What IS this thing called “American Exceptionalism”? Three views
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
I
American Exceptionalism
A Double Edged Sword
By Seymour Martin Lipset (1996)
Chapter One [Excerpted]: Ideology, Politics, and Deviance
![](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/American-Exceptionalism-book.jpg)
"American Exceptionalism explains why socialism has never taken hold in the United States, why Americans are resistant to absolute quotas as a way to integrate blacks and other minorities, and why American religion and foreign policy have a moralistic, crusading streak..."
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]orn out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society. Americanism, as different people have pointed out, is an "ism" or ideology in the same way that communism or fascism or liberalism are isms. As G. K. Chesterton put it: "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence. . . ." As noted in the Introduction, the nation's ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissezfaire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed cultures.
Other countries' senses of themselves are derived from a common history. Winston Churchill once gave vivid evidence to the difference between a national identity rooted in history and one defined by ideology in objecting to a proposal in 1940 to outlaw the anti-war Communist Party. In a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said that as far as he knew, the Communist Party was composed of Englishmen and he did not fear an Englishman. In Europe, nationality is related to community, and thus one cannot become un-English or un-Swedish. Being an American, however, is an ideological commitment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who reject American values are un-American.
The American Revolution sharply weakened the noblesse oblige, hierarchically rooted, organic community values which had been linked to Tory sentiments, and enormously strengthened the individualistic, egalitarian, and anti-statist ones which had been present in the settler and religious background of the colonies. These values were evident in the twentieth-century fact that, as H. G. Wells pointed out close to ninety years ago, the United States not only has lacked a viable socialist party, but also has never developed a British or European-type Conservative or Tory party. Rather, America has been dominated by pure bourgeois, middle-class individualistic values. As Wells put it: "Essentially America is a middle-class [which has] become a community and so its essential problems are the problems of a modern individualistic society, stark and clear." He enunciated a theory of America as a liberal society, in the classic anti-statist meaning of the term:
It is not difficult to show for example, that the two great political parties in America represent only one English party, the middle-class Liberal party. . . . There are no Tories . . . and no Labor Party. . . . [T]he new world [was left] to the Whigs and Nonconformists and to those less constructive, less logical, more popular and liberating thinkers who became Radicals in England, and Jeffersonians and then Democrats in America. All Americans are, from the English point of view, Liberals of one sort or another. . . . The liberalism of the eighteenth century was essentially the rebellion . . . against the monarchical and aristocratic state--against hereditary privilege, against restrictions on bargains. Its spirit was essentially anarchistic--the antithesis of Socialism. It was anti-State.
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
In dealing with national characteristics it is important to recognize that comparative evaluations are never absolutes, that they always are made in terms of more or less. The statement that the United States is an egalitarian society obviously does not imply that all Americans are equal in any way that can be defined. This proposition usually means (regardless of which aspect is under consideration--social relations, status, mobility, etc.) that the United States is more egalitarian than Europe.
Comparative judgments affect all generalizations about societies. This is such an obvious, commonsensical truism that it seems almost foolish to enunciate it. I only do so because statements about America or other countries are frequently challenged on the ground that they are not absolutely true. Generalizations may invert when the unit of comparison changes. For example, Canada looks different when compared to the United States than when contrasted with Britain. Figuratively, on a scale of 0 to 100, with the United States close to 0 on a given trait and Britain at 100, Canada would fall around 30. Thus, when Canada is evaluated by reference to the United States, it appears as more elitist, law-abiding, and statist, but when considering the variations between Canada and Britain, Canada looks more anti-statist, violent, and egalitarian.
The notion of "American exceptionalism" became widely applied in the context of efforts to account for the weakness of working-class radicalism in the United States. The major question subsumed in the concept became why the United States is the only industrialized country which does not have a significant socialist movement or Labor party. That riddle has bedeviled socialist theorists since the late nineteenth century. Friedrich Engels tried to answer it in the last decade of his life. The German socialist and sociologist Werner Sombart dealt with it in a major book published in his native language in 1906, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? As we have seen, H. G. Wells, then a Fabian, also addressed the issue that year in The Future in America. Both Lenin and Trotsky were deeply concerned because the logic of Marxism, the proposition expressed by Marx in Das Kapital that "the more developed country shows the less developed the image of their future," implied to Marxists prior to the Russian Revolution that the United States would be the first socialist country."
Since some object to an attempt to explain a negative, a vacancy, the query may of course be reversed to ask why has America been the most classically liberal polity in the world from its founding to the present? Although the United States remains the wealthiest large industrialized nation, it devotes less of its income to welfare and the state is less involved in the economy than is true for other developed countries. It not only does not have a viable, class-conscious, radical political movement, but its trade unions, which have long been weaker than those of almost all other industrialized countries, have been steadily declining since the mid-1950s. These issues are covered more extensively in chapter Three. An emphasis on American uniqueness raises the obvious question of the nature of the differences. There is a large literature dating back to at least the eighteenth century which attempts to specify the special character of the United States politically and socially. One of the most interesting, often overlooked, is Edmund Burke's speech to the House of Commons proposing reconciliation with the colonies, in which he sought to explain to his fellow members what the revolutionary Americans were like. He noted that they were different culturally, that they were not simply transplanted Englishmen. He particularly stressed the unique character of American religion. J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, in his book Letters from an American Farmer, written in the late eighteenth century, explicitly raised the question, "What is an American?" He emphasized that Americans behaved differently in their social relations, were much more egalitarian than other nationalities, that their"dictionary" was "short in words of dignity, and names of honor," that is, in terms through which the lower strata expressed their subservience to the higher. Tocqueville, who observed egalitarianism in a similar fashion, also stressed individualism, as distinct from the emphasis on "group ties" which marked Europe.
These commentaries have been followed by a myriad--thousands upon thousands--of books and articles by foreign travelers. The overwhelming majority are by educated Europeans. Such writings are fruitful because they are comparative; those who wrote them emphasized cross-national variations in behavior and institutions. Tocqueville's Democracy, of course, is the best known. As we have seen, he noted that he never wrote anything about the United States without thinking of France. As he put it, in speaking of his need to contrast the same institutions and behavior in both countries, "without comparisons to make, the mind doesn't know how to proceed." Harriet Martineau, an English contemporary, also wrote a first-rate comparative book on America. Friedrich Engels and Max Weber were among the contributors to the literature. There is a fairly systematic and similar logic in many of these discussions. Beyond the analysis of variations between the United States and Europe, various other comparisons have been fruitful. In previous writings, I have suggested that one of the best ways to specify and distinguish American traits is by contrast with Canada. There is a considerable comparative North American literature, written almost entirely by Canadians. They have a great advantage over Americans since, while very few of the latter study their northern neighbor, it is impossible to be a literate Canadian without knowing almost as much, if not more, as most Americans about the United States. Almost every Canadian work on a given subject (the city, religion, the family, trade unions, etc.) contains a great deal about the United States. Many Canadians seek to explain their own country by dealing with differences or similarities south of the border. Specifying and analyzing variations among the predominantly English-speaking countries--Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States--is also useful precisely because the differences among them generally are smaller than between each and non-Anglophonic societies. have tried to analyze these variations in The First New Nation. The logic of studying societies which have major aspects in common was also followed by Louis Hartz in treating the overseas settler societies--United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia, and South Africa--as units for comparison. Fruitful comparisons have been made between Latin America and Anglophonic North America, which shed light on each.
Some Latin Americans have argued that there are major common elements in the Americas which show up in comparisons with Europe. Fernando Cardoso, a distinguished sociologist and now president of Brazil, once told me that he and his friends (who were activists in the underground left in the early 1960s) consciously decided not to found a socialist party as the military dictatorship was breaking down. They formed a populist party because, as they read the evidence, class-conscious socialism does not appeal in the Americas. With the exceptions of Chile and Canada (to a limited extent), major New World left parties from Argentina to the United States have been populist. Cardoso suggested that consciousness of social class is less salient throughout most of the Americas than in postfeudal Europe. However, I do not want to take on the issue of how exceptional the Americas are; dealing with the United States is more than enough.
LIBERALISM, CONSERVATISM, AND AMERICANISM
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he United States is viewed by many as the great conservative society, but it may also be seen as the most classically liberal polity in the developed world. To understand the exceptional nature of American politics, it is necessary to recognize, with H. G. Wells, that conservatism, as defined outside of the United States, is particularly weak in this country. Conservatism in Europe and Canada, derived from the historic alliance of church and government, is associated with the emergence of the welfare state. The two names most identified with it are Bismarck and Disraeli. Both were leaders of the conservatives (Tories) in their countries. They represented the rural and aristocratic elements, sectors which disdained capitalism, disliked the bourgeoisie, and rejected materialistic values. Their politics reflected the values of noblesse oblige, the obligation of the leaders of society and the economy to protect the less fortunate.
The semantic confusion about liberalism in America arises because both early and latter-day Americans never adopted the term to describe the unique American polity. The reason is simple. The American system of government existed long before the word "liberal" emerged in Napoleonic Spain and was subsequently accepted as referring to a particular party in mid-nineteenth-century England, as distinct from the Tory or Conservative Party. What Europeans have called "liberalism," Americans refer to as "conservatism": a deeply anti-statist doctrine emphasizing the virtues of laissez-faire. Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, the two current names most frequently linked with this ideology, define conservatism in America. And as Friedrich Hayek, its most important European exponent noted, it includes the rejection of aristocracy, social class hierarchy, and an established state church. As recently as the April and June 1987 issues of the British magazine Encounter, two leading trans-Atlantic conservative intellectuals, Max Beloff (Lord Beloff) and Irving Kristol, debated the use of titles. Kristol argued that Britain "is soured by a set of very thin, but tenacious, aristocratic pretensions . . . [which] foreclose opportunities and repress a spirit of equality that has yet to find its full expression. . . ." This situation fuels many of the frustrations that make "British life . . . so cheerless, so abounding in ressentiment." Like Tocqueville, he holds up "social equality" as making"other inequalities tolerable in modern democracy." Beloff, a Tory, contended that what threatens conservatism in Britain "is not its remaining links with the aristocratic tradition, but its alleged indifference to some of the abuses of capitalism. It is not the Dukes who lose us votes, but the 'malefactors of great wealth. . . .'" He wondered "why Mr. Kristol believes himself to be a 'conservative,' " since he is "as incapable as most Americans of being a conservative in any profound sense." Lord Beloff concluded that "Conservatism must have a 'Tory' element or it is only the old 'Manchester School,' " i.e., liberal.
Canada's most distinguished conservative intellectual, George Grant, emphasized in his Lament for a Nation that "Americans who call themselves 'Conservatives' have the right to that title only in a particular sense. In fact, they are old-fashioned liberals. . . . Their concentration on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with nineteenth century liberalism than with traditional conservatism, which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the name of the common good." Grant bemoaned the fact that American conservatism, with its stress on the virtues of competition and links to business ideology, focuses on the rights of individuals and ignores communal rights and obligations. He noted that there has been no place in the American political philosophy "for the organic conservatism that predates the age of progress. Indeed, the United States is the only society on earth that has no traditions from before the age of progress." The recent efforts, led by Amitai Etzioni, to create a "communitarian" movement are an attempt to transport Toryism to America. British and German Tories have recognized the link and have shown considerable interest in Etzioni's ideas. Still, it must be recognized that American politics have changed. The 1930s produced a qualitative difference. As Richard Hofstadter wrote, this period brought a "social democratic tinge" to the United States for the first time in its history. The Great Depression produced a strong emphasis on planning, on the welfare state, on the role of the government as a major regulatory actor. An earlier upswing in statist sentiment occurred immediately prior to World War 1, as evidenced by the significant support for the largely Republican Progressive movement led by Robert LaFollette and Theodore Roosevelt and the increasing strength (up to a high of 6% of the national vote in 1912) for the Socialist Party. They failed to change the political system. Grant McConnell explains the failure of the Progressive movement as stemming from "the pervasive and latent ambiguity in the movement" about confronting American anti-statist values. "Power as it exists was antagonistic to democracy, but how was it to be curbed without the erection of superior power?"
Prior to the 1930s, the American trade union movement was also in its majority anti-statist. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was syndicalist, believed in more union, not more state power, and was anti-socialist. Its predominant leader for forty years, Samuel Gompers, once said when asked about his politics, that he guessed he was three quarters of an anarchist. And he was right. Europeans and others who perceived the Gompers-led AFL as a conservative organization because it opposed the socialists were wrong. The AFL was an extremely militant organization, which engaged in violence and had a high strike rate. It was not conservative, but rather a militant anti-statist group. The United States also had a revolutionary trade union movement, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW, like the AFL, was not socialist. It was explicitly anarchist, or rather, anarcho-syndicalist. The revived American radical movement of the 1960s, the so-called New Left, was also not socialist. While not doctrinally anarchist, it was much closer to anarchism and the IWW in its ideology and organizational structure than to the Socialists or Communists.
The New Deal, which owed much to the Progressive movement, was not socialist either. Franklin Roosevelt clearly wanted to maintain a capitalist economy. In running for president in 1932, he criticized Herbert Hoover and the Republicans for deficit financing and expanding the economic role of the government, which they had done in order to deal with the Depression. But his New Deal, also rising out of the need to confront the massive economic downsizing, drastically increased the statist strain in American politics, while furthering public support for trade unions. The new labor movement which arose concomitantly, the Committee for (later Congress of) Industrial Organization (CIO), unlike the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was virtually social democratic in its orientation. In fact, socialists and communists played important roles in the movement. The CIO was much more politically active than the older Federation and helped to press the Democrats to the left. The Depression led to a kind of moderate "Europeanization" of American politics, as well as of its labor organizations. Class factors became more important in differentiating party support. The conservatives, increasingly concentrated among the Republicans, remained anti-statist and laissez-faire, but many of them grew willing to accommodate an activist role for the state.
This pattern, however, gradually inverted after World War 11 as a result of long-term prosperity. The United States, like other parts of the developed world, experienced what some have called an economic miracle. The period from 1945 to the 1980s was characterized by considerable growth (mainly before the mid-1970s), an absence of major economic downswings, higher rates of social mobility both on a mass level and into the elites, and a tremendous expansion of higher educational systems--from a few million to 11 or 12 million going to colleges and universities--which fostered that mobility. America did particularly well economically, leading Europe and Japan by a considerable margin in terms of new job creation. A consequence of these developments was a refurbishing of the classical liberal ideology, that is, American conservatism. The class tensions produced by the Depression lessened, reflected in the decline of the labor movement and lower correlations between class position and voting choices. And the members of the small (by comparative standards) American labor movement are today significantly less favorable to government action than European unionists. Fewer than half of American union members are in favor of the government providing a decent standard of living for the unemployed, as compared with 69 percent of West German, 72 percent of British, and 73 percent of Italian unionists.33 Even before Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, the United States had a lower rate of taxation, a less developed welfare state, and many fewer government-owned industries than other industrialized nations.
II
On American Exceptionalism
Ron Ridenour (2018)
From The Russian Peace Threat (Excerpts, Chapter 19)
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]MERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IS an ideology in itself. It holds that “America” is unique among all countries for being a “land of opportunities”. Americans are unique among all peoples for their ideals of democracy, liberty, personal freedom, individualism— that everyone who works hard regardless of roots or class can become rich and even become a president—everyone who is white and male, that is. That last caveat was the “exception to the rule” of American Exceptionalism until the 20th century when, first women and later black people could officially be equal, and could occupy the White House built by African slaves. (1)
French political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was the first writer to describe the country as “exceptional” in his book, Democracy in America (1835).
American Exceptionalism embraces Manifest Destiny—the belief that it is Americans’ destiny to expand their “exceptional” qualities first throughout the Americas, in mid-19th century, and later to the whole world—spreading the good word with sword and movies. Many believe Americans are chosen by God to civilize the world, to bring the world its democracy. e rst war fought with “god on its side” was against Mexico (chapter 18).
This superior view of America’s place in the world was already codified in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, named after President James Monroe’s foreign policy. First it warned Europe that Latin America was to come under United States doctrine while Europe could keep its other colonies.
Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg address (1863) that Americans have a duty to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” This got interpreted to mean it is Americans’ mission to extend their superiority over other nations.
Many presidents took up the term American Exceptionalism in their wars, among them: Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
While American Exceptionalism does not apply only to one religion or ethnic group (in later years blacks could be included), it is akin to what many Jews believe of themselves as being God’s “chosen people”, entitled to the Palestinian “promised land...of milk and honey” at the expense of the Arab peoples. U.S. manifest destiny promoters accept this postulate as it aids their drive for Middle Eastern oil—so much so that for the only time in history, it looked the other way when another state attacked it. The survivors of the USS Liberty know this first hand after Israel bombed their ship for hours and killed 34 American sailors. (http:// www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html)
The actual phrase American Exceptionalism may have originated in the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. He condemned many American Communists, including some leaders, who suggested that the U.S. was impervious to communist ideals, that American workers were “exceptional” because there were no rigid class distinctions, and they would not embrace a socialist revolution. With minor exceptions few workers have, in fact, embraced the classic Marxist concepts of the need for class struggle and socialist revolution.
Why is that? Colleague Gaither Stewart writes in “The Greanville Post”, October 2, 2017:
“In a great dialectic the survival needs of the bourgeoisie generate the resistance that can ultimately crush it—the resistance that according to Marxist theory will crush it someday. ese days, there for everyone to see, for everyone to feel, is the spreading sense of unease marking its successive economic- nancial crises point to the eventual demise of bourgeois, bandit capitalism.
So why has it not already happened, one must wonder? Why hasn’t it collapsed long ago? ough the bourgeoisie—capitalist class— is small and the proletariat wage earners an overwhelming majority, why don’t the exploited classes rebel and rebel, revolt and revolt, again and again? Why not? e reason is clear: the exploited classes are not only victims. ey are also accomplices—half victim, half accomplice. e historical paradox! e ruling class counts on this dichotomy to maintain the system. Divide and rule. Meritocracy. Rewards for obedience. Two cars and bigger houses for staying in line. A system based on money, domination, pervasive indoctrination of Orwellian proportions, and fear. Religion too, and FEAR. Fear of fear. Fear of change. Fear, fear, fear. A fearful people is an obedient people.” (http:// www.greanvillepost.com/2017/10/02/definitions-the-bourgeoisie/)
I agree with Stewart and add that the U.S. capitalist class can a afford to give a bit more to many of its homeland exploited as the capitalists exploit workers in “third world” countries all the more. They create false consciousness through the divide and conquer rule, and by instilling fear.
American Exceptionalism works best on Americans when they convince themselves to believe the ruler’s lies thereby maintaining their ignorance. They feel safe by refusing to see the truth, by accepting the rules for fear of losing their jobs, fear of being outcast by friends and family, fear of being jailed or even killed if they decide to seek the truth and then act upon it. That is what stands behind a lot of America’s racist and genocidal violence perpetrated by the white working class clothed in overalls or military uniforms under the orders of the ruling elite.
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What the Yankees have always been good at is deception, especially among whites by enlarging their colorless ego through nearly all the mass media, entertainment and cultural forms. The land of opportunity, and many others, is there for the taking...for whites. If there is not enough backing within the population or among international ally vassals for yet another aggressive war then creating conditions for the wanted war can be accommodated. There are many examples:
1. “Remember the Maine” was the slogan media mogul William Randolph Hearst used to whip up war fury against Spain, in order to take effective control of Cuba by preventing Cubans from winning their anti-colonial liberation war alone. (chapter three)
2. President Lyndon Johnson did the military-industrial complex the favor of reversing JFK’s initiation of ending the war against Vietnam by fabricating a Vietnamese attack on the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. He convinced Congress with this lie to grant him a war without naming it as one. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution granted the presidency the use of all “necessary” force, which ended in the murder of millions of human beings. (chapter 12)
3. The lie that led to the totally superfluous atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (chapter 12)
4. The many lies about the terror attack on September 11, 2001, in which some “chickens did come home to roost”, and lay the basis for invasions in the Middle East and North Africa.
The chicken roosting simile I associate with morality. Many of the terrorist victims were co-responsible for America’s many wars and oppressive domination of other peoples, a moral issue I take up in an agonizing essay. (https://www.ronridenour.com/articles/2002/0101--rr.htm)
I do not know for certain if elements in the U.S. government were co-responsible for the attacks on that day but I do know that there was no defense against these attacks since it seems the entire military apparatus was on an exercise. The training dealt with how to combat such terror attacks. If there were only 19 terrorists directly involved, it seems more than odd that they would choose that propitious day without inside knowledge; also odd that 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia, whose diplomats and bin Laden family members were let free to fly away when no one else could.
It is also odd that Israeli intelligence agents were seen applauding the Twin Towers explosions. Five Israelis were arrested and detained for 71 days. FBI counterintelligence concluded at least two worked for Israeli intelligence, but they were let go, deported to Israel.
Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas made the documentary film Loose Change that is used widely by the 9/11 Truth movement. The film asserts that Flight 77 could not have accounted for the damage at the Pentagon, that the Twin Towers fires were insufficient to cause their collapse, and that cell phone calls from the hijacked airplanes would have been impossible at the time.
How can it be that thousands of architects and engineer professionals demand a new investigation into the cause of the attacks? Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is a powerful documentary about this. Many Hollywood stars and even a former Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura, speak about the government lies and the need for an independent, honest investigation. (http://911truth.org/achievements/events- campaigns-to-expose-911-truth/)
HAROLD PINTER 2005 NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE SPEECH
While it is not Pinter’s intent to make the chicken-roosting judgment that I do, his poignant speech in acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature shows some of the reasons why some seek revenge.
“...the majority of politicians...are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be ready in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth has to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
“ The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States in icted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? e answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people’
It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.”
“Its official declared policy is now defined as ‘full spectrum dominance’. and it is not my term, it is theirs. ‘Full spectrum dominance’ means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.”
“What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days—conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?” (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/ pinter-lecture-e.html)
John Rohn Hall calls American Exceptionalism “the illusion of choice.” “Sleeping through the American Dream, still believing the lies, counting on the lies, clinging to the lies like their lives depend upon it. The Empire’s Misinformation Machine knows the drill. Well learned from blood brother Adolph: ‘If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.’” (https://dissidentvoice.org/ 2017/08/empires-day-of-reckoning/)
BARAK OBAMA THE WORST PRESIDENT
President Barack Obama used the term American Exceptionalism more than any other president—perhaps to “compensate” for the racist riff-raff hatred against him because of his skin color.
A Washington Post May 28, 2014 headline read: “Obama’s New Patriotism: How Obama has used his presidency to redefine ‘American Exceptionalism’”.
Greg Jaffe wrote: “No American president has talked about American Exceptionalism more often and in more varied ways than Obama. As an Illinois state legislator, young U.S. senator and presidential candidate, he spoke about it most frequently through the prism of his own remarkable story. His father had grown up in Kenya herding goats. His wife carried ‘blood of slaves and slave owners,’ he noted during his first presidential campaign. He had brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews of every race and many religions, scattered across continents.”
“In Libya, many of his top advisers, including his defense secretary, urged him not to use the U.S. military to protect citizens from attacks by forces loyal to dictator Moammar Gaddafi. The United States didn’t need another war in a country of only peripheral interest. Obama overruled them, citing America’s ‘indispensable’ role.” (http://www.washingtonpost. com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/ ?utm_term=.56ee66d9c6f7)
Obama used the al Qaeda lie that they knew Gaddafi would “massacre” them in a day. His (and Hillary Clinton) war on Gaddafi is what they call preemptive war, something Zionists have used against Arab countries at will.
Eight months before the Washington Post article, in September 2013, Obama was about to war on Syria, because of another terrorist lie that the government had used sarin gas to kill people. (chapter 15). President Putin warned him about using “American Exceptionalism” to commit a military invasion that could easily lead to a world war. Despite the “New York Times” alliance with the war-machine it wisely published his opinion piece and on a special day, September 11 (2013): “A Plea for Caution” by Vladimir V. Putin.
“Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies. Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization—the United Nations—was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.”
With a prayer for peace the man most demonized by U.S. politicians and their media concluded:
“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’ It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea- for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?_r=0)
John Pilger is not nearly as diplomatic as President Putin in his description of Obama’s embrace of American Exceptionalism. Excerpts from his piece, “ The Issue is not Trump, It is US:”
“One of the persistent strands in American political life is a cultish extremism that approaches fascism. This was given expression and reinforced during the two terms of Barack Obama. ‘I believe in American Exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,’ said Obama, who expanded America’s favorite military pastime, bombing, and death squads (‘special operations’) as no other president has done since the Cold War. (https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/17/the-issue-is- not-trump-it-is-us/)
“According to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016 alone Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. That is 72 bombs every day. He bombed the poorest people on earth, in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan.
“Every Tuesday—reported The New York Times—he personally selected those who would be murdered by mostly hellfire missiles red from drones. Weddings, funerals, shepherds were attacked, along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning the “terrorist target”. A leading Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, estimated, approvingly, that Obama’s drones killed 4,700 people. ‘Sometimes you hit innocent people and I hate that,’ he said, ‘but we’ve taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda.’”
“Under Obama, the US has extended secret ‘special forces’ operations to 138 countries or 70 per cent of the world’s population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa. Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments...It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose ‘historic mission’, warned Frantz Fanon...is the promotion of ‘a capitalism rampant though camouflaged’”.
I also wrote my take on Obama’s significance. In my view he is the worst U.S. president ever because he was the greatest hope especially for African-Americans, other people of color, and white liberals/ progressives. They kept hoping for years without protesting his wars and plundering for the rich. Some even rationalized his wars. See https://dissidentvoice.org/2013/03/obama-the-worst-us-president-ever/
“He is THE president for US corporations. With his black Kenyan roots he can walk into Africa’s rich parlors and black White houses and communicate with these butchers better than any of the capitalist class’ other presidents, all white.
“Obama is worse than them because he betrays all his black ‘brothers and sisters’ in the US, all except a few rich and opportunistic ones. He was THE hope; he would improve their lot, and that of the poor, the working people. He has done nothing. Instead, he takes from them to give to the rich, the worst criminals on Wall Street, the war arms industry, the oil and mineral industries.”
Another element in American Exceptionalism is the phenomenon of American citizens’ shooting wars against their own people. There were “only 290” mass shooting murder incidents (four or more killings) in Obama’s last year while Trump’s first year was the deadliest of all— 345; one every nine of ten days. Americans commit more mass shooting murders than any other country: one-third of them. October 1 was the biggest single citizen murder day in U.S. history when a 64-year old wealthy man killed 58 persons and wounded 500 at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas.
LULLABY
Little war child, where are you going?
East or west?
Where in the world do you believe you can nd a friend? Little war child, what suits you best:
A worn carpet?
A plywood co n?
A life jacket?
Little war child, where will you die:
Where the bombs fall
Or in the open sea?
Little war child, where do you want to go?
Choose yourself. Just we
Shall never see you again
(By Henrik Nordbrandt, a Danish poet, winner of Nordic Council’s 2000 Literature Prize. Translated by this author with his permission)
WHAT TO DO
John Pilger concluded his article with the most pressing question of the century? “...when will a genuine movement of opposition arise? Angry, eloquent, all-for-one-and-one-for all. Until real politics return to people’s lives, the enemy is not Trump, it is ourselves!”
Harold Pinter is in step: “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
“If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man,” Harold Pinter concluded his speech.
Canadian professor Michel Chossudovsky addresses the issues Pilger and Pinter raise, in his January 9, 2018 article, “The Empire’s ‘Lefty Intellectuals’ Call for Regime Change. The Role of ‘Progressives’ and the Antiwar Movement” (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-empires- le y-intellectuals-call-for-regime-change-the-role-of-progressives- and-the-antiwar-movement/5625333)
“What is now unfolding in both North America and Western Europe is fake social activism, controlled and funded by the corporate establishment. This manipulated process precludes the formation of a real mass movement against war, racism and social injustice.
The anti-war movement is dead. The war on Syria is tagged as ‘a civil war’.
The war on Yemen is also portrayed as a civil war. While the bombing is by Saudi Arabia, the insidious role of the US is downplayed or casually ignored. ‘The US is not directly involved so there is no need for us to wage an anti-war campaign’. (paraphrase)
War and neoliberalism are no longer at the forefront of civil society activism. Funded by corporate charities, via a network of non-governmental organizations, social activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to US led wars.
In turn, dissent has become compartmentalized. Separate ‘issue oriented’ protest movements...”
“What is required is the development of a broad-based grassroots network which seeks to disable patterns of authority and decision making pertaining to war.
This network would be established at all levels in society, towns and villages, work places, parishes. Trade unions, farmers’ organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, veterans associations, church groups would be called upon to integrate the antiwar organizational structure. Of crucial importance, this movement should extend into the Armed Forces as a means to breaking the legitimacy of war among service men and women.
The first task would be to disable war propaganda through an effective campaign against media disinformation.
The corporate media would be directly challenged, leading to boycotts of major news outlets, which are responsible for channeling disinformation into the news chain. This endeavor would require a parallel process at the grass roots level, of sensitizing and educating fellow citizens on the nature of the war and the global crisis, as well as effectively ‘spreading the word’ through advanced networking, through alternative media outlets on the internet, etc. In recent developments, the independent online media has been the target of manipulation and censorship, precisely with a view to undermining anti-war activism on the internet.
The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the structures of political authority, is no easy task. It would require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in World history. It would require breaking down political and ideological barriers within society and acting with a single voice. It would also require eventually unseating the war criminals, and indicting them for war crimes.
America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the ‘Globalization of War’ whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine—coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of ‘regime change’—is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of preemptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.
This ‘Long War against Humanity’ is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.
It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of ‘human rights’ and ‘Western democracy’.
Gabriel Rockhill wrote an excellent article about that published on December 13, 2017, entitled, “The U.S. is not a Democracy; it never was”. After analyzing why that is the case, which this book also deals with, he offers a bit of hope that we can do something about that.
“Rather than blindly believing in a golden age of democracy in order to remain at all costs within the gilded cage of an ideology produced specifically for us by the well-paid spin-doctors of a plutocratic oligarchy, we should unlock the gates of history and meticulously scrutinize the founding and evolution of the American imperial republic. This will not only allow us to take leave of its jingoist and self-congratulatory origin myths, but it will also provide us with the opportunity to resuscitate and reactivate so much of what they have sought to obliterate.
“In particular, there is a radical America just below the surface of these nationalist narratives, an America in which the population autonomously organizes itself in indigenous and ecological activism, black radical resistance, anti-capitalist mobilization, anti-patriarchal struggles...It is this America that the corporate republic has sought to eradicate, while simultaneously investing in an expansive public relations campaign to cover over its crimes with the g leaf of ‘democracy’...” (https://www.counterpunch.org/ 2017/12/13/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-never-was/) [my emphasis]
Gareth Porter offered a proposal in line with this simmering radical America at the NoWar2016 conference: “How We Could End the Permanent War State”. It is posted on World Beyond War run by anti- war activist and writer David Swanson. (http://worldbeyondwar.org/ end-permanent-war-state/) (NB: The file has apparently been withdrawn from this site.)
World Beyond War endeavors to be “a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace”. It has chapters in several cities of the world. Porter wrote:
“I want to present a vision of something that has not been discussed seriously in many, many years: a national strategy to mobilize a very large segment of the population of this country to participate in a movement to force the retreat of the permanent war state.”
“I suggest that it is time for a newly invigorated national movement to come together around a concrete strategy for accomplishing the goal of ending the permanent war state by taking away its means of intervening in foreign conflicts.
“The following are the four key elements that we would need to include in such a strategy:
(1) A clear, concrete vision of what eliminating the permanent war state would mean in practice to provide a meaningful target for people to support.
(2) A new and compelling way of educating and mobilizing people to action against the permanent war state.
(3) A strategy for reaching speci c segments of society on the issue.
(4) A plan for bringing political pressure to bear with the aim of ending the permanent war state within ten years.”
“So we should update General Smedley Butler’s memorable slogan from the 1930s, ‘War is a Racket’ to reflect the fact that the benefits that now accrue to the national security establishment make those of war profiteers in the 1930s seem like child’s play. I suggest the slogan such as ‘permanent war is a racket’ or the ‘the war state is a racket’”.
The Real News covered this conference and videos are presented of the various talks and panels. (http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016/) One of many groups participating at this unique conference was “Voices for Creative Non-Violence” (http://vcnv.org/). Among its many activities is advocating Peace with Russia, in which they make study trips to the country. (http://vcnv.org/category/u-s-russia-tensions/) My friend William Hathaway has ideas worth implementing too. His book, Radical Peace is a favorite of mine. (http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace/ 2010).
I quote here from his article, “Sedition, Subversion, Sabotage: A Long-War Strategy For the Left.”
“Despite its recurring crises, this system is still too strong, too adaptable, and has too many supporters in all classes for it to be overthrown any time soon. We’re probably not going to be the ones to create a new society.” (https://popularresistance.org/sedition-subversion-sabotage-a-long-war- strategy-for-the-left/) (A must website for all activists. Look up his piece for more details.)
“But we can now lay the groundwork for that, first by exposing the hoax that liberal reforms will lead to basic changes. People need to see that the purpose of liberalism is to defuse discontent with promises of the future and thus prevent mass opposition from coalescing. It diverts potentially revolutionary energy into superficial dead ends. Bernie Sanders’ ‘long game’ campaign is really only a game similar to that of his reformist predecessor, Dennis Kucinich, designed to keep us in the ‘big tent’ of the Democratic Party. Capitalism, although resilient, is willing to change only in ways that shore it up, so before anything truly different can be built, we have to bring it down.
“What we are experiencing now is the long war the ruling elite is fighting to maintain its grip on the world.” To bring it down, Hathaway suggests “the path out...will include conflict and strife. Insisting on only peaceful tactics and ruling out armed self defense against a ruling elite that has repeatedly slaughtered millions of people is naïve, actually a way of preventing basic change. The pacifist idealism so prevalent among the petty-bourgeoisie conceals their class interest: no revolution, just reform. But until capitalism and its military are collapsing, it would be suicidal to attack them directly with force.
“What we can do now as radicals is to weaken capitalism and build organizations that will pass our knowledge and experience on to future generations. If we do that well enough, our great grandchildren (not really so far away) can lead a revolution. If we don’t do it, our descendants will remain corporate chattel.
“Our generational assignment—should we decide to accept it—is sedition, subversion, sabotage: a program on which socialists and anarchists can work together.”
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne sign of the few encouraging ones we have today is the many Establishment policy makers: civil servants, ambassadors, militarists and cloak and dagger murderers who have come over to the people’s side. I have come across scores of them, and used many of their words herein. Everyone knows of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Among the covert types are the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Some of the war-intelligence professionals have admitted big sins, such as E. Howard Hunt confessing to having been privy to the murder of President Kennedy by his own “comrades”. The government-the military-industrial complex- deep state-mass media do not listen to them, however, nor does it seem does the much-alienated American Working Class.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s 1965 essay, “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” is one of my favorite works regarding alienation, morality and creating the new revolutionary person and society.
“Work under all forms of exploitative economies—all those predating an economy based upon collective ownership and decision-making— results in alienation of the individual and producers. Liberating us from this exploitation and its associates—oppression and repression—is a principal task of any post-capitalist economy, starting with socialism. Work, in the new economy, will be based on basic human needs and moral incentives, not materialism/consumerism,” Che wrote.
“The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. This law acts upon all aspects of one’s life, shaping its course and destiny.”
“That is why it is very important to choose the right instrument for mobilizing the masses. Basically, this instrument must be moral in character, without neglecting, however, a correct use of the material incentive—especially of a social character.”
“Those who play by the rules of the game are showered with honors— such honors as a monkey might get for performing pirouettes. The condition is that one does not try to escape from the invisible cage.”
“In these circumstances one must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.” “We socialists are freer because we are more fulfilled; we are more fulfilled because we are freer.”
We don’t need to wait until capitalism is abolished before we begin implementing some of Che’s ideas about post-capitalism. For instance, there are farms owned by and worked by workers in the United States, some taking a lead from the Spanish Mondragon Corporation. There are over 250 such companies in various countries run by about 75,000 workers. This type of production relationship could be enhanced with a perspective of making a socialist transition of society. (https://www. mondragon-corporation.com/en/)
Chris Wright’s “The Necessity of a Moral Revolution” seems to suggest something similar.
“We’re embarking on a revolutionary era, an era that promises to be more radical even than the 1930s.” (https://www.counterpunch.org/ 2017/08/08/the-necessity-of-a-moral-revolution/)
“The core of the protracted revolution, of course, is to create new institutions, ultimately new relations of production. Every revolution is essentially a matter of changing social structures; the goal of transforming ideologies makes sense only as facilitating institutional change. Nevertheless, to spread new ways of thinking, new values, can indeed serve as an effective midwife of revolution, and thus is a task worth undertaking.
“The fundamental moral transition that has to occur (in order, for example, to save humanity from collective suicide) is from a kind of nefarious egoism to a beneficent communism. This is the ideological core of the coming social changes, this shift from individualistic greed—‘Gain wealth, forgetting all but self ’—to collective solidarity. We have to stop seeing the world through the distorted lens of the private capitalist self, the self whose raison d’être is to accumulate private property, private experiences, private resentments, finally private neuroses, and instead see the world as what it is, a vast community stretching through time and space. Such a change of vision might facilitate the necessary institutional changes—which themselves, later, will naturally engender and instill this communist-type vision.”
Randy Shields is one of those pesky radicals who tells it just like he feels it, and these excerpts from his piece, “When I Started Hating America”, fit the topic here to my taste.
“I thought of McGovern recently because I was trying to pin down when I first started hating America. I’ve been a little tired of all these Osama and Anwar al-come-lately’s and the glory they get for hating America when many of us have toiled unpaid and unknown—hating America for decades.” (https://dissidentvoice.org/2012/07/when-i-started-hating-america/)
“McGovern got land-slided in 1972 and the American working class has been land-sliding the world ever since in proud ignorance, cowardly violence, and infinite obedience. So I say, contra Carl Sandberg: the people, no, hail no, for god sakes, no. I know as a Marxist I’m supposed to promote working class solidarity but I’m never really feeling the love. The union guys I work with don’t know anything about May Day, Big Bill Haywood or surplus value but they’re idiot savants when it comes to fantasy football, Philly strip clubs, and the most Eden-like places to blow away defenseless animals.”
“It’s hard to relate to something as alienated and shut down as the American working class...” but then Randy sees a way out:
“I was very excited about what Julius Levin was saying about the socialist industrial union form of government: a government based on industry instead of an anachronism like territory, a government of nurses, farmers, machinists, secretaries, plumbers, etc., democratically elected at every level—local, regional and national—from all workplaces with no union reps making any more money than the average worker. This all-industrial council of workers would replace the nonproductive pampered professional politicians called Congress. In short, industrial unionism would make Jefferson’s citizen-legislators real—ALL the citizens: Blacks, women, un-propertied White males, everybody. Capitalism’s Supreme Court weather vanes would be sent packing and the Whitey House would be turned into a museum honoring working class heroes.”
Despite Randy’s, and my own, despair about the American Working Class maybe its belief in American Exceptionalism is diminishing a bit. Polls indicate that the majority does not want more war; at least the feeling is there if not the action. NBC’s July 2017 poll determined that 76% of the Americans fear a major war while most oppose making one. That was 10% over the same poll half-a-year earlier. The July poll found that 62% believed the U.S. should consider its allies’ interests even if it meant making compromises; 59% over 35% believe diplomacy rather than military means should be used to resolve conflicts with so-called enemies. This is something old fashioned American Exceptionalism would not tolerate.
Who are the big threats to the United States that could result in war? Fortunately, the major threat was not Russia. In contrast to the Establishment Russia bashing, only 18% feared Russia most. The biggest threat comes from Trump’s main enemy at that time, North Korea, with 41%. North Korea surpasses even the real terrorists, ISIS, which the U.S. helped create—which 28% most fear. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/ national-security/nbc-news-poll-american-fears-war-grow-n783801)
The major problem we in “the real left” face is how to turn these well meaning people into revolutionaries or, at the very least, into a fighting force that could effectively stop the war machine. I’ve presented some activist-radical thinkers’ ideas. I add to this discussion with a view that is largely ignored or rejected by “the real left”. We need to include in our movements still-in-the-making two key points: a) an open discussion, a running dialogue both within the movements and presented to those we wish to mobilize and organize just what type of society we wish to create; b) see and admit our own flaws, and endeavor to overcome our own illusions.
I have spent nearly six decades primarily as a radical-revolutionary, anti-war, anti-racist activist; secondly as a journalist and propagandist writer. Unlike most of my kind in the West, I was also an activist in a socialist society, Cuba for eight years, and have spent a couple years in other Latin American countries striving to become socialist. I have learned that these governments did not want their people to decide how to run the fields and factories, not to mention the governments. I have learned that most people do not like that about these governments and, as surely can be seen by all who look, most Cubans wish to embrace capitalism today—although they wish to keep the social welfare that they have achieved. But that social welfare can also be achieved in a capitalist system.
I have learned that solidarity workers and socialist-communist parties in the West that stand side by side with these countries do not wish to hear about their serious mistakes, the authoritarian power structures, the unwillingness to turn over the reins of power to the workers. I don’t see how we can convince our own workers in capitalist states to risk their lives fighting against the barons’ bayonets if we can’t convince them that what we stand for is a better life for all, not only materially but spiritually and one in which they will make the key decisions. Only in that way, can we begin to eliminate the alienation about which Marx and Che speak.
We need to look reality in the face, all reality, and tell it like it is, not to malign but to improve, to project a world in which we stop fooling ourselves and our people. No more self-denials; no more illusions. At least one advantage to dropping illusions is that we won’t become disillusioned. We don’t abide by so many other illusions. Let us not abide our own!
At age 93, former French diplomat Stéphane Hessel wrote the pamphlet Indignez-vous! (“Time for Outrage”). Within three months it sold 600,000 copies—the most sold book in France.
His call for uprising both reflected and anticipated the spirit of student demonstrations in France, Britain and the U.S. Occupy Wall Street movement, as it did the wave of revolt challenging dictatorships in the Middle East.
After fighting against fascism in WWII, Hessel was involved along with Eleanor Roosevelt in drawing the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His voice was always on the side of the oppressed, the exploited. Here is a key extract, one that we must adhere to today.
“The motivation that underlay the Resistance was outrage. We, the veterans of the Resistance movements and fighting forces of Free France, call on the younger generations to revive and carry forward the tradition of the Resistance and its ideas.
“We say to you: take over, keep going, get angry! Those in positions of political responsibility, economic power and intellectual authority, in fact our whole society, must not give up or let ourselves be overwhelmed by the current international dictatorship of the financial markets, which is such a threat to peace and democracy. I want you, each and every one of you, to have a reason to be outraged. This is precious. When something outrages you, as Nazism did me that is when you become a militant, strong and engaged. You join the movement of history, and the great current of history continues to flow only thanks to each and every one of us.”
III
Anatomy of American Exceptionalism
Patrice Greanville (2018)
Inset From The Russian Peace Threat (Excerpts, Chapter 19)
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]merican exceptionalism is one of those peculiarities that make the U.S. such an exasperating enigma to so many people around the world. Exceptionalism, per se, is just one form of chauvinism, itself an offshoot of tribalism, a recognition that humans are (and feel) divided by real or imagined differences, and that many tend to feel superior to others.
Just about every country under the sun today—big and small, old and young— is chauvinist in some way. Bolivia and Chile, I know for a fact, are chauvinist, and so is Brazil and France, of course, and Britain, and Italy—as anyone attending an international soccer match can attest—is in a class by itself. Russia, naturally, to some extent, shares this trait, too, and even China and India, both ancient, foundational civilisations noted for their inner balance and firm identities, also show instances of national vanity. The Germans even had a national anthem once proclaiming to be “uber alles”—it doesn’t get more explicit than that. Little Togo is probably chauvinist in its own peculiar way. So “exceptionalism” is not that rare at all.
But, there are degrees of chauvinism among nations, like differences in temperament, in narcissism, and these differences can have serious consequences. In that sense—as shown by recent polls—US chauvinism is very pervasive. It’s chauvinism on steroids—insistent, intrusive, obnoxious, and even devious.
And these are just what we might call its “mundane” characteristics, where it most resembles other cases of acute national self-approval. The problem is that narcissism at the national level is no less toxic a personality disorder than at the individual level. And when this trait defines the character of a reality-averse, often petulant jejune superpower, US exceptionalism—this nationalist ideology akin to German fascism—really becomes a threat to everything and everyone on the face of this planet. How did this monstrous deformation come to occupy the center of US political life, to be seen as a “foundational" belief with many of the accoutrements of a de facto religion? I say religion because religions are not supposed to be questioned in their logic or factuality.
A closer look at US exceptionalism begins to give the game away. It finds its claims false or undistinguished and its uses malignant: The ideal mask for modern US imperialism, immunising it, at least in the eyes of the vastly disinformed home populace, against any and all possible charges of impure intent and wanton criminality. But the exceptionalist myth— itself like most major myths an organism comprised of subsidiary mythologies—goes even further: wrapped in its customary sanctimoniousness, it grants the ruling plutocrats unlimited access to the blood, muscle and treasure of most ordinary Americans, while also proclaiming with the audacity of a shameless mountebank the right of the United States to be acknowledged as the world’s natural leader, the “indispensable nation” under God.
Casual observers might think the rise of exceptionalism was largely spontaneous: a nation of immigrants—the losers, the refugees fleeing Europe’s brutal class wars—showing, rather compulsively, their eternal gratitude to the new land of opportunity. But they would be mistaken. Nothing with real power consequences is ever that accidental or left to chance in America, especially when it has been found to be an extremely powerful tool, an irresistible weapon (for the ruling orders), to employ in the management of their subject population. To paraphrase media analyst pioneer Alex Carey, the American system of pseudo democracy saw in exceptionalism’s multifaceted manifestations another terrific tool to “take the risk out of democracy,” something the Founding Fathers themselves had been keenly interested in and maneuvered to implement. (they mostly succeeded.). In a way, the immigrants’ naive vision of America gave the expansionist wing of the US ruling class, the folks who had embraced Manifest Destiny with a passion, and already stolen half of Mexico by mid 19th century, a shot in the arm, the ultimate seal of approval.
John Gerassi, a noted Latin Americanist and political scientist had little trouble puncturing the conceits of US exceptionalism, and by extension its devilish spawn, US foreign policy, a criminal enterprise, with rare lapses, almost from inception. Speaking about Manifest Destiny, something Bolivar and Marti also warned us about, he states:
“That has been our policy in Latin America. It began in recognizable manner in 1823 with President Monroe’s declaration warning nonhemisphere nations to stay out of the American continent. Because of its rhetoric, America’s liberal historians interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as a generous, even altruistic declaration on the part of the United States to protect its weaker neighbors to the south. To those neighbors, however, that doctrine asserted America’s ambitions: it said, in effect, Europeans stay out of Latin America because it belongs to the United States. A liberal, but not an American, Salvador de Madariaga, once explained its hold on Americans:
‘I only know two things about the Monroe Doctrine: one is that no American I have met knows what it is; the other is that no American I have met will consent to its being tampered with. That being so, I conclude that the Monroe Doctrine is not a doctrine but a dogma, for such are the two features by which you can tell a dogma. But when I look closer into it, I find that it is not one dogma, but two, to wit: the dogma of the infallibility of the American President and the dogma of the immaculate conception of American foreign policy.’” (Violence, Revolution, and Structural Change in Latin America, https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/02/21/ violence-revolution-and-structural-change-in-latin-america/).
As promulgated by its national identity myth, America is good, was born good, and can only do good. We have an obligation to share our good with other nations. It follows that if the immaculate conception defines our highly moral foreign policy, our similarly excellent economic system—capitalism—or “free enterprise” if you like—could and must define “americanness”, what to be an American, a true free individualist, really means. For only in the US to be against capitalism is also to be “un-American”, a suspect in virtue, an illogical and absurd construct that no one seems to notice, let alone oppose, due to the sheer enforced ubiquity of the concept stemming from nonstop propaganda legitimating it. In Italy, Germany, Mexico, France, or even England, where capitalism first matured, the idea of calling, say, a British communist “un-British” or an Italian socialist “anti-Italian”, would sound odd if not downright laughable. But not here. How come?
Built on a tissue of mostly transparent lies that few rational minds would have difficulty uncovering, the exceptionalist myth is enormously resilient. Cursory inspection reveals layer upon layer of self- flattering claims and assumptions (many riddled with contradictions), while thick hypocrisy lubricates every nook and cranny of its institutional edifice, making the whole a well-integrated, smoothly functioning imperialist ideology. As the author [Ridenour] points out at the beginning of this chapter, US exceptionalism is no run-of-the-mill hyper-nationalism as we observe in other nations; it is a full-blown ideology informing and enabling many aspects of the US governmental apparatus. Indeed, the “American Way of Life” never had a deeper meaning than in this essential aspect of its existence.
For—to the misery of the world—the US ruling class has learned to use this ideology adroitly for conquest and subversion abroad and pacification at home.
Empires, however, especially compulsory hegemonists, do not do well in holy matrimony with genuine democracies. One tends to exclude and cancel the other. In the US, with a very weak or pretend democracy, this organic tension does not really exist, although the task of keeping appearances becomes increasingly if not prohibitively challenging to all the main parties involved. The fact is that Americans now live in an empire, not a regular nation, the US homeland merely serving as the carrying vessel for the business of the transnational capitalist hegemon, whose sole object is to advance and defend the interests of the global plutocracy, of which the US branch is (still) the undisputed champion.
This is of course a huge imposture, a fraud of colossal proportions, especially for trusting souls stuck on Civics 101, but one which the propaganda system is still managing to keep afloat. Fractures are however starting to appear. As certified now even by Ivy League political scientists, the US is only a make-believe democracy, the natural default mode, after all, for any capitalist democracy, itself a widely accepted oxymoron since the core unit of capitalism, the corporation, is a hierarchic tyranny.
An article by investigative historian Eric Zuesse confirms this heretical finding:
“A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, ‘Who governs? Who really rules?’ in this country, is:
“Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little in uence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to [formal, not substantive] democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, they go on to say,
“America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened” by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead ‘“the nearly total failure of ‘median voter’ and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-signicant impact upon public policy.”
To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy. The authors of this historically important study are Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, and their article is titled ‘Testing Theories of American Politics.’ The authors clarify that the data available are probably under-representing the actual extent of control of the U.S. by the super-rich.” (See “US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study”, by Eric Zuesse, Common Dreams, April 14, 2014 (https://www.commondreams.org/views/ 2014/04/14/us-oligarchy-not-democracy-says-scienti c-study).
The fact of grotesque inequality and non-existence of actual governing power by the masses has been the hidden counterpart to the brutal imperialistic regime abroad, something to which hundreds of millions of people in scores of nations, large and small, can attest.
Protected by its “exceptionalist” propaganda endowing it with axiomatic, unerring, moral superiority, and (as tirelessly proclaimed by its ruling class) charged with the “sacred duty” to carry “freedom and democracy” to all corners of the planet, the US has been able to lead a sordid double life for almost 200 years: arguably mostly Dr Jekyll at home, murderous meddlesome Mr Hyde across the globe.
This should come as no shock to the sophisticated reader of US history, or anyone conversant with the dialectics of class dynamics. Political power is always fluid, so the question is always the direction in which it is flowing. Toward further concentration in fewer and fewer hands? Toward dispersion and thereby more democracy? Despite its novel, widely admired Constitution suggestive of democracy, America, the first new nation of the modern world, has always been far more an aristocratic republic deeply infused with the values of unrestrained capitalism (wrapped in the raiments of democracy) than a plutocracy beningly evolving toward real democracy. In the current era of decomposing capitalism (due to its incurable contradictions and accumulated irrationalities), the remnants of the nation’s younger democratic forms are fast vanishing as the empire fights to retain its global supremacy. In this dirty fight, the masks are falling off.
In conclusion, is US exceptionalism based on pure fantasy? Is there no substance whatsoever to its claim of “superior differentness”? The proper answer is a lot more interesting than just a simple “Yes” or “No”.
America’s power and still privileged position is, as it often happens with great nations that become empires, a mixed bag of fact and fiction, theoretical morality fused to actual depravity and plenty of self-delusion—much of it in the US case deliberately injected.
It’s well known that the US owes a great deal to personal toil, sweat and tears, plus ruthless brutality, calculated extermination and oppression of “inferior races”, often punctuated by theft, and, in some instances, not as frequently as the apologists would have it, (to keep the Horatio Alger myth alive), amazing examples of material success. But the true star in the mix is simply sheer unalloyed luck. The US is a colossally lucky country. Thus, taking credit for something fortuitous—like an accident of nature— is not as valid as being recognised for something in which human agency and will were the deciding factor. Consider just a few facts that weaken the claims upholding US exceptionalism.
BEST DEMOCRACY
The claim of being a true democracy, let alone the world’s best democracy, has already been demolished. This claim is false.
AMERICA WAS MADE GREAT BY FREE ENTERPRISE
The entrepreneurial spirit is undeniable in America, and there’s little question that capitalism—given access to suitable resources—(which it found almost inexhaustible in the North American continent)— can create enormous commercial entities and huge fortunes and wealth in a relatively short period of time. Yet the problem is not so much the creation of wealth as its final distribution. When the major social variables (actually manifold and only the most superficial mention of its negatives can be made here), are factored in, it soon becomes evident that capitalism is a Faustian bargain, a blessing which is in reality a curse:
• capitalism creates grotesque social, political and economic inequality;
• real democracy is subverted by money while the winners, the puny percentage of corporate billionaires, buy all organs of the state and the media, making real change well nigh impossible. Capitalism does not guarantee democracy, it destroys it;
• unregulated capitalism inevitably evolves from a more competitive and democratic period, to a final phase of tightly controlled monopolies;
• capitalism's built-in disregard for the environment puts it on a collision course with nature;
• capitalism's growth obsession, regarded in capitalist culture as something to aim for and celebrate, puts it at loggerheads with a finite planet, yet this is one of its central and non- negotiable sociopathies;
• in its international, mature phase, capitalism transforms itself into imperialism, an aggressive system of inter-nation competition and quest for domination which triggers continual wars for resources, subversion of weaker nations, and a plethora of other criminal acts to attain and maintain global hegemony. The latter requires an Orwellian regime of constant official lies and the total corruption and control of mainstream communications.
• capitalism cannot avoid the boom and bust cycles, some of which can and do develop into catastrophic depressions;
• capitalism by definition does not operate to meet human needs, but merely to make profits. Under capitalist logic society exists to serve capitalism and not the other way around. Thus all social priorities are distorted severely with impunity: what is desperately needed may not be produced at all, and what is not needed turned out in massive quantities, some of it wasted. The market even regulates access to absolute necessities, such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals;
• by definition capitalism is not capable nor interested in curing unemployment.
• capitalism depends on the Big Lie—constant, professional massaging of reality, both for commercial (advertising) and political reasons (government by opportunistic p.r. and “spinmeisters”). Truth is a threat to capitalist rule in all social spheres of action.
THE AMERICAN WAY EMBODIES CHRISTIAN VALUES
This claim is rotundly false. Americans see themselves as highly pious and Christian, but they live in a society of extreme institutionalised social violence and immorality. Capitalism enshrines selfishness, opportunism and the primacy of the individual over group solidarity and empathy. No matter how hard Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman and other apologists have tried to square the circle, there’s an irreconcilable philosophical antagonism between capitalist and Christian values. Ironically, except for its atheism, communism is a lot closer, at times identical, to Christian values than capitalism. Radical liberation theology—popular in Latin America and other parts of the Third World—is built on this strong commonality of vision.
Further reasons to doubt US exceptionalism
Many other accidents of history have made America great, or seem superior to other nations.
With the British empire in ascendancy, America was colonized in the 16th century by Western Europeans, inheritors of ancient Mediterranean cultures, humanity’s “vanguard” into science and modernity, with their implicit gift of more advanced technologies in war and navigation, key to further conquests and subjugation. And in the US capitalism also finds its first continental-size politically unified internal market underwritten by a common language: English.
The timing of modern era’s European wars, devastating conflicts between European powers to divide the world’s “colonial spoils”, presented America with extremely fortunate opportunities to develop its industrial might and political clout. Except for self-inflicted wounds such as the Civil War America has enjoyed uninterrupted peace in its own homeland for over three centuries, thanks to the US’ exquisite geostrategic location, a virtual island continent anked by two gigantic oceans and two weak powers, one an easy target for land grabs, Mexico, the other—Canada—a satellite almost from its own inception.
Add to this the infusion of cheap labor for many generations via mass immigration due to the deplorable European and other old world class systems, coupled with another great accident, having the best topsoil in the world, and you get the makings of a veritable miracle in US agriculture: the most productive, even without its high quotient of early capitalization.
Thus, when we compare Russian/Soviet and U.S. agricultural output, the “fix was in”, so to speak. Besides being poor, in turmoil, with its underdeveloped infrastructure in shambles for a long time due to war wounds, and encircled by enemies, Russians had to contend with one of the hardest lands to cultivate, a lot of it permafrost. Yes, the USSR/Russia territory is big, 11 time zones, but a lot of that is essentially not very fertile. This serendipitous advantage which was paraded as a triumph of capitalism over socialism was again, when examined, based on bunk. Virtually all the conceits of the “indispensable nation” to justify its sociopathic imperialist trajectory are grounded in bunk. Historical truth is persona non grata in America. (Excerpted from Understanding US Exceptionalism, a monograph in preparation, P. Greanville, 2019).
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