It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. Vladimir Putin
It is not that I am not a fan of American exceptionalism. That is like saying I am not a fan of the moon being made out of green cheese — it does not exist. Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent, and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it is not very substantial to put it politely. Noam Chomsky
Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.
James Hillman
Washington Post Reporter Karen Tumulty concludes it is the belief that America ‘is inherently superior to the world's other nations.' It is a widely held belief. Indeed, most Americans believe our superiority is not only inherent but divinely ordained. A survey by the Public Religious Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that 58 percent of Americans agree with the statement, ‘God has granted America a special role in human history.’
Let me make it clear at the outset. I too believe in American exceptionalism, although I don't think God has anything to do with it. But I suspect my perspective will find little favor among Republicans in general and Tea Party members in particular. For I believe that America is exceptional in the advantages we've had over other nations, not what we have done with those advantages.
Indeed, to me there are two American exceptionalisms. One is the exceptionally favorable circumstances the United States found itself in at its founding and over its first 200 years. The second is the exceptional way in which we have squandered those advantages, in the process creating a value system singularly antagonistic to the changes needed when those advantages disappeared.
Americans did not become rich because of our rugged individualism or entrepreneurial drive or technical inventiveness. We were born rich. Ann Richards' famous description of George Bush Sr. as an individual is equally applicable to the United States as a whole, ‘He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.’
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-real-american-exceptionalism_b_851544
Ter verduidelijking: de derde honk is de laatste honk vóór de thuishonk. Van een tripel is sprake wanneer een slagman de bal zo raakt dat hij de derde honk in één keer kan bereiken zonder dat de tegenpartij een fout maakt. Morris:
America has benefited mightily from foreign wars. Arguably, the conflict between France and England had more to do with our winning independence than our own military efforts. In the first half of the 19 century, European wars led political leaders to peacefully sell huge quantities of land to the United States for a pittance (the Louisiana purchase of 1803 doubled the size of our infant nation).
A century later foreign wars again dramatically benefited the United States. ‘In the twentieth century the American economy was twice left undamaged and indeed enriched by war while its potential competitors were transformed into pensioner,’ notes historian Godfrey Hodgson. After World War I the United States became the world's creditor. After World War II Europe and Japan lay in ashes while the United States accounted for a full 40 percent of the world's economy.
But the myth that we became richer than other countries because of our blessedness encouraged us to develop a truly exceptionalist culture, one that has left us singularly unequipped to prosper when our luck changed, when inexpensive land and energy proved exhaustible, when the best and the brightest in the world began staying at home rather than emigrating to our shores, when wars began to burden us and enrich our economic competitors.
The central tenet of that culture is a celebration of the ‘me’ and an aversion to the ‘we.’ When Harris pollsters asked U.S. citizens aged 18 and older what it means to be an American the answers surprised no one. Nearly 60 percent used the word freedom. The second most common word was patriotism. Only 4 percent mentioned the word community.
To American exceptionalists, freedom means being able to do what you want unencumbered by obligations to your fellow citizens. It is a definition of freedom the rest of the world finds bewildering. Can it be, they ask, that the quintessential expression of American freedom is low or no taxes and the right to carry a loaded gun into a bar? To which a growing number of Americans, if recent elections were any indication, would respond, ‘You are damn right it is.’
In dit opzicht kan het Amerikaans exceptionalisme gezien worden als puur egoïsme, het volledig op zichzelf gericht zijn van het individu dat van hem in feite een asociaal maakt. Zijn enige drijfveer is begeerte, oftewel ‘money seeking,’ een manie waarvoor de Franse aristocraat Alexis de Tocqueville in zijn Democracy in America waarschuwde dat daardoor burgers zich in zichzelf opsluiten en ‘constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls.’ Tocqueville zocht naar de oorzaken van deze obsessie. In hoofdstuk dertien, getiteld ’Why the Americans are so restless in the midst of their prosperity’ schreef hij:
It is strange to see with what feverish ardor the Americans pursue their their own welfare; and to watch the vague dread that constantly torments them, lest they should not have chosen the shortest path which may lead to it.
A native of the United States clings to this world’s goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications.
De tirannie van de meerderheid kan minderheden verdrukken waardoor die hun toevlucht zoeken in geweld.
De meerderheid kan hier eveneens het slachtoffer van worden door de neiging tot conformisme, centralisatie en de individualisering.’ Zelf schreef de verlichte Franse aristocraat:
Wanneer ik denk aan de vorm die deze nieuwe tirannie zal aannemen, zie ik voor mij een massa van in alle opzichten gelijke mensen die rusteloos onbeduidende en banale genoegens najagen; die op zichzelf zijn teruggeworpen, die zich louter op hun gezin en een handvol kennissen richten en die zich van het bestaan van andere mensen nauwelijks bewust zijn, die nog slechts op zichzelf en voor zichzelf leven. Boven deze geïndividualiseerde massa troont een bevoogdend machtsapparaat dat over het wel en wee waakt, dat alles voorziet en alles regelt, maar dat de mensen in een staat van onmondigheid houdt. Het garandeert de burgers een veilig en welverzorgd bestaan, maar staat er op zelf uit te maken wat goed is voor hen. Zo zullen de mensen steeds minder gebruikmaken van hun eigen oordeelskracht; de individuele wilskracht zal zich op een steeds beperkter terrein laten terugdringen.
Tocqueville voorzag de dictatuur van de staat door erop te wijzen dat de ‘overheid de samenleving in een net [zal] spannen van ingewikkelde, gedetailleerde en eenvormige verordeningen waardoor zelfs de meest originele en wilskrachtige geesten zullen worden gelijkgeschakeld. Men zal mensen tot niets dwingen, maar men zal zoveel belemmeringen aan de persoonlijke activiteiten opleggen, dat uiteindelijk elk initiatief uitdooft. Zonder op enigerlei wijze tiranniek te moeten optreden, worden mensen monddood en willoos gemaakt. De natie zal een kudde angstige en vlijtige schapen worden, met de overheid als zorgzame herder. Deze vorm van gereglementeerde en gemoedelijke slavernij komt tot stand in de schaduw van de volkssoevereiniteit.’ Opvallend was tevens dat Tocqueville een bipolaire wereld voorspelde, waarbij Rusland en de VS beide de hegemonie in handen zouden krijgen. Dit voert ons weer terug naar de analyse van de Amerikaanse intellectueel David Morris uit 2017:
The United States is also exceptional among industrialized nations not only in having by far the world's most unequal income distribution but in believing that this inequality benefits us all, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
In the last decade, while the top 1 percent of Americans saw their incomes rise, on average, by more than a quarter of a million dollars each, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined.
Morris voegde hieraan toe dat in de VS:
inequality is unimportant because of another aspect of American exceptionalism, the unparalleled opportunity in the United States for those with ambition and grit (vastberadenheid. svh) to move up the economic ladder. They insist, and most of us firmly believe, that America is still the land of opportunity, that the probability of a rags to riches saga is much higher here than abroad.
But recent data contradicts that fundamental tenet of American exceptionalism. A Brookings Institution report comparing economic mobility in the United States and other countries concludes, ‘Starting at the bottom of the earnings ladder is more of a handicap in the United States than it is in other countries.’ And more broadly notes, ‘there is growing evidence of less intergenerational economic mobility in the United States than in many other rich industrialized countries.’
Another hobbling (belastend. svh) fundamental tenet (principe. svh) of American exceptionalism is that we have nothing to learn from other countries. Why mess with God's perfection? Back in the late 1980s I went to producers at Minneota's public television station TPT and proposed a show tentatively entitled, ‘What We Can Learn From Others.’ They wondered what in the world I was smoking.
This sense of uniqueness has most clearly been reflected in our debates on national health care reform. In 1994 both the United States and Taiwan engaged in national debates about how their health care systems might be improved. To come up with the answers, Taiwan's leaders visited about a dozen other countries to gain insights about the wide variety of existing national health system structures and use these insights to tailor a system adapted to their own needs. U.S. leaders visited no other countries. The debate rarely even mentioned other countries except dismissively and usually inaccurately (e.g. Canadians cannot choose their own doctors). This occurred despite the overwhelming evidence that the U.S. medical system is the most expensive, the least accessible and by many measures, one of the least well-performing of any in the industrialized world.
The 2009 debate over health reform took place as the United States economy collapsed, unemployment soared and foreclosures mushroomed. Yet there was virtually no discussion about the relationship of health care and personal financial adversity. A study by Steffie Woolhandler and colleagues at the Harvard Medical School done in 2007 revealed a remarkable statistic: 62 percent of U.S. bankruptcies were a result of medical expenses. Equally damning, 75 percent of the people with a medically related bankruptcy had health insurance.
How does this woeful statistic compare to other countries? It is impossible to say because in other countries such a statistic would be a sign of gross irresponsibility and perhaps a societal breakdown. On Frontline, Washington Post veteran reporter T.R. Reid examined health systems around the world. In the process he interviewed the president of the Swiss Federation. Switzerland had dramatically changed its own health system in 1994 through a national referendum.
Reid: ‘How many people in Switzerland go bankrupt because of medical bills?’
Swiss President Pascal Couchepin: ‘Nobody. It doesn't happen. It would be a huge scandal if it happens.’
Conservatives proudly point to the Declaration of Independence as the foundational source of their guiding principles. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’
More and more Americans are desperately trying to hold on. In an astonishing reversal of the first 200 years of American history when we were seen as perhaps the most optimistic of all peoples, we have become one of the most personally insecure.
To make up for the decline in wages, Americans are working longer hours and taking on more debt just to make ends meet. Today Americans are at work 4 to 10 weeks longer than their counterparts in Europe. Forty million Americans lack health insurance and tens of millions more have health insurance with limited coverage.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, at the founding of the American Republic a key difference between the Old World and the New World was that in the New World a baby survived. Today, the numbers paint a different picture. The proportion of infants that survive in the United States is one of the lowest in the industrialized world.
At the founding of the nation, access to low cost land transformed the United States into the first large nation in history populated principally by property owners. Since late 2007. however, there have been more than 7 million foreclosures in the United States and some predict another 2 million in 2011.
America has been and continues to be exceptional. At first we were exceptional because of circumstances that conferred on us enormous advantages over other nations. Today we are exceptional because of our culture, a culture born of our unusually fortunate history and now perhaps the single biggest handicap to our collective survival and prosperity in the less favorable circumstances of the 21 century.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-real-american-exceptionalism_b_851544
Volodymyr Zelensky werd als held binnengehaald in het Europees parlement, donderdag. Het was een ongelooflijk schouwspel. Iets wat je zelden ziet in Brussel. Parlementair medewerkers, stagiairs en keukenpersoneel stroomden over zes verdiepingen de galerijen op rondom de grote vide, om een glimp van de man op te vangen die helemaal beneden over de rode loper binnenkwam. Mensen klapten, juichten en riepen ‘Slava Ukraini.’ Anderen posteerden zich in de gangen waar Zelensky later doorheen zou wandelen, op weg naar de plenaire zaal waar hij zijn speech zou houden. Tweemaal werd het Oekraïense volkslied gespeeld. Hij kreeg een Europese vlag. De zaal zat bom- en bomvol europarlementariërs.
Nadat de interviewer had opgemerkt ‘From what I am seeing outside of CNN and other mainstream-media, it seems like the politicians in Washington DC are more eager to fight this battle through Ukraine against Putin, and it does not seem the Pentagon is as on board as the politicians,’ verklaarde Macgregor:
It is clear that American people are largely divorced from the reality of this conflict, as they have been for the last thirty years. Wars always happen far away on somebody else’s soil. The difference this time is that Washington has decided, along with help and assistance particularly from its allies in London and the global financial community run out of New York City to wage war on the Russian State with the goal not only regime change, but ultimately destroying the state, potentially dismembering it. When you look at the people who are advocates of this terrible destructive policy, they are largely the same people that got us in the Balkans in 1990’s, into Bosnia and Kosovo, and subsequently were largely supportive of the interventions in 2001 and 2003, perpetual warfare in the Middle East, demonizing and transforming into an enemy Libya and Syria, and obviously Iran. This is an old story, the same old trope (analogie. svh) you have been hearing. It is 1936 again: we have another Hitlerian state and if we don’t act as appeasers things go really wrong. But I think there’s a lot of money behind this, because Russia is full of trillions of dollars of resources, mineral resources, oil, gas, precious medals, agricultural etcetera.
There was an attempt in the nineties and in the early part of this century by people from the West, many of whom connected to organizations like Goldman Sachs and others from the global financial community to go and effectively steal everything they could possibly steal from it.
Many Americans would be shocked to learn that political coups are part of our country’s history. Consider the Wall Street Putsch of 1933.
Never heard of it? It was a corporate conspiracy to oust Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just been elected president.
With the Great Depression raging and millions of families financially devastated, FDR had launched several economic recovery programs to help people get back on their feet. To pay for this crucial effort, he had the audacity to raise taxes on the wealthy, and this enraged a group of Wall Street multimillionaires.
Wailing that their ‘liberty’ to grab as much wealth as possible was being shackled, they accused the president of mounting a ‘class war.’ To pull off their coup, they plotted to enlist a private military force made up of destitute World War I vets who were upset at not receiving promised federal bonus payments.
One of the multimillionaires’ lackeys reached out to a well-respected advocate for veterans: Retired Marine general Smedley Darlington Butler. They wanted him to lead 500,000 veterans in a march on Washington to force FDR from the White House.
They chose the wrong general. Butler was a patriot and lifelong soldier for democracy, who, in his later years, became a famous critic of corporate war profiteering.
Butler was repulsed by the hubris and treachery of these Wall Street aristocrats. He reached out to a reporter, and together they gathered proof to take to Congress. A special congressional committee investigated and found Butler’s story ‘alarmingly true,’ leading to public hearings, with Butler giving detailed testimony.
By exposing the traitors, this courageous patriot nipped their coup in the bud. But their sense of entitlement reveals that we must be aware of the concentrated wealth of the imperious rich, for it poses an ever-present danger to majority rule.
Zo mogelijk nog veelzeggender is hetgeen Butler zelf zei en schreef over zijn werk als militair. Omdat de meeste lezers Smedley Butler niet kennen, stel ik hem even voor:
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler is well known for having later become an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences, as well as exposing the Business Plot, a purported plan to overthrow the U.S. government.
By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
Butler vatte zijn werk als volgt samen in een toespraak, die hij tijdens een tour door de VS hield, en die werd afgedrukt in zijn boek War is a Racket (1935):
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer (afperser. svh), a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Smedley-Darlington-Butler/dp/1478349840
Door een combinatie van lafheid en opportunisme weigeren de huidige politici en pers deze complotten te belichten, en doen zij deze informatie af als een maffe ‘complottheorie.’ Maar aangezien ik niet schrijf voor mijn geflipte mainstream-collega’s citeer ik opnieuw de insider kolonel b.d. Douglas Macgregor die over de corrupte kliek onder president Boris Jeltsin, wiens regime gesteund werd door westerse profiteurs, het volgende opmerkte:
They were ultimately defeated and thrown out by Vladimir Putin who established a new regime to bring more stability and dignity to the Russian state. He has been talking for many, many years about the unacceptable policy of advancing NATO to Russia’s borders. And he repeated over and over again: if you do this you will inevitably come in conflict with us. We will not tolerate a large NATO-presence — and when you say ‘presence’ read: the potential for U.S ballistic and cruise missiles, and so forth on the border. In Washington the political elite, the ruling elite of our country are taking the position that Russia is weak, that Russia can be buried, and all we have to do is apply great pressure, and since we dominate the global financial system we can isolate Russia. So we embarked on this very dangerous course of conflict and confrontation with Russia and its armed forces.
The Washington community which sponsors this, has obviously enriched itself over the last thirty plus years through all the interventions and the massive increases in defense-spending, but it actually goes beyond that, it goes to reconstruction costs, rebuilding costs, and the introduction of U.S. firms and interests into other countries. It is a kind of new imperialism that we have been embarked upon. Russia is just the latest target. The problem for the ruling elites in Washington is twofold. First of all, most of them are ignorant of the reality. They know nothing about the world beyond their borders. They know nothing about military power, and so they badly miscalculated with Russia. For them this was a war that should have ended in a few weeks, because Russia would collapse, or at least in a few months it would collapse. This is a war that should have ended because Russia can not produce enough ammunition. This is a war that should have ended because of horrendous and horrific casualties taken exclusively by the Russians. And all we had to do is to arm this proxy, this Ukrainian force that we built after 2014, once we had established a government in Kiev that would do our bidding, and this force in Ukraine would devastate Russia. Well, it has not quite worked out that way, has it?
So now we face a very different set of circumstances, but when you ask who is behind it, you have got to look at a whole range of people. Remember, the preeminent goal in Washington for most politicians is to stay in office to continue to enrich themselves. Therefore they pay a great deal of attention to their donors. To know these donors you have to go and look at the oligarchic class that drives policy, that keep us in a perpetual state of conflict with a whole range of people and nations. Who are they? Look at the industries in which they have invested and which support these policies. When you look at these things carefully, it boils down very simply to follow the money. When you do that you begin to understand that what is happening in Washington has nothing to do with the American people or United States interests. Almost no one in the United States knows were Ukraine is exactly located, they could care less, and when you ask about NATO people will say: ‘Oh yes, that’s important I guess, but what is it precisely? I mean, this is the problem with about everything, I think that has been happening in the United States since the end of the Second World War, most Americans are not terribly interested in what goes on beyond the borders of their own country.
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