The Myth Of American Exceptionalism
A kerfuffle of sorts broke out with the publication of "A helpless giant, led by buffoons," the lead introduction to last week's Weekly. Its lament for the late, great grand experiment called "American Exceptionalism" drew fire (e.g. see "Another Angle" appearing above), not so much for the asserted emasculation of it through our loss of resolve and moral ballast, but for heralding that very phenomenon in the first place. Exceptionalism suggests hubris. Hubris smacks of imperial overreach. This point-counterpoint is the topic for our MM discussion, centered around the focus article The Myth of American Exceptionalism.
The notion of America being as much an idea as it is a place has been the theme of previous Member Monday discussions, including MM 5/14/18 Reimagining America where we paid tribute to the ennobling principles and the unifying myths of the American experiment as measured against today's hard realities, then again in our MM 9/24/18 'Mourning' In America session focused on the onset of a national malaise born of a special kind of grief in which the object of the grief can no longer even be identified, and finally in our MM 7/12/21 Four Americas discussion about the nation splintering into four versions (Free, Smart, Real, and Just Americas) locked into a shared incomprehension of each other.
The above points to the fact the subject of America is far more complex than what can be easily reduced to some facile bumper-sticker debate. The difficulty stems from America's imagination of itself i.e. a country rooted in the idea of expanding opportunity with an ever-ascendant trajectory, always in furtherance of some kind of Puritanical national "innocence." Without the comfort of such grace or rationale, the argument goes, Americans feel themselves sliding toward triviality. It is this sense of malaise that finds its way into the expression "a helpless giant, led by buffoons."
On this, the twentieth anniversary of 911, we are afforded the perfect opportunity to look within. The "within" here means not so much the search for buffoons among the country's leadership -- let's stipulate for our purposes that the logistics of our withdrawal from Afghanistan was nothing short of egregious malfeasance -- as it is casting a critical eye within oneself.
Specifically, where were you (was I), what were you thinking, how were you acting throughout the travesty over the past decades (two for sure, arguably four or more) leading to this particular Middle East debacle? Where were you as the Carter and Reagan administrations decided to arm and train Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets? What were you thinking as the neocon wet dream to impose Madisonian democracy onto those ragged tribes first manifested in Paul Wolfowitz's White Paper? What did you do as the originally-announced justification for the Afghanistan mission totally evaporated after bin Laden was known to have long left that country?
One often hears the refrain, yeah we were lied to. If there is one abiding Member Monday hope it would be the injunction to think for oneself. A functioning democracy (er, Republic) is based upon an informed electorate. One would think after "fool me once, fool me twice . . . " that an informed electorate would mean active, sometimes critical, engagement with the power structure -- suggesting something more than a mere passive reliance on mainstream information sources that (to put it mildly) reflect “captured” perspectives. It might be noted here that much of the skepticism related to our Middle East adventures had been readily featured in various “alternative” information sources.
The overall point is that any real (l/c) exceptionalism necessarily emanates from the bottom-up. The pejorative (u/c) Exceptionalism, on the other hand, generally applies to nations (indeed, empires) where exceptionalism hardens into tops-down hubristic impulses. That difference may just be the real myth of American Exceptionalism and the key to reconciling the two opposing viewpoints.