[...] History tells us that what brought down mighty empires of the past was hubris—the confusion of weakness for strength. Might America be next? Cheerleaders insist that the United States is exempt from the lessons of history, but don’t count on it.
We are now governed by an obsolete militarism that does not serve the national interest. The obsession with arming ourselves for World War III is backward-looking, and so, too, is the madness of deploying forces in hundreds of overseas bases. The warrior nation goes looking for trouble in other people’s neighborhoods. Sure enough, we sometimes find it.
Our over-reaching military doctrine suggests masculine insecurity among military planners—a crisis of virility, so to speak. If America looks weak, then the Pentagon must keep pushing for more and smarter guns that will bolster our national self-confidence. On the home front, this feeling of inadequacy is expressed in the new “open carry” laws. It’s not enough simply to own a deadly weapon; a real man needs to wear his “piece” holstered on his hip. He needs to take it everywhere, so no one can doubt that he’s a tough character.
The point is, American culture and politics are drenched in warrior celebration. Faith in military might is deeply grounded in the national psyche. After the failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we began to see patriotic rituals staged at baseball games and other public events to thank the returning veterans and their families, including the dead and wounded. But thank them for what? For their service and sacrifice, of course. It would have been offensive—unpatriotic—at those commemorations if anyone had talked about the utter failure of these costly wars. Yet even in defeat, the authorities stick to cloying triumphalism and tell stories of American goodness that people long to hear.
The national dilemma boils down to this: We cannot tell ourselves the truth about who we are and what we have become. In the history of nations, that failure has often led to tragedy.
Brooding on the American predicament, I began to grasp that our situation threatens to resemble the tragic fate of Samson, the legendary biblical warrior. Samson’s struggle was portrayed in Samson Agonistes, the epic drama by 17th-century English poet John Milton. I first read Milton’s work in college, long ago. Re-reading it now was a disturbing experience.
Our agony is like Samson’s; he was never able to escape his habits of violent mind and thought.
Samson was the Old Testament giant said to have slain a thousand foes with the jawbone of an ass. When he was captured by the Philistines, however, the mighty warrior was shorn of power—they cut off his hair, the source of his God-given strength, and plucked out his eyes (“O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon”).
“Blind among enemies! O worse than chains,” Samson laments, in Milton’s great poem. The fallen Samson is rendered “eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves / Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.” Samson’s agony was never being able to escape his own habits of violent mind and thought, and his prison was “the dungeon of thyself.” The hero ended badly: Samson pulled down the temple and destroyed the Philistines, but also himself.
The United States, I decided, is trapped in America Agonistes. The country could still avoid Samson’s fate, but to do so it has to let go of its egotistical presumptions. The delusion of being all-powerful and always virtuous is a dangerous road. [...]
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