David Stairs
Americans are by nature a careless people. This statement will likely anger some Americans, who prefer to think of themselves as generous and caring. But the facts show otherwise. Americans are largely responsible for the environmental catastrophe about to descend upon them. Their rapacious 150-year love affair with fossil fuels might be excusable if they hadn’t elected a climate change denier to the presidency, twice.
But it is their notions of power that are most susceptible to criticism. Ask the average American what her country is doing in the world and she will respond that America is focused on the good of mankind, in promoting freedom and democracy for a majority of human beings. If only that were true.
In The Myth of American Idealism, the latest offering from Noam Chomsky, we are treated to an unveiling of another truth: that American hegemony is the goal of our foreign policy, and that we pursue this at the risk of destroying civilization. Long a critic of the harm done by American adventurism, Chomsky pulls no punches in his evaluation of the status quo. For those who spent the past week following the hagiolatry surrounding the funeral of the 39th president, Chomsky does not let even saint Jimmy Carter off the hook.
American exceptionalism is rarely so taken to task. Yet, it has existed since the dawn of the republic, written into our founding documents by slave-owners and emblazoned into our history books through declarations like the Monroe Doctrine and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Since its inception America has been governed by elites with only occasional inroads by the majority into the halls of power. Twelve of the first eighteen presidents were slave owners. Most of our early leaders were constitutionally disposed toward the genocide of Native Americans. And during the last century alone, America has led or inspired untold suffering through its support of genocidal autocrats the world over.
Since the end of World War II the world order established by Bretton-Woods and American military dominance has gone mostly unchallenged. As Chomsky observes, “We also took it for granted that we had the right to put missiles in the Soviets’ backyard. But when they tried to exercise the same right, we nearly started World War III. The inconsistencies are barely noticed.” This non-sequitur is the direct result of the myths we tell ourselves, and it has led to a standoff over Ukraine.
What is more, the United States promotes military and economic aggression against anyone who threatens our “interests” on a world-spanning scale. The projection of the 7th Fleet into the South China Sea is only the most recent example. And we have no compunction aligning ourselves with malevolent actors while branding all others as terrorists. Again Chomsky writes: “A fascist coup in Colombia, inspired by Franco’s Spain, brought little protest from the U.S. Government; neither did a military coup in Venezuela, nor the restoration of an admirer of fascism in Panama. But the first democratic government in the history of Guatemala, which modeled itself on Roosevelt’s New Deal, elicited bitter U.S. antagonism…….When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy has to go; if these rights are safeguarded, killers and torturers will do just fine.”
How have Americans developed such an enormous blind spot about their geopolitical misdeeds while the rest of the world sees them as a rogue state? Affluence certainly covers up many sins, a wealth propped up by our predatory economic system and the world’s most over-leveraged military. Our leadership, educated in our elite universities and varying little in its interpretation of the rules of engagement despite political differences, has succeeded in pandering to the masses. The media, itself grown fat and lazy, tows the euphemisms fed to it and cranks out a bottom line of convincing propaganda, whether about “weapons of mass destruction” or “Palestinian terrorists,” that seldom varies. No matter the scale of the atrocities involved, America is portrayed as the shining city on a hill, the travel destination of all right-thinking human beings.
As L.A. burns and NATO rattles nuclear sabers in Ukraine, Chomsky is correct in labeling nuclear war and environmental disaster as the two greatest threats to humankind. Neither threat can be mitigated by denialism, or increased military spending. The world America has designed is headed for a fall unless, or until Americans themselves awaken from their torpor and challenge this narrative. They have done so before, with the labor movement of the 1930s, the civil rights movement of the ’60s, the environmental movement of the ’70s, or the anti-nuke movement of the ’80s.
Post COVID there is a temptation to throw up one’s hands in frustration and surrender to the inevitable. This would be a mistake; self-destruction is not inevitable. The only way we confront this dual threat is to remain engaged, question the propaganda about American greatness, and as the Who once famously sang, “Don’t get fooled again.” The world is worth saving, not only for our children’s children, but ultimately for idealism’s sake. Let us design a better, more just world where, rather than ignoring international treaties and vetoing Security Council resolutions, America finally lives up to its high-sounding foundation documents and leads the way to universal peace and prosperity. It is the relinquishment of exceptionalism for the higher recognition of our collective humanity that is needed. And it is the only way forward.
David Stairs is the founding editor of the Design-Altruism-Project.
