Remarks on Exceptionalism

 moon of  alabama

Some comments to the previous thread on Kazakhstan mentioned U.S. exceptionalism.

It started with Bemildred:

It is amusing how these "thinkers" ideas about how to undermine Russia or China tend to look a lot getting them to do what Bush-Cheney did, i.e. over-reach and over-spend and engage in little stupid wars for profit, revenge, and to stroke their little egos.

and:

"We'll give them their own Vietnam, Afghanistan, whatever the latest one was." Always fighting the last war, and always losing it again, at great cost, again.

To which Ghost Ship responded:

It's American Exceptionalism and American Projectionism working against Washington.

Washington believes in American Exceptionalism so thinks that the way it does things is the only right way to do those things, then American Projectionism kicks in and guides Washington to project the way it does thing on to others. Washington can't cope when its opponents do something a way it has not even considered and it runs around in circles all flustered while the opponent is so far within John Boyd's famous OODA loop that Washington with all its advantages loses.

BTW, what has become of John Boyd's OODA loop in Washington. At one time, you couldn't move for the paper generated by articles mentioning it. Now there is nothing. But it's still a useful tool to be used against Washington to unbalance a top-heavy regime like Washington. Has Washington given up on it because it's too slow to apply it successfully?

Meanwhile Washington seems to continue with the "My enemy's enemy is my friend" BS which has been brought back from the dead as a zombie idea.

Two days before those comments an essay which Professor Michael Brenner had sent to his mailing list had formulated a similar idea. In it he lamented the loss of a realistic view of the world in U.S. foreign policies:

When Pompey the Great made his triumphant return to Rome in 61 BCE from his stunning conquests in the East, a spectacular ceremony was planned. Pageantry on a grandiose scale was designed both to satisfy his outsized ego and to display superior status in his rivalry with Julius Caesar. The centerpiece was to be a towering throne where a regally costumed Pompey would pass through a Victory arch installed for the occasion. A small problem arose, though, when a rehearsal showed that the throne was 4 feet taller than the height of the arch.

That is a neat metaphor for the uneasy position in which Uncle Sam finds himself these days. We proudly pronounce our enduring greatness from every lectern and altar in the land, pledge to hold our standing as global Number One forever and ever; yet, we constantly bump our head against an unaccommodating reality. Instead of downsizing the monumental juggernaut or applying ourselves to a delicate raising of the arch, we make repeated attempts to fit through in a vain effort to bend the world to our mythology. Evocation of the Concussion Protocol is in order – but nobody wants to admit that sobering truth.

Our engagements in the world over the past 20 years reveal a grim record of failed ventures. Most have been caused by unrealistic goals, blinkered views of the field of action, overweening pride, an ignorance of foreign places and their history, and an unseemly readiness to take complacent comfort in fantasy worlds that exist only in our own imagination. In short, American foreign policy has been misguided – badly and consistently misguided.

This is caused by a mismatch between the view America has of its role in the world and how the world really is:

Americans are struggling to draw into focus their exalted image of themselves and reality. They are not doing a very good job of it. The gap is wide and growing. That is due in good measure to what has been happening beyond the country’s shores as well as at home, and over which it lacks the skills and the means to exercise decisive influence. Our response has been one of avoidance and reaffirmation of thought and deed. We seem to fear that if we stare at reality squarely, we will find reality staring back at us in a discomforting way.

There is a psychological background to this:

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality.

There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road. This is an individual and collective phenomenon. They are related insofar as much of our self-identity and self-esteem is bound up with the civic religion of Americanism. To a considerable degree, it’s been like this since the very beginning. A country that was “born against history” had no past to define and shape the present.
...
We are close to a condition that approximates what the psychologists call “dissociation.” It is marked by an inability to see and to accept actualities as they are for deep seated emotional reasons. Those you are dissociating are not aware that they are sublimating on a systematic basis. "Dissociation is commonly displayed on a continuum. In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanism in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress – including conflict." Conflicts of purpose, conflict of aims, conflict of ideas, conflict between idealized reality and actual truth. Dissociative disorders are sometimes triggered by trauma (9/11?).

The ever growing gap between wanting to be exceptional and not being it leads to attempts to act even more exceptional (which will then create even bigger failures):

What do these developments foretell for the United States’ relations with the rest of the world? The most obvious and important implication is that Americans will be ever more dependent on maintaining that sense of exceptionalism and superiority that is the foundation of their national personality. A fragile psyche weak in self-esteem and prowess is sensitive to signs of its decline or ordinariness. Hence, the obsession with curbing China. Hence, the country will continue to exert itself energetically on the global stage rather than become progressively more selective in its engagements and choice of methods for fulfilling them.

Continuity is a lot easier than reorientation. It doesn’t demand fresh thinking and different skills. ...

To change that path would require more qualified people in Washington DC and less of the groupthink (also in the media) which creates failure after failure by its attempts to keep up its illusions about itself.

There is no end of it in sight.

Posted by b on January 7, 2022 at 15:22 UTC | Permalink

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