No We Can't
Apr. 17th, 2011 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
realthogThere's a post over at Daily Kos, written by the blogger called just Hunter, that deserves as wide a readership as possible for its calling of "time" on the overwhelmingly negative, extraordinarily destructive faux-patriotism that's everywhere on the march these days, as everything that's great about the United States of America is subjected to relentless attack by those who claim, falsely, to be the country's loyal supporters. The post begins thus:
One of the more striking characteristics of the "new" Republican agenda (or the agenda of the conservative movement, or Tea Party movement, or whatever they prefer to call themselves) is how unrelentingly negative it is. Depressingly, ploddingly negative; America is simultaneously the best and greatest country in the world, as blanket assertion, and a nation on a slow death march towards insolvency and irrelevance. America must make sacrifices, goes the refrain, but every one of the sacrifices seems to involve retracting a past long-term success; America must not (something), is the defining chant, where (something) is any number of things that other countries can successfully do and have done, but America cannot, or an even larger list of somethings that America used to do, and quite competently, but America can do no longer.
Other industrialized nations can provide their citizens with better access to healthcare; we simply cannot, and you are a fool for even bringing it up. Other nations can, say, establish warning systems for tsunamis, or volcanoes, or hurricanes; America must tighten its belt, and that meager, economically trivial ounce of prevention is considered fat that should obviously be trimmed, so that America-the-entity can get back to its fighting weight. Past-America could provide at least some modest layer of security to prevent its citizens from descending into destitution in old age; we in this day cannot. Past-America could pursue scientific discoveries as a matter of national pride, even land mankind on an entirely other world; we cannot. Past-America was a haven of invention and technology that shook the world and changed the course of history countless times: whatever attributes made it such a place we cannot quite determine now, much less replicate. Public art is decadent. Public education is an infringement. Public works are for other times, never now.
America of the past could build highways and railroads and a robust electrical grid. We cannot even keep them running. Of course we cannot keep them running: that was past-America. That past America had a magic that we modern Americans cannot match. Perhaps it was beholden to Satan, or to socialism, or merely to some grandiose vision of a better future, one with flying cars or diseases that could actually be cured, with proper application of effort. Whatever the case, past-America was wrong and stupid, and we know better.
It is not even that these things are debatable, mind you: they are certainties. It is a certainty that (1) none of these past tasks of government can be competently done, (2) none of these things should be competently done, and (3) any past success at actually doing them and paying for them is nothing but a random fluke of history. That was past-America; future-America is a profoundly less capable place. And, again, you are a fool or a communist for not recognizing it yourself.
We are at a time of record unemployment, of unemployment that was considered an apocalyptic worst-case only a few short years ago, but we no longer even talk about doing anything about it. Instead we continue to look for more goals to be stripped, more jobs to be removed, and more tasks to be abandoned. And it is all perfectly obvious, yes?
Other industrialized nations can provide their citizens with better access to healthcare; we simply cannot, and you are a fool for even bringing it up. Other nations can, say, establish warning systems for tsunamis, or volcanoes, or hurricanes; America must tighten its belt, and that meager, economically trivial ounce of prevention is considered fat that should obviously be trimmed, so that America-the-entity can get back to its fighting weight. Past-America could provide at least some modest layer of security to prevent its citizens from descending into destitution in old age; we in this day cannot. Past-America could pursue scientific discoveries as a matter of national pride, even land mankind on an entirely other world; we cannot. Past-America was a haven of invention and technology that shook the world and changed the course of history countless times: whatever attributes made it such a place we cannot quite determine now, much less replicate. Public art is decadent. Public education is an infringement. Public works are for other times, never now.
America of the past could build highways and railroads and a robust electrical grid. We cannot even keep them running. Of course we cannot keep them running: that was past-America. That past America had a magic that we modern Americans cannot match. Perhaps it was beholden to Satan, or to socialism, or merely to some grandiose vision of a better future, one with flying cars or diseases that could actually be cured, with proper application of effort. Whatever the case, past-America was wrong and stupid, and we know better.
It is not even that these things are debatable, mind you: they are certainties. It is a certainty that (1) none of these past tasks of government can be competently done, (2) none of these things should be competently done, and (3) any past success at actually doing them and paying for them is nothing but a random fluke of history. That was past-America; future-America is a profoundly less capable place. And, again, you are a fool or a communist for not recognizing it yourself.
We are at a time of record unemployment, of unemployment that was considered an apocalyptic worst-case only a few short years ago, but we no longer even talk about doing anything about it. Instead we continue to look for more goals to be stripped, more jobs to be removed, and more tasks to be abandoned. And it is all perfectly obvious, yes?
Called "No We Can't", it's a longish piece, but I'd suggest quite an important one, and certainly worth reading in its entirety. Please pass it on.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-17 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 01:33 pm (UTC)Thanks, Daisy! Glad you liked the article. Most of what the author said had occurred to me already, but he brought it all together for me quite masterfully.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 01:33 pm (UTC)I thought so too!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 01:40 pm (UTC)it's nice to see someone in the US questioning US exceptionalism
All of the people I chat or e-chat with here on a regular basis question it -- indeed, go beyond mere questioning of it! Really it's only politicians, media blowhards and the terminally dimwitted who make much of an issue of American exceptionalism: most of the rest of the population have seen through that particular piece of demagogic, manipulative tripe.
That said, you still have plenty of people with the "but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else" attitude. But I guess that's true in plenty of countries, not just the US.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-19 12:07 am (UTC)I have seen too many incidents, particularly in feminist networks, of non-Americans being shouted down or sidelined
That's something a bit different, though -- the American attitude of: "Anyone who doesn't live here doesn't really understand what's happening where it's all at." The attitude's a pain in the rear, although it's in many ways understandable (why should outsiders tell us where it's at?) and anyway probably common to other cultures as well (think of the French), only most other cultures don't bray it as loudly or obnoxiously as some Americans do.
That said, the insularity here is truly astonishing. Not long after I'd arrived, some friends of Pam's told us quite soberly that they fully understood how most Europeans spent most of their time being jealous of the American quality of life. They were genuinely baffled when Pam and I fell around laughing. And these were Americans who'd actually been to Europe.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 01:41 pm (UTC)They decided that long ago.