A modest question:
14/10/11 14:03![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsI often hear justifications of US foreign policy, particularly Ameridickery in foreign policy stated as "Faction X/government X/regime X is worse so the USA is good." In particular this comes up when say, the US coups in Iran and Chile come up. The argument is made that because Joe Stalin and Brehznev led evil regimes, anything the USA does must be good. Or today, if the USA has seen more examples of US soldiers deliberately murdering civilians or torturing POWs, well "Islamist movement X is evil so the USA is good."
The problem to me has two problematic assertions built into one. The first is that one evil can or must justify another. From a philosophical viewpoint removed from the real world and its effects, this is bullshit. If movement X burns entire towns to the ground and has parties over the corpses of the people who live there, that does not justify movement Y taking hostages and shooting them to consolidate its control over a region, no matter what Movement Y says. The United States claims a moral superiority above all other nations, it claims to be exceptional. Then in practice it is no different than any of the others, and expects that people will not notice the naked Emperor doing the dance from Thriller with the court camarilla. Always, if an act is recognized even by the jingoists who claim that the USA is always right and good and pure and moral and holy, the justification will be that other acts make the bad act either not worth commenting on or the least of all the others. This is not and can never be consistent or coherent from a moral viewpoint.
In practice, I'll just say this: if we're saying the USA's not-the-USSR or not-Al-Qaeda or not-the-Islamic-Republic, this is damning the United States with faint praise. To not be a totalitarian dictatorship that creates and destroys powerful military and political elites on a whim, or a movement that makes decapitation videos as a PR exercise, or a regime that succesfully waged the longest war of the 20th Century and has the closest thing to a modern Comintern is not saying very much. At one level the USA is not these societies, which is worth noting, but doesn't say anything about what the USA *is* in a positive sense.
If the United States can only be defined in a negative sense of not being a state or akin to a terrorist organization that commits evil on a regular basis to secure evil ends by evil means, then what does that say the USA is? It says that the USA must be nothing too impressive if it has to turn to the dark depths of human depravity to make itself the great and holy great good. The United States cannot be defended by saying it is not Al-Qaeda or not the old Ba'ath regime in Iraq. That in itself is a tacit admission the USA has long ceased to represent anything positive and that the only thing the USA can claim is the simple, hollow claim of not being something.
I am for a government that is of the people, by the people, for the people, that all people be free and truly equal in opportunity (meaning things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and privilege in all its forms are evil for they create inequality of opportunity). I am not for either a government or society that can only say what it would not, but can never say what it would.
So my modest question is this: by what right is saying the United States is not generic evil thing X saying anything good about the United States? Is it not in fact conceding the USA is itself just a lesser evil?
The problem to me has two problematic assertions built into one. The first is that one evil can or must justify another. From a philosophical viewpoint removed from the real world and its effects, this is bullshit. If movement X burns entire towns to the ground and has parties over the corpses of the people who live there, that does not justify movement Y taking hostages and shooting them to consolidate its control over a region, no matter what Movement Y says. The United States claims a moral superiority above all other nations, it claims to be exceptional. Then in practice it is no different than any of the others, and expects that people will not notice the naked Emperor doing the dance from Thriller with the court camarilla. Always, if an act is recognized even by the jingoists who claim that the USA is always right and good and pure and moral and holy, the justification will be that other acts make the bad act either not worth commenting on or the least of all the others. This is not and can never be consistent or coherent from a moral viewpoint.
In practice, I'll just say this: if we're saying the USA's not-the-USSR or not-Al-Qaeda or not-the-Islamic-Republic, this is damning the United States with faint praise. To not be a totalitarian dictatorship that creates and destroys powerful military and political elites on a whim, or a movement that makes decapitation videos as a PR exercise, or a regime that succesfully waged the longest war of the 20th Century and has the closest thing to a modern Comintern is not saying very much. At one level the USA is not these societies, which is worth noting, but doesn't say anything about what the USA *is* in a positive sense.
If the United States can only be defined in a negative sense of not being a state or akin to a terrorist organization that commits evil on a regular basis to secure evil ends by evil means, then what does that say the USA is? It says that the USA must be nothing too impressive if it has to turn to the dark depths of human depravity to make itself the great and holy great good. The United States cannot be defended by saying it is not Al-Qaeda or not the old Ba'ath regime in Iraq. That in itself is a tacit admission the USA has long ceased to represent anything positive and that the only thing the USA can claim is the simple, hollow claim of not being something.
I am for a government that is of the people, by the people, for the people, that all people be free and truly equal in opportunity (meaning things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and privilege in all its forms are evil for they create inequality of opportunity). I am not for either a government or society that can only say what it would not, but can never say what it would.
So my modest question is this: by what right is saying the United States is not generic evil thing X saying anything good about the United States? Is it not in fact conceding the USA is itself just a lesser evil?
Lesser?!?
Date: 14/10/11 19:50 (UTC)Are you daring to suggest the US is not the Greatest Country Ever?!?
Kidding, kidding. I agree completely. It concedes exactly that.
Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 14/10/11 19:54 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 14/10/11 21:48 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 15/10/11 00:13 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 15/10/11 03:43 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 15/10/11 09:28 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 15/10/11 17:13 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 15/10/11 19:26 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 15/10/11 19:32 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 16/10/11 06:19 (UTC)I think the U.S. still wins in terms of body count and dollars of damage done in foreign nations over the past decade. And there's a certain unfortunate culpability I would argue we have to accept for Iran, in helping create the conditions that let the Ayatollahs take over.
Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 16/10/11 19:26 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 17/10/11 02:28 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 17/10/11 13:12 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 16/10/11 06:10 (UTC)Re: Lesser?!?
Date: 16/10/11 19:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/10/11 20:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/10/11 20:24 (UTC)I never said the United States had to be perfect. I said that American Exceptionalism is an extraordinary claim and not being murderous assholes wanting to take over the world is insufficient evidence to back the claim up. I freely admit the USA's not morally equal or equivalent to the Taliban. In fact admitting this is the whole point of the post.
If not being them is all we've got, then that's a flat admission that the US Dream and American exceptionalism are failures and the only claim of the USA to be great is to not be certain things.
Embrace your inner Calvinist
Date: 14/10/11 23:07 (UTC)Re: Embrace your inner Calvinist
Date: 15/10/11 00:13 (UTC)Re: Embrace your inner Calvinist
Date: 15/10/11 02:36 (UTC)Re: Embrace your inner Calvinist
Date: 15/10/11 07:34 (UTC)Re: Embrace your inner Calvinist
Date: 15/10/11 17:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/10/11 20:27 (UTC)Is this philosophical Friday or what?
Date: 14/10/11 21:24 (UTC)For me, true greatness in a nation is shown in self examination and critique, not pride and boasting. Certainly, all things have their place and sober measurements are to be preferred, but still, you get my meaning.
I always thought that the crowd phrasing it in the way you mention, is truly like a parent whose child committed a heinous bullying act and was caught. They defend it even in spite everything that is good and sane.
But for the most part, large groups in the US are good with the critique and self examination...it's just that the other groups are pretty damn large too.
Re: Is this philosophical Friday or what?
Date: 14/10/11 23:03 (UTC)If people are genuinely happier or more prosperous does that not make a rational case for exceptionalism?
Re: Is this philosophical Friday or what?
Date: 15/10/11 00:43 (UTC)You say that there is a tendency among those who advocate self examination and critique to ignore home base virtues and faults in other places. I will twist this around and ask: Could it be that some people are over sensitive about self criticism and virtues in other places? Could it be that when someone says that "we suck at this particular thing which the French do a lot better", a certain amount of people feel that such a statement negates anything good in the home country?
I'm saying this out of pure self experience, as I am a person that critique and self examine a lot, and I don't feel like I'm ignoring good things, nor faults of others.
(pardon the edit fest in this particular comment)
Re: Is this philosophical Friday or what?
Date: 15/10/11 00:47 (UTC)Re: Is this philosophical Friday or what?
Date: 15/10/11 00:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/10/11 23:46 (UTC)At the same time one must acknowledge virtues where they exist.
I you really want to condemn the US for being "the lesser of many evils" ask your self the following question. "Which is more important, to mean well or to do well?"
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 00:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 19:36 (UTC)People living in the US are quantifiably better of than 90% of the rest of the world so if that doesn't make a case for "American Exceptionalism" it certainly factors into the choice of who to back.
PS: By any objective measure western civilization is the bestest civilization evar!!!!!!!!
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 19:43 (UTC)I disagree that there is any best-worst dichotomy of "civilizations" as between them Islam, Communism, and Imperialism have "Westernized" the entire world at this point. There are choices within Western civilization, there is no East and hasn't been since the last of the rival civilizations blew up a century ago.
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 01:55 (UTC)By the right of logical correctness. All else being equal, it is better for the United States not to be generic evil thing X, than it is for the United States to be, in addition to any other of its faults, real or imagined, ALSO generic evil thing X.
Is it not in fact conceding the USA is itself just a lesser evil?
It is conceding, perhaps, that the United States is not perfect. But the fact remains, it is better to be the lesser evil than the greater evil.
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 02:20 (UTC)Indeed, but the USA claims to be much more than that....
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 15:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 17:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 18:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 18:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 23:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/10/11 19:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/10/11 19:43 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/10/11 19:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/10/11 19:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/10/11 20:00 (UTC)But I'm sure as they're Arab Muslims they have no reasons whatsoever to be the least bit skeptical of the United States and that alliances with a Saudi regime that squelched one pro-democracy movement and backs its own stripes of terrorism in other cases is perfectly a valid case to be for democracy.
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 02:34 (UTC)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other states. In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming "the first new nation,"[1] and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. This observation can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840.[2] Historian Gordon Wood has argued, "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy."[3]
The specific term "American exceptionalism" was first used in 1929 by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin chastising members of the American Communist Party for believing that America was independent of the Marxist laws of history "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions."[4]
Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense.[1][5] To them, the United States is like the biblical "shining city on a hill," and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.[6]
Since the 1960s "postnationalist" scholars on the left have rejected American exceptionalism, arguing that the United States had not broken from European history, and has retained class inequities, imperialism and war. Furthermore, they saw every nation as subscribing to some form of exceptionalism.[7]
People express American exceptionalism in different ways.
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 09:38 (UTC)So what I got from this is: We are Americans who do American stuff, so we are exceptional.
(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 19:29 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 21:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/10/11 23:08 (UTC)