delusional people like Beck, let alone elect batsh!t-crazies like Michelle Bachmann?
Indeed, why? Why do we constantly talk about them as if they were significant people rather than irritating, mentally-ill noisemakers who profit as much from our irascibility as from the bigotry of their right-wing disciples? Do they have coherent ideas that we can or should fight, or are they simply spastic bigots whose self-selecting audiences are incapable of anything more dangerous to the republic than random violence? Did their madness cause, or even benefit from, the 2010 Republican sweep, or was it one of the few things retarding it (emphasis on retard)? Are we to believe that because insane people exist in elective office, that America is somehow defined by them? Are there no madmen in the Bundestag, or is it completely stocked with reasonable, rational progressive saints who sit around all day discussing how to make Germany a kinder, gentler place for the defenseless?
So that's my explanation to Germans: America seems to have gone insane specifically because it has.
While the diarist's almost gleefully besieged attitude may gratify the guerrilla fantasies of certain perspectives on the left, it has nothing to do with the United States as it actually exists - or the world as it actually exists, for that matter. Teabagger candidates overwhelmingly lost in a 2010 election characterized by Republican victories and vast funding of unhinged right-wing propaganda, but a handful managing to win in extremely conservative states against Blue Dog Democrats - and the failure of the establishment thus far to implement sweeping systems we've never had before, that no US administration has ever even attempted to pass - somehow translates to the United States "going insane."
Or perhaps the flippant commenter will say that the US can't "go" where it never left in the first place, but that only sharpens the irony of the critique. Europe is not full of relatively successful, peaceful social democracies because its cultures were rational and humane - quite the opposite. Before they settled into their current status, the continent was rife with militarily aggressive fascist dictatorships and Orwellian Communist dystopias - their civilization nearly annihilated itself 70 years ago, and the United States dug into its own pockets to rebuild and subsidize the Western side of the Iron Curtain. The military funding of the United States allowed Western Europe - and thus, today, all EU states - to focus its resources on internal improvement, which after half a century has yielded impressive results (as one would expect).
European countries did not just decide one day that they were going to be peaceful, democratic countries focused on human rights and social services - they experimented with every violent, oppressive nightmare imaginable by the human psyche before finally settling down, having ground themselves into dust before they would even consider letting go of the martial glory and authoritarian fanaticisms that had characterized Europe since the genesis of its civilizations. In other words, their social democracies are simply an accounting trick: Half a century of externalizing costs on to the US Cold War budget allowed them to function as what they in fact are - colonial patrons of the United States. And the irony is that the US is then condemned for "colonialism" for having military forces in Europe.
Now, that is not to belittle the accomplishment - however one goes about doing something, an achievement is an achievement. And if one fairly extends the thesis of this diary, the United States is one of Europe's achievements, so in essence Europe still deserves great credit for what it has become in the last few decades. But to cite EU social democracy in condemning the United States would be as ludicrous as comparing a semi-retired parent with the lifestyles of the children whose paychecks subsidize them.
It took generations of sustained political effort, external subsidies, and the savings of being virtually freed from spending on defense for Europe to cultivate the systems it now has in individual countries smaller, more uniform, and a lot more internally conversant than ours. And even with all those advantages, it still falls prey to the same predators we do - greedy, corrupt banks and governments who think the people must suffer austerity measures so that wealthy businesses will be spared any inconvenience.
Seeing that, the idea that the United States is somehow especially corrupt, immoral, or irrational begins to look increasingly ridiculous: Our country is the reason that European social democracy exists, the reason for China's current prosperity, the reason that the vast majority of the world is no longer interested in war (the United Nations was largely a US initiative), and the reason for a lot of other positive developments now routinely cited as evidence of our irrelevance, depravity, and decline. We are the engine that drove these things, when Western Europe was a burnt husk tired of life, China an isolated hermit kingdom, Eastern Europe a crushed totalitarian nightmare, and the world so full of military and paramilitary violence that a reliably peaceful country was the exception.
You can cite all the ways great and small that American interests and institutions have created or contributed to problems in other countries over the years - Iran, Vietnam, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iraq, etc. etc. - but there is no denying the ultimate legacy of the United States has been and continues to be overwhelmingly positive. You're reading this on the Internet created by the United States, on computers whose development has been largely driven with US money, in the English language whose growth and continued evolution has been largely a product of American cultural flexibility (or nihilism, if you're an inveterate Tory), and probably judging it according to values you wouldn't have without this country's influence.
When the United States elected Barack Obama President, about a billion people around the world with limited expectations suddenly began to feel that maybe they can do and be whatever they want - and not just people with dark skin in predominently light-skinned countries: Anyone belonging to a poorly-treated minority. "America will never have a black President" - most black Americans believed it, most white Americans believed it, and probably even more foreigners believed it than Americans, because discrimination in most countries does not consist of overt bigotry: Just a stifling, invisible wall that never yields. Other countries assumed it would be the same here - Barack Obama would run, lose with a respectable vote count, and then we would congratulate ourselves on having at least considered him.
But that's not what happened - not even close. He won in a landslide, as any candidate in his position would have been expected to. And it happened because Americans confronted the problem of racism without being enthralled to it: We behaved, as a whole, with a level of social maturity that continues to embarrass European countries where electing a racial minority leader under any circumstances would be painfully unlikely. The right-wing nutjobs crystallized out of the primordial goo, did their little hate dances, and we told them where to stick it - none of which would have happened in a European election.
They would have had a very civilized debate, and then promptly sent the black guy packing with a handshake and a pat on the head for playing. And never mind non-European democracies - most are not leavened by Europe's philosophical vanity, and would reject a minority "intrusion" into their politics without pretense. Even Canada's relationship to racial minorities is cordial, like one politely meeting strangers. America, on the other hand, confronts these things vigorously because they've been confronting us vigorously since our nation's birth - and out of the conflict has come greater understanding, humanity, and cultural vibrancy.
Now, I suppose one could say that Brazil is less racist than the United States because its people are so racially mixed, but being a relatively hateless society is not the same thing as learning to transcend hate - they do not reflect the same intrinsic qualities, nor do they produce the same result. Brazilian/Latin color-blindness is as much a serendipitous accident as Northern European/American race-obsession is an unfortunate one, but the point of transcending the latter is not necessarily to emulate the former - in my view, Brazil would be as unlikely to elect a black leader as France, precisely because race is not politicized in these societies. Ergo, lacking a political context, people can only relate to race purely on a personal/tribal level, and don't consider it illegitimate to vote against someone for looking different.
Our nation has historically had a talent for turning massive problems into massive advantages, and racial issues are no exception. The multi-generational enslavement of Africans by American farmers is one of the largest, most egregious crimes in human history, yet our willingness to confront that colossus of a problem and its legacy over centuries has led to such tremendous good that it cannot be overemphasized. Europe did not have to confront it because its economy hadn't depended on slaves since the Roman Empire, and even when it did, the slaves looked pretty much like their masters (albeit somewhat taller) - they or their children could blend into the general milieu and have hope of a prosperous future. In the US, the slaves looked nothing like their masters, and had zero prior cultural relationship with them - it was tabula rasa, and a guaranteed pressure-cooker environment.
If American history had proceeded along the logic of European history, the United States would have parted ways - perhaps amicably, perhaps as part of an armistice after an indecisive war, or perhaps as the default result of a mutually destructive conflict with indeterminate victor. Or the South would have been content to remain under a flimsy umbrella as de jure Americans while exercising de facto sovereignty - either way they would have kept their slaves, and eventually the slaves would have successfully revolted and formed independent countries in some parts of the territory.
The Confederate states that survived would spend generations cultivating bitterness, animosity, and rage toward these former slave colonies, and then some demagogue would come to power by railing against whatever fiction had been invented to demonize the slave revolt, build up a big military, then invade and exterminate their former slaves. Meanwhile the rump United States in New England would look down with pompous satisfaction at the barbarity of the Southerners they'd cast off, and do nothing to stop it other than writing newspaper editorials. This is basically the true story of modern Europe.
But the United States is not Europe. The Southern US, in its principled commitment to hypocrisy, decided to simply cast away all pretense of loyalty to the Constitution or the principles it embodies, when it would have been so much more politic to maintain the fiction in exchange for what had been minimal to nonexistent federal involvement. And the Union, committed to its own moral hypocrisy, decided to start freeing slaves in captured Confederate territory while leaving them to rot in non-secessionist border states - in other words, doing the right thing only where convenient. In the Union's case, it began by acting in a very European manner: Virtue in service to expediency rather than the other way around. But then a funny thing happened: We started to believe our own bullshit, because it turned out to be true.
The Civil War hadn't been about slavery for the Union at first - it had only been about slavery for the Confederacy, while the Northern states were largely content to let them keep it if they remained loyal. But once at war with the South, it became pretty obvious how insane their justifications were, and how what had begun as abstract moralizing on the part of Abolitionists was found to be completely true: With the exception of the Virginia elite who styled themselves "patrons" of their slaves, Confederate society was primarily a culture of dirty, lazy bigots who terrorized defenseless people into working for them on pain of death or torture so they wouldn't have to earn their own livelihoods.
Their sole reason for trying to shatter the United States of America was to maintain that lifestyle - i.e., their cause wasn't merely wrong, it was pure evil, and its rationalizations the flimsiest nonsense imaginable. Soldiers are never thrilled about the guys trying to kill them, but I can't imagine it helped their impression of the greycoats to realize the bastards were trying to kill them just so they wouldn't have to tend their own fields - something most Northerners did as a matter of course, if not pride.
Ever since the Civil War, it's been the same story repeating: Racist depravity causes an expedient reaction in the rest of society that induces unintended moral reflection and transformation - sometimes profound, sometimes subtle. To me, this sounds like a proverbial Progress Engine: We have in our cultural DNA both the highest and most active aspirations of humanity, and the basest, most repugnant degeneracy imaginable, and their continual conflict has regularly produced some pretty amazing revolutions. Whenever it seems like hate, animosity, and division are proliferating and eating away at our foundations, something happens to us - something in our national psyche is triggered, and we turn around and go in the other direction.
We are not a hateless society, like Brazil and a few others seem to be, but we are the only society I'm aware of that hates hate itself - that recognizes, and is repulsed by, the emotion in ourselves, and responds with energetic positive action. This willingness to look inward without climbing up into our own navels also makes us more willing to look at others and tell them what we see - we can say to others, "You need to work on that" without being aggressive or insulting, and without using it as an excuse to neglect our own problems. And it has a real effect, both internally and with respect to foreign relations - the ability to be open and assertive with others brings mutual change and connection.
Say it with me: America is a good country. Never mind being a "great country" - it really doesn't need to be stipulated that the origin of modern global culture is "great," so anyone who claims otherwise is either making an irrational moral judgment by applying standards they picked up from the country they're trashing, or is just being a contrarian douche who enjoys attacking big things. But we are a good country. Maybe if your definition of "good" is doing minimal harm, then ours is certainly not that, but if it's benefiting the world I defy anyone to name the country that has given more - maybe ancient Athens. Not the British Empire, not the Roman Empire, and not the miscellaneous assortment of peaceful little republics that have come and gone over the years have contributed to humanity what this one nation has in the two centuries and change of its existence.
Legitimate, constructive criticism of the United States is one thing, and certainly helpful, but there is a political religion of anti-Americanism that loudly, angrily condemns us down to our very nature as some evil, monstrous blight upon the Earth, and it is the stupidest, most delusional, most hypocritical fucking bullshit ever spouted by what are often seemingly intelligent people. By condemning the US, they condemn the moral ground beneath their own feet: Many, if not most of these people have no knowledge of the origins of their own moral compass - the long historical webs of relationships, social changes, and heroes who have helped build every great human achievement and cultural reformation. They blindly swing around their attitudes like a child with a toy light-saber, not caring about the context of their own thinking.
"By their fruits ye shall know them." I've said a lot about American accomplishments and how we've benefited the world - a dozen phone books wouldn't suffice to list what we've given to humanity in our relatively short history - but what are the counterexamples that we're supposed to emulate? I've already dealt with Europe, so where else? Latin America, perhaps: Shall we compare our contributions to humanity with those of Cuba and Venezuela? Or Asia: Japan, South Korea, and China as they exist today are direct consequences of US economic and/or foreign policy, and notwithstanding impressive technology portfolios, not a one has shown an interest in social leadership outside their immediate spheres - let alone taken a forefront role in progressive change. China's growing profile on the world stage has been monotonously, unabashedly self-interested, without even a pretense of carrying new ideas to the world.
The point is not to belittle other countries, but to show the gargantuan stupidity of anti-American ideology. For all intents and purposes, our culture has been a focal point where all others merge and interact in complex ways, so hating us is kind of like saying you hate the world and hate humanity. Which, appropriately enough, some incredible douchenozzles literally do...
II. Misanthropy: The Chickenhawk Version of Murder-Suicide
Hating humanity is a painfully common phenomenon among moral narcissists - people who just need everything to be one way or another, who can't stand the thought of things even existing another way, and who see other people as wicked and bankrupt for not caring about it as much as they do. Unsurprisingly, "misanthropists" (to create a juxtaposition with "philanthropists") tend to also be intensely anti-American, but really they just despise people - they loathe the imperfections of the human race, and either seek to hide from them or crave to burn them away violently.
These people do not see human beings and cultures as unique phenomena with value in themselves - they see them as deviations from perfect ideals that exist apart from cause or the need for justification. It is this mentality that gives rise to destructive religious and political ideologies that subordinate humanity to ideas, and ironically reinforce the degradation by inspiring like minds outside of it to further condemn mankind. Call it Psych 101 if you wish, but it doesn't take much vision to see that it comes from people who hate themselves trying to impose their standards on the world because they feel impotent to improve their own lives.
From a position of malign indifference, a person with this attitude watches others' attempts to make progress with scorn, casting suspicion on their motives, belittling their work, and at best interpreting the entire effort as a foolish, futile gesture by naive children for the benefit of an unworthy species. Meanwhile, they look on man-made disasters and acts of pure evil with what can only be described as a semblance of relief and vindication: The only time human beings actually come close to meeting with their approval is when they "punish" themselves for the crime of imperfection.
And what do these people always say when asked why they feel that way? They cite "Man's inhumanity to Man," its ecological recklessness, its follies and hypocrisies, etc. But how are you going to judge humanity by morals that don't exist without it? That doesn't make any sense - you might as well chop down a tree because you feel the leaves are being poorly served by the roots. It's complete madness. We are the most humane animal in existence - ergo the word "humane," not "rabbitane" or "horseane."
Male deer, cattle, moose, oxen, elk, rams, etc. sometimes die in rutting season butting horns/antlers in competition to reproduce, but we don't cluck and speak of "deer's in-deerity to deerkind." You know why? Because deer don't have morals. When one deer sees another deer die who isn't part of their family, they don't give a shit. A cow does not feel guilty after fatally stepping on someone. It's not their fault that they don't generalize compassion, it's just they didn't evolve with that capacity. Humans, however, did. We can generalize compassion to encompass literally everything - in some Eastern perspectives, you have to show respect even to inanimate objects because even they have an intrinsic nature that should be cared for. But the fact that we can do that, doesn't mean we all do at all times, or that it's practical under most conditions.
Ours is a diverse species, with a larger intelligence and compassion spread than any other: From full-on sociopaths who, in their deepest thoughts, believe themselves to be alone in the universe in a world filled with figments of their imagination, all the way to buddhas who swim in a sea of love for every grain of sand and mote of dust in the cosmos. And then there are these incredible dingleberries who think mankind is crap because it doesn't universally rise to standards it invented and embodies. In extreme cases, I've even seen people advocate voluntary extinction "in order to save the Earth."
I guess there's no accounting for Crazy, but it still irks me. Technological intelligence is an adaptation, and we don't know where it will take us because its consequences are inherently unbounded. It may cause our extinction, it may cause the extinction of the mammalian order, or it may be the means by which the terrestrial ecosystem spreads across the galaxy - how about we go wild and find out instead of declaring that we're doomed and then patiently await an end that just doesn't come? How about we make intelligent decisions based on science and adaptive technology and discover what we're capable of instead of declaring humans a "cancer," a "virus," or some other misanthropic denouncement of humanity?
If it's not enough, then pissing and moaning isn't going to make it enough. And if it is enough, then what the hell is the point of being a giant misanthropic douche - you and your nth-iteration doppelgangers are just going to be hating on the cosmos-treading descendents of humanity into eternity, doing no good to anyone and reaffirming that YOU suck and have no purpose.
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In conclusion, heap all the constructive criticism you want on the United States - show the objective facts of our underperformance in x category, discuss the cultural or economic origins of the problem, and offer possible solutions in the context of reality, don't just say "And the solution is for them to stop doing that and instead do what I say." But don't tell me the USA is a corrupt, savage, inhuman, Evil Empire that owns the patent on Teh Stoopid because it failed to implement universal healthcare while it was busy building the world as it now exists. But rest assured, we will have universal healthcare, there is no avoiding it.
Furthermore, don't cite progress on the part of other countries caused by US policy as evidence of our weakness or irrelevance - a more pertinent question would be why these other countries were so dependent on and susceptible to our policies that their entire societies were transformed by them. And don't tell me humanity is doomed, you lazy-minded emo - unless that's the preface of a call to action or the preamble to your suicide note, just STFU. I love America, and I love humanity, for exactly the same reasons, and no amount of right-wing dick-cheese defiling our flag is going to make me forget what this country really is. If you think Michelle Bachmann and Dinesh D'Souza are indicative of something about the United States of America - other than its fascination with freak shows - then you never knew anything about this country in the first place.