Unlearning the myth of American innocence
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The rest of the article (book?) is about the author's slow growing awareness that non-Americans are warped by these distortions of reality too, in ways that are just as self-delusional and self-destructive. Yes, power does corrupt. Absolutely.
Frankly, I have a hard time seeing how anyone over 30 could find this piece compelling. It's founded in a childish self-centered view of the world, a self-indulgent bubble that finally popped for the author, but not until age 30?
Has this become typical? Even an Ivy League American student can be so insulated that they're not aware that people elsewhere in the world see the world so differently? That their disenfranchisement from power, both locally and globally leaves them bitter and mistrustful of all forms of authority? Who doesn't know this? Jeez. We just elected TRUMP, dammit. Who isn't aware that even the average American feels disempowered by the routine abuse of authority by self-perpetuating elites?
Likewise, I was equally taken aback at the general public's response to "Hillbilly Elegy" as epiphany. Back in the 1970's I lived on the edge of Appalachia, which left me well aware of the subsistence lifestyle in rural America that the book revealed as something new (to most?). Are such wide dynamic ranges of experience in and outside the USA really so invisible to most of us?
If so, that's freaking inexcusable. We live in an era where the ubiquity of the Net can make you aware of virtually every aspect of human experience on Earth in less than a heartbeat. Just open your eyes.
I have to wonder what good an article like this is then. Which I think is the overall point of GP's post.
In other words, we used to see the Grand Canyon. Now we see it on a screen through a camera, and we spend the rest of our time at the Grand Canyon by posting about it on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit etc.
I'm old enough (60) for my early days to have been shaped more by a tangible Real World than an electronic one. I can see how those who grew up after the rise of Networked iLife might base their world view on less tangible experience, presuming they know more about hands-on cultural physics than the watching life through the World Wide Window allows.
> ...
> affluent North.
Good one!
Ironically it sounds like you yourself are living in a bit of a bubble. I can assure you that many Americans over the age of 30 share what you describe as a self-centered view of the world.
Calling this "inexcusable" seems ungenerous. It's inevitable.
At age 31 the author just wrote a whole book based on her naivete, apparently without a mea culpa or inquiry into how that did or could happen, even after an Ivy League education.
I persist; inexcusable.
There are, after all, millions of Americans who never get a good understanding of what it's like in other countries. Changing this is a huge challenge. Going around saying things are "inexcusable" doesn't actually help fix them.
That the counterculture and the Communists were actively trying to make us lose a war? The author of this discusses real problems with the US -- situations like Guatemala, where we backed a feudal aristocracy, or Iran, where we set the country back considerably by helping overthrow Mossadeq -- and not just conspiracies carried out by our enemies.
Thinking about the meaning of "empire", I wonder if it would've been better for the US to have made various outright annexations after WWII. Not having to deal with an independent local government, or with self-interested local elites, makes things clearer and easier; the US's interventions in El Salvador or Guatemala would've been significantly less nasty if they had begun with annexation and the extension of domestic policies like EITC, Social Security, and property tax...
I can't speak to Latin America, but I recall that General Patton upon the 3rd Reich's surrender in Berlin wanted to quickly broker peace with a friendly German government so that he could press on eastward to Moscow and put an end to the Soviet Union while it was in a weakened state from the failed German invasion. Historic counterfactuals sure are interesting to think about.
Meanwhile if you go to rural red state America, the 90% of the country that doesn't live in cities where people can remain proud of the ignorance while also not even being aware of it, will tell you, upon being informed the mixed world opinion of America? You will get variably surprise, denial, and anger. And that's for people over 30. They have no idea what the world thinks, some will deny it and others will scoff why they should care what someone else thinks, they're all stupid socialist countries anyway (and therefore their opinions don't matter, sort of logic).
I think you're in deep denial yourself about how deeply ignorant most Americans are by presuming only the young are this ignorant. I'm willing to bet the millennial generation is more well traveled than baby boom generation (I'm X) and most of the ignorant cluelessness about the rest of the world comes from the most clueless waste of space generation in America which is the baby boomers.
Aren't they lucky - first they get their democracy subverted by multinational corporations, then they get to feel guilty about what those same corporations do.
Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
For a people that is always chanting "USA! USA! USA!", "Freedom!", "Democracy!", I find the reactions in this thread pretty rich.
You, collectively, are 100% to blame for the actions of your government. You, individually, share 1/300 millionth of that blame. If you don't feel that way, your democracy has failed.
You don't get that flag-waving, chest-beating attitude here in Britain. We're shit and we know we are (as I think the chant goes)
Brit here.
I think we do, just not to the perverse and extreme degree that the USA does.
We have a large section of the population in this country that absolutely refuse to entertain any criticism of the former Empire, its treatment of the former colonies and its effect on thew world as a whole.
To them, Britian is exceptional.
I find it hard to blame Americans for all the misinformation their media and politicians feed them.
Well, ordinary citizens also get to benefit from a strong position of their country in the world arena.
Plus, in a democracy ordinary citizens are also to blame for their government's decisions. They can always vote something else, protest, revolt etc. People all around the world have done it for their governments (and of course Americans at different times).
Lastly, some (if not most) of those actions also have strong popular support (whether for misinformation, misplaced patriotism, or just because of strong propaganda).
Those BASTARD Mosul Kurds ! I KNEW they did something to deserve getting mass-murdered and raped.
Thanks for clarifying that not revolting means you are guilty of whatever government happens to rule the piece of land you're currently occupying does. And of course, what it did in the past.
I must say, I was not clear on that. Well, I still am not clear on that.
First of all, I wrote "in a democracy". For all the sneer, you missed that part.
Second, those "Mosul Kurds" did very much rebel, and for a long long time. For all the sneer, your example doesn't match their history.
Third, even if they hadn't that would be irrelevant, as they were a minority in that country. It's the duty of the general population that first and foremost should not let its government do injustice, not of an oppressed minority, that not only doesn't control the government but also has the majority against it. For all the sneer, you missed that obvious counter-argument as well.
>Thanks for clarifying that not revolting means you are guilty of whatever government happens to rule the piece of land you're currently occupying does.
You're welcome. People in a democracy are not just random bodies occupying random pieces of land and getting on with our lives whatever happens. They are citizens, they vote, they participate in the public discussion, the voice their opinions, etc. Silence is complicity.
Iraq was a democracy at the time. In fact this is one of the big grievances that is blamed for the creation and advance of ISIS.
Oops.
> Second, those "Mosul Kurds" did very much rebel
No they didn't. Not when it mattered. Here is the sequence of events, in the hope that it can show you just how wrong you are :
Iraq was a sectarian country. That America made it a democracy is part of the causal chain that gave us Daesh/isis. Here's what happened:
1) Saddam (gets put into power as an ally of Hitler and more generally as a product of the nationalistic ideologies sweeping the world)
2) Saddam is a Sunni muslim, and rules in sectarian fashion. This means that anybody in government jobs is a Sunni muslim too (sunni muslims, in case you don't know, are the ones behind most terrorism, the ones behind daesh/isis, and the largest group of muslims (80% or so). They are completely intolerant of other islamic groups, and of course of any other faiths and atheists).
3) Sunnis, however are a minority in Iraq. Shi'a, the "Iranian/Persian" "branch" of islam, are the majority. Other minorities include Kurds, Christians, Druze, Zoroastrians, and expats.
4) America fights two wars against Iraq. Second time, they install a democracy.
5) The democracy puts the majority Shi'a in power. They put Shi'as in power who, together with Americans, fire pretty much every Sunni in government service, which were pretty much the only remaining jobs.
6) After that, of course, those Shi'as found that over time they had been relocated to areas of the country that were unimportant economically, where Sunni's lived.
7) Sunnis react to this state of affairs by attacking everyone and everything. As a result of this, the Christian community of Iraq has essentially been murdered out of existence.
8) Shi'as remove Sunnis from those economic areas, by simply destroying their houses, villages, etc. and shooting everyone. The Shi'a police force, with help from Americans, learn to deal with the Sunni terror attacks over time and those become ineffective.
9) The Sunni band together and form Daesh/isis, and take territory. Confronted with an organized force, the Shi'a soldiers simply abandon their posts and let them take large parts of the country.
So, firstly, not only were the Kurds living in a democracy, but a democracy that was doing very unacceptable things (by our moral code, not by theirs). A racist democracy, installed and supported by the US and Iran (yes, really).
In the areas that were conquered, everyone saw it coming.
But of course outside of that we simply cannot accept that, given the chance, in the middle east (and elsewhere I might add) muslims simply immediately oppress and even massacre anyone even slightly different from them. When they get control of a government, they replace the agents on the ground, the police and the army, so that, firstly, they can do whatever they want, and second the government itself helps with the ethnic cleansing. And of course, that happens whether that government is a dictatorship or a democracy, because that fact simply has nothing to do with the problem. People might even suggest that similar things are in the very early stages of happening in cities like Paris, in a few districts.
Identity becomes deeply entwined with protecting the purity of the 'exceptional group' with an unhealthy reductive interest in judging others and clearly demarcating the 'unexceptional'. This is a very negative space.
The problem with sweeping articles like this is it requires intense engagement with history, reason and reflection to escape the generalization and find a truth you can be comfortable with.
No one can define you, you can always choose what you want to be. On a wider level people have always been led and as long as exceptionalism remains a low key 'motivator' it works but its a dangerous game as the lines can blur pretty quickly.
The old saying is "everybody has one novel in them." updated verson: everyone has a blog post in them.
Her words are ok. Not inspiring whatsoever. Not dramatic. Not new.
I take it for what it is. Let her get better at her job.
She notices similarities between Turkish nationalism and American patriotic world view, and that includes being a very aggressive state.
There are a few big reasons for what the author is observing and commenting on, that get too little attention IMO.
One is the end of the cold war, and the wars preceding it. The cold war was cold, but the psychology was regular war psychology. Fear, demonisation, rallying around your side... Relative evaluation of conduct and goals, rather than idealistic evaluation.
In the corld-war-world, the US represented democracy, personal liberty and its associated human rights, and (very importantly) culturally icons. US and western police forces behaved well relative to Soviet police forces. US Movies & Music were better. Press was more honest. The comparison was not made relative to an idealised concept of democracy or human rights (or music). It was made relative to the Soviet Union associated states. It was also mostly made in Eastern Europe, where the divide was arbitrary, non-national and highly visible.
That dichotomy world is gone. These days, I think people evaluate these things in a more abstract way, relative to abstract idealizations.
A second effect is US politics' global viewership. This is a product of globalized media, the dramatic merits of US political theater, the genuine impacts of big US decisions and other reasons.
This is huge. I live in Ireland. The majority of people are more knowledgeable, vested and opinionated about US politics than local politics. They have a strong opinion on US health policies, but not Irish ones. This is a recipe for insanity. US politicians are pandering to US opinions, not Danish or Georgian or Irish opinions. Of course they feel unrepresented. When one side loses a heated election, large numbers always feel alienated and angry at the country. It passes, a normal part of democracy. Many Danes (and everyone) were involved enough emotionally to get the same feeling but being non-americans aren't as affected by the normalizing effects that bring everything together in the end.
When Europeans express a frustrated criticism of US politics, they are doing it as insiders. They are criticising it the same way they would criticize a local party coming to power, one which they don't like. Imagine how angry Americans would get at the Danish or Mexican parliament if they were following it like this.
A third issue is the "someone must be driving" fallacy. In this sense being angry at the US is like the constant anger at one's own government. There is so much wrong with everything and it has to be someone's fault.
The US has been having a bad run in foreign policy. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, even N. Korea, ... The US is (rightly or wrongly) held responsible as the guy in charge. Politics rarely rewards successes. The failures are just more visible.
Who do you get angry at for the Syrian civil war? Who's to blame? The UN?
When I read shallow reflections like this article, I think, here's a person that judges the wartime decisions of the past in the peace of the present, and submits to the vapid criticism every government levels against the world's boogieman.
But, I don't really think the writer of this article is all that bad. He's obviously writing from a personal perspective. Basically narrating his "disilusionment," for lack of a better term. It's actually a fairly poor term. We always start from simpler idea, less knowledge and grow from there.
The reality is that there is no such things as patriotism. It's a made up concept to describe how we feel about our country (another made up concept). There is no True narrative of Turkey's political saga.
These are all opinions and narratives, subjective by nature. Facts play a roles, but they are intermingles with a lot of stuff that isn't factual in nature. That doesn't make it shallow.
The problem is that we're all playing a losing game. You can't read an article like this, and just fish for stuff that supports are weakens your own position in some meta-trial conducted in the minds of the whole world.
He?
This is the thesis of the piece. The rest is an extended critique of Americans.
I have difficultly buying into the thesis, so the rest of it reads like a very long-winded opinion piece with the standard throwaway charges about how the U.S. is horribly bad.
This seems to be a perennial topic and folks all over the world eat it up. It's nice to see it done in such a talented way. Just not my thing.
Can't see them publishing the equivalent article about the prejudices of, say, the north London elite.
As an American, I've noted the popularity of this kind of "America still sucks!" media material. I've seen it for 40 years and I imagine it'll still be going strong 40 years from now. It's not that I have a problem with introspection and going over all of our faults and thinking about where we could be better. It's after a couple hundred of these things? I'm not seeing where a lot of them are adding any more to the discussion.
It gets to have more of a feel of a religious sermon or catechism, where the material is well-known by both the speaker and audience and held dear, but over time the ritual of pronouncing and consuming the material can become more important than the content itself.
Still, given the caveats about the genre, points for style and cogency.
Not sure who was challenged by this piece apart from the author. Sometimes that can be interesting of itself though.
I don't think you can compare across genres. Over a period of centuries you can observe which ones come and go and which ones stay. Disaster stories, for instance, seem to come and go on regular intervals. This "I am observing so many things about my upbringing that were invisible to me until X" story? It feels to me a much older genre, one that originally had roots in verbal story-telling, not books.
The interesting question (to me) is how the genre changed moving from a verbal interaction to an essay form. You could extend that to this particular writer. Have they had experience with this form of story-telling, perhaps in a religious or social setting?
So looking at these multiple genres with the same theme, yes, it says something. There's something powerfully true about the human spirit at work. But 40 years of seeing this in <FORMAT_X>? Nope. At least not for me. Too soon. Check back with me in a hundred years or so. :)
ADD: You know who this type of written story reminds me of? Emily Dickinson. There's that same feeling of turning your life inside-out and looking at it from the outside. That's about as far back as I can go with the written word, but my Kung Fu here is quite weak.
It's also reminiscent of the flagellants, which had much the same message and delivered it verbally to whomever would listen.
All that said, there certainly is something in what she writes, particularly about the naivety of people growing up with little world perspective like that.
I had a fairly sheltered upbringing in the UK, but we did at least do some world geography and the GCSE curriculum in the early 90s required a little bit more social geography, concentrating on the southern parts of West Africa (not that I remember much of it now).
Without any world geography at all, well it seems criminal to set up an education system, that way.
/s
The question isn't if the ends are desirable. It's whether it is acceptable to merely consider whether the DoE as currently-constituted is the best way to achieve them.
As far as I can tell, the Department of Education's role (https://www2.ed.gov/about/what-we-do.html) is largely limited to certain funding (eg: student loans), statistics, certain anti-discrimination legal enforcement that is applicable at the national level, and "[identifying] major issues" (eg advocacy). Plus some items related to the No Child Left Behind act.
A lot of that seems okay to me. In particular, I think having a centralized statistical department (what this department's role largely was before elevation to cabinet level) is absolutely worthwhile. Student loans would in my opinion be the most interesting topic to explore of the above, but it's more or less worth a debate over it... not "eliminate department due to Reasons".
How many US high school students can pinpoint even fairly known countries on the map?
(Come to Austria, meet the Kangaroos)
Only it's not like that. You can ask random people yourself to verify, or you can trust one of several surveys and/or studies in the subject. E.g:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_...
>It shits me because it's so hypocritical. I'm not from the U.S. and I have no idea where your capital city is (let alone state capitals and whatnot) and I really don't give a crap, so why should you care about mine?
Well, it's exactly the "don't know, don't care" attitude we're arguing against here.
A basic knowledge of geography is not only essential in the modern, globalized world, but also indicative of a lack of knowledge in other areas, including history and current world affairs. And that, for a country that's intervening left and right, and whose citizens are trusted to vote, rally for, or oppose parties that will perform such international interventions, diplomatic actions, etc, a lack of such knowledge is shameful.
Not as if lack of knowledge was ever some kind of badge of honor.
Don't conflate being able to recite geographic info with knowledge. It's not knowledge, it's just... data.
Which would be relevant if anybody had asked them to do that. Nobody suggested people should "memorize names and locations of cities and landmarks in a far-off country that you have no plan to visit".
I (and others, including classical education) suggested a working knowledge of work geography -- what the continents are, what the major countries are, major cities. They should also know a thing or two about their history. You know, the history of human civilization, even if they have no plans to contribute to it.
And the "instantly public availability" of information doesn't make one smarter. Only the information already accessed (and even more so, evaluated and assessed) does. Things you know are there in your mind, available for your thoughts and comprehension, can help you follow a discussion, can be used to make judgements etc. Things one can merely look up do not inform your worldview -- they are absent from it.
>Don't conflate being able to recite geographic info with knowledge. It's not knowledge, it's just... data.
Knowledge itself is just data plus understanding them in context. Without data there's no knowledge. Don't conflate potential access to data with actually knowing things.
This sounds like a very shallow style of geography, did you not do any social geography?
Edit: In case you were interested this[0] is an example of the kind of stuff we learn when we're 11-14 in Britain.
I can't remember year 7 and 8 geography very well, though that all sounds familiar.
It's really just a generalized statement based on her personal experience.
Here's some anecdata:
In 11th grade I took a world cultures class that spent a lot of time in Russian and Chinese history as well as a broader overview of various parts of Africa (mostly sub-Saharan, if I recall correctly). This was a couple of years after doing a world cultures class that was a bit broader and shallower, but I do remember it having a pretty extensive introduction to the bigger world religions. We learned the Five Pillars of Islam as well as some of the basic principles of Hinduism and Buddhism.
In elementary school, the gifted kids would put on a thing called "International Day" where they'd each pick a country, write to embassies for info, get into the CIA World Factbook on the World Wide Web, wear clothing from the nation, bring in their food, etc. It was a nice way for kids to try tzatziki sauce, listen to Slovenian-style polka, say hello in Mandarin, or see someone wearing a ghoutra or kaftan.
While this was a good school district, it was nothing remotely resembling an urban or cosmopolitan one. I have to think that plenty of Americans had similar experiences like this.
It's increasingly cack but still the best of a bad bunch
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/oct/05/the-avocado-...
The opinion pieces really make me wince sometimes.
It's got worse though, now seems like they won't publish a piece unless it has a snide reference to "neoliberalism", or some comment about evil bankers causing financial crises, or some such, no matter how off-topic it is.
Perhaps it's just me, but it seems the overwhelming majority of op-eds I read these days are outrage screeds pertaining to the latter.
Probably because they have also eaten bombs, interventions, pressure etc for a century or so before that.
Well, I don't think the above information would be much comforting to the people affected.
Maybe we should be picking on all of them, but even more so to the one actually doing it at the present (and for near a century)?
Especially since "picking on" (criticizing negatively) seems like the lightest of responses about the abuses and harm from a powerful country to others.
> It seems a bit much to expect America not to throw it's weight around since there's no superpower in the history of humanity that has restrained itself like that. Instead it would be more productive to learn to to live with and mitigate it.
Back when America could do no wrong, America was Rocky, or one of those glistening 80s heros. Maybe a bit flawed, but generally a family man vs. evildoers, a plucky little upstart.
Then America was Bruce Willis in Die Hard, rough around the edges and divorced but still a good guy, trying to do the right thing. Then America was Keifer Sutherland in 24... somebody's gotta do the torturing! For a good cause, though.
The more and more dirt comes out, the more public sensibilities turn to stuff like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and House of Cards, reassuring watchers that nobody's good, that if you try to do the right thing the world will crush you, that all that matters is being top-dog. Sucks, but "that's the way the world really is".
It's super interesting. You'd think the character development in those shows is indicting, but it really is mostly immunizing and pride-preserving.
I was noticing I cared more about international politics than I previously did, and I saw a lot of other Americans putting more skin in the game than in the past (Although the only way I know this is from the last days of the French Election, where a bunch of tone-deaf English/bad French memes were being pushed to save Le Pen). It is European focused but hey its a start I guess.
More importantly though, is the lack of trust in institutions. When the article started talking about conspiracy theories and the deep state I had be do a double take for a second on whether she was still talking about Turkey.
The modern Left is dripping with hatred for the West - quite ironic given that we live in one the most free, prosperous societies ever created in human history. They are driven almost entirely by resentment, and lack even a shred of gratitude for the vast wealth, comfort and freedom they've been born into.
Do you mean that "the modern left", that homogeneous and well defined group, discourse is full of unjustified generalizations, where generic labels are apply without qualification?
Yes, quite ironic certainly.
GP's point was just that a sweeping generalisation of "the modern Left" is a meaningless statement, because it doesn't address a well-defined group, and the Left generally is not similar enough among itself for those broad claims to be true. Representing an entire swathe of the political spectrum as one homogeneous group is completely dishonest and unrealistic. It's definitely not "pointing out a trend".
But if your group is so wide that people so different as H.Clinton and Chomsky could be inside it, and you talk about their motivations instead of a specific idea, I think you deserve some criticism.
I think it is more like saying:
"The modern Right is dripping with hatred for the Government - quite ironic given that we live in one the most free, prosperous societies ever created in human history. They are driven almost entirely by resentment, and lack even a shred of gratitude for the vast wealth, comfort and freedom they've been born into."
You could ask me, and rightly so, who is this "modern right" and if I'm being fair when addressing their motivations.
You could ask me, also rightly, how the debate advance in a positive way with this kind of all covering statements.
That's 'privilege', and is something to feel guilty about. It's not something to be grateful to your ancestors for providing, but something you get unfairly by 'accident of birth'. Only when it comes to guilt is your connection to your ancestors and ethnicity more than an accident.
Edit: I did not think a 'sarcasm' tag necessary.
Oh wow.
I mean, I know that compared to many others (the vast majority) in the world I am exceedingly privileged. And seeking to help others overcome the barriers they face (that you do not) is a good thing. Even understanding that these barriers are there is something a lot of folks don't really get.
But I'm sure as hell not going to feel guilt over being brought up with a good education, enough money in the house and being born with light, pinkish skin.
I happen to be quite grateful for the sacrifices my ancestors (and the human race more broadly) made in building civilization, so that I don't have to live in a Hobbesian world where death by age 30 is the norm.
Pretty sure DarkKomunalec is being sarcastic, but good job reinforcing your biases.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=white%20by:DarkKomunalec&sort=...
Poe's Law strikes again :)
Because, to me, it looks only like an ad hominem attack towards an ill-defined group.
Because they consider it immorally gotten? Why do you assume that people with completely different value judgements to you ought to think as you do about history and society?
Equally, people might reject systems of ownership out of hand, and consider the gulf of wealth causes by those systems to be the product of immoral behaviour.
Kind of a double edged sword though. Any society that currently allows the gratitude probably has a fairly checked past, even those outside the U.S. Not sure where one line begins and another ends.