America's Sense of Self

While many would like to attribute Bush's perspective on being right on all things to him only, this tendency is one that we should examine in America in general. As we end the Bush administration and enter in to the Obama administration, it is interesting to listen to the way in which the outgoing president portrays his decisions. Hearing Bush deny that the U.S. has an image problem or is seen in negative ways, that he has worked with strong allies beside the U.S., and that we have helped lead the world as a beacon of liberty, is truly an amazing thing. What is interesting to me about it, however, is how much of a sense of self we have as a nation, and how hard it seems to view things from the point of view of the other.

There are several reasons, I believe, for this orientation. Among them is the idea of rugged individualism that seems to have caught on as a founding principle of our nation. While this may be true, when one reads documents by those founding members of our country, they are also living, wrestling with, and most importantly, dedicated to the notion of what we do for one another. The idea of service and duty are laid out frequently as part and parcel of citizenship, whereas it is now the case (as the Bush administration once suggested) that we best demonstrate our citizenship by buying and consuming goods to fight terrorism. Perversely, we consciously are encouraged to work and spend as individuals, while the notion of community has taken a holiday.

When I travel abroad, I see another aspect of how we see ourselves as central to the world, through the media. It is fascinating to my students to travel in Latin America, for example, and notice that the news is not Gringo-centric, i.e. stories that involve two actors may actually be written which do not include the U.S.A. as one of them. It is natural for citizens in most societies to have an element of ethnocentrism, it is why virtually all cultures have a creation stories of which they are the focus. However, I would argue that with few possible exceptions, no country has become so practiced at its self importance as we have. This is exemplified in our outgoing president, who literally cannot conceive of the idea of acting in concert with others, at least not in the sense of actually taking their views into active consideration.

As I listen to Bush defend his eight years in office, I must admit that while I am angry about the loss of life (which he still believes was justified in our ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) I am also deeply saddened. It is tragic to me that we had a president who consciously or unconsciously, believed that being a leader was merely "making tough decisions." Even as he justifies policies, decisions, and entire wars, the framework is one which centers around himself, his life, his views, and his personal narrative. He is literally incapable of even understanding that there ARE alternative narratives, much less that he could be wrong.

And so we need to accept to, that he is not so different from many of us in this country. We are a people who need to get out more, listen more, acknowledge other viewpoints as legitimate far more often, and accept that others can come up with good ideas that don't have to be ours, necessarily. We have become a divided nation, not necessarily through arrogance, but certainly through a lack of practice at being humble.

Fear Itself

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" -Franklin D. Roosevelt

Roosevelt spoke these words to reassure a nation that was sliding into a prolonged economic depression, but these words are also relevant today, although perhaps for different reasons. An undercurrent of the past election campaign, and part of the post-election buzz, is quite literally that of fear. There is fear that Obama will discriminate against Whites, and there is fear and uncertainty over "what" his election means. My own daughters experience this, since they go to school in a place that is quite conservative. There is fear and uncertainty the range from discrimination to the idea that he is a Muslim. It is easy to dismiss these fears, since on the face of it, Obama has neither shown a disposition toward such behavior, nor is he a Muslim (nor should it matter). That being said, it is important to understand where these fears come from.

This is where we need to think of ourselves as a nation, and our trajectory over the past 30 years. Following Carter, who upset people by asking the people of the United States of America to look closely at themselves, the choice was made to look at others. Through our popular and political culture we have created two enemies-the other and each other. The former came in the shape of the fear of the soviets, then Arabs, then extremist Muslims; all seen as a common enemy against we could easily discriminate.

At the same time, we also saw a creation of another enemy--the American who disagrees with us. Beginning with the Reagan administration, but following a thread through every subsequent president, Democrat or Republican, has been a willingness to alienate and run over those with whom we disagree. This was accentuated in the mid-90s, and then came together in one big patriotic bash following 9-11.

So what is the consequence of this? The consequence is that when we discriminate against a whole people, or when we are willing to run each other out of political parties in internecine conflicts, we eventually come to fear that very thing being done to us. It is not that people see actual evidence of an Obama administration doing this to them nor are they imagining it being done to them. No, it is that they have lived it, done, carried it out, and can only imagine what it would feel to be on the end of those same actions. They themselves have provided the concrete model for that which they fear the most.

The fear itself becomes the spark for more fear, and the only a strong counter-dialogue of action may counter it. Words and ideas will not be sufficient, because they are not powerful enough to contradict the reality which has been constructed which has inscribed on our daily lives, on our daily relationships with one another. What we fear is each other at the moment, and it will take time to work out "dies diu".