Every single one of us who frequent this blog has been called 'anti-American' or a variation thereof in recent months, so I was wondering how some people reach this determination and my surfing has revealed one man's opinion of why America is the greatest country on earth - bar none - which exemplifies those views that are oft embraced by some of those who consider us The Enemy.
Now, Dinesh D'Souza's article, '10 things to celebrate; Why I'm an anti-anti-American' (2003), can simply be written off as a more naive picture of The Great America but his perceptions are shared by many who decry criticism of their home country and consider any attack on its stance in the world as being wholly 'anti-American'. So, let's have a look at what he believes are America's strengths. I'll pull some quotes without commenting on them too much because his talking points are stunningly obvious to those of us who don't wear nationalistic blinders:
1. 'America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy...We now live in a country where construction workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where maids drive nice cars and where plumbers take their families on vacation to Europe.'
2. 'America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country, including the countries of Europe. America is the only country that has created a population of "self-made tycoons."'
3. 'Work and trade are respectable in America. Historically most cultures have despised the merchant and the laborer, regarding the former as vile and corrupt and the latter as degraded and vulgar. Some cultures, such as that of ancient Greece and medieval Islam, even held that it is better to acquire things through plunder than through trade or contract labor.'
4. 'America has achieved greater social equality than any other society. True, there are large inequalities of income and wealth in America. In purely economic terms, Europe is more egalitarian. But Americans are socially more equal than any other people, and this is unaffected by economic disparities.'
5. 'People live longer, fuller lives in America.'
(Has your head exploded yet? No. Well wait, there's more.)
6. 'In America the destiny of the young is not given to them, but created by them.'
(I took a break to Dress Paris Hilton. Now, where was I again?)
7. 'America has gone further than any other society in establishing equality of rights.'
8. 'America has found a solution to the problem of religious and ethnic conflict that continues to divide and terrorize much of the world...in general, America is the only country in the world that extends full membership to outsiders.'
9. 'America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great power in world history...Twice in the 20th century, the United States saved the world -- first from the Nazi threat, then from Soviet totalitarianism. What would have been the world's fate if America had not existed?'
(Cough cough Booman cough cough)
10. 'America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the most virtuous nation on Earth.'
Okay, if you haven't thrown up yet (which I very nearly did when I first read that piece) you can see the type of attitude many of us have been dealing with and why it's so difficult to cut through, even with the most sharpened intellectual knife. And this particular author believes so greatly in what he professes that he actually wrote a book for his devotees of American Greatness that they can cherish and reread as if it's America's New Bible! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he's actually turned it into an animated movie for kids so they can be reared 'appropriately' to love their country more than they will ever love themselves.
His points may seem exagerrated to anyone with a sense of reality, but there is no doubt that he has simply expressed what many people believe to be The Truth.
So, that's what we're up against folks: Denials 'R Us. No wonder we've been shunned as threats to the Great American Experience.
America, the Beautiful? Or, America, the Delusional? You decide.
6 comments:
It's a faith tradition. I don't mean that as mockery: whether religious or irreligious most people have things that they take as matters of faith. One of my matters of faith is that nurture takes precedence over nature.
And for many people -- including quite a lot who live outside the borders of the U.S. since the colonisation of the mind is a powerful thing -- the particular beliefs highlighted here are evidently among those held as matters of faith. In such circumstances no amount of evidence of flourishing the HDI, leaving will convince them otherwise. Only they can decide what they want to believe and who they want to believe is human.
The most one can hope to do is tweak how those beliefs are expressed.
Grumph.
As the old saying goes, denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
So it goes.
As Nanette notes, this is the stuff we're given as official state propaganda from the day we're born.
Very few of us get exposed to much of anything else - maybe little tidbits here and there, like dad saying that the Indians weren't the ones who developed the practice of scalping, etc.
To challenge such deeply held assumptions is simply alien to most Americans.
I find American attachment to symbols like documents and monuments rather fascinating. The poor old Constitution is whipped out by all sides in every public debate. Of course, being a Canadian with a Charter of Rights that is still fairly new, that seems quite foreign to me. Still we're not in the habit (yet, maybe) of slamming others over the head with it according to our interpretation. And I'll bet you won't find many Canadians who can name or who much less care about the Fathers of Confederation as if they were some kind of modern day saints with omnipotent wisdom for the ages. (There may be some crochety history types - not all history types are crochety - who know all that those men said, but they're few and far between). America is very steeped in tradition and that's a hard habit to overcome.
(O/T: I need to start a blog to complain about the hordes of trolls who've invaded my space this past week; somewhere where I can just be a screaming banshee for a while. Holy macaroni. Wingnuts are tiring.)
Yo catnip. I'd noticed the troll invasion over at your space lately - some cats who really need to get their shit together.
Every now and again I'll get a mini-swarm of fly-by trolls, usually on those rare occasions when some right-wing site like Real Clear Politics (and by clear, those motherfuckers mean like spilt oil) picks up one of my blog entries.
Catnip,
why don't we set up a Flog the Trolls night or day for your blog, where we get enough of us together and go over there and just overwhelm them with logic until smoke starts blowing out of their wart covered little green ears? :o)
They seem to be immune to logic as a weapon. I've tried.
James,
Real Clear(ly Conservative) Politics has picked up some of my posts too. Not exactly sure how they found me. I suppose they need us "minorities" in an effort to make their site "fair & balanced". ;)
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