The America-bashing you find in the US is of course a somewhat different animal from what you find abroad. Again, though, I’m not convinced that it really owes that much to Marx or Marxists, or that it derives in any way from conventional Marxist “thought” (to use the term loosely). The Marxists became a marginal force in the American left long ago; today they have been pretty much replaced by the loopies. I picked that term up from a New Zealander, a marine biologist who has worked for many years with marine mammals. She applied it to the various sorts who show up claiming some deep spiritual connection with whales and dolphins, or that the animals were superior beings from another planet who had come to teach us the error of our materialistic ways, or any one of a host of other oddities. I liked the term enough that I’ve come to apply it to a whole spectrum of leftward individuals.
The loopies are the ones who will tell you with a straight face that the pharmaceutical industry and modern medical technology are inherently evil, though half of them would be dead without them. They are the ones who will tell you that even though they grew up in Orange County and know as much about forests as they know about quantum mechanics, their opinions on forest resource management should be taken seriously because they once spent a weekend swaying with the trees and communing with a spirit guide named Squirrel Nutkin. They’ll tell you that the key to unveiling your essential humanity is dancing naked around a bonfire to the beat of tribal drums. They’ll tell you with an absolutely straight face that we need to take human society back to the bygone age when we worshipped goddesses, were ruled by women, lived in harmony with the environment, and lived for centuries without illness because of magical herbs and potent shamanic rites. Of course, they will also tell you that America is responsible for all the woes of the world.
It’s very difficult to analyze loopie “ideas” (they might better be described as “impulses”) in any systematic way, because they don’t exist in any systematic way. Loopie “thought” (to use the term very loosely indeed) is a vague amalgam of fundamentalist environmentalistm, Luddite dread of technology, mushy New Age spiritualism, one strand of fundamentalist feminism, and a host of other single-issue manias, all rolled together into an incoherent ball. Internal contradiction is the order of the day. Although many loopies are in a vague sort of way socialist, they are certainly not Marxists, and they would certainly not dream of calling themselves scientific. They would recoil from that notion with horror, proclaiming that science is just another phallic religion interposing its dogma between the human race and the true wisdom of nature, Gaia, and the spiritual world. The loopies detest the United States, and capitalism, and corporations, and currency, and technology, and practically everything else that doesn’t fit into their particular fantasy. The premises and processes that lead to this hatred, though, have little or nothing in common with formal Marxism or the intellectual progressions that Harris laid out.
One distinct feature of the loopie phenomenon is that much of the loopie creed derives from extreme versions of ideas that, often for very good reasons, are widely accepted by rational people in their more moderate forms. This gives the loopie notions a natural avenue for backflow to those who under normal circumstances would have little to do with such extreme ideas. Formal Marxism has virtually no avenue of appeal to the ordinary American. On the other hand, almost any American who is in any degree interested in environmentalism, feminism, alternative medicine, eastern religion, and on down the line – and many Americans are interested in such things – will sooner or later be exposed to elements of the loopie belief system. Most will not adopt them all, but a certain number of them will begin a gradual creep back toward the mainstream
The loopies are certainly loud, and have achieved considerable visibility, especially since adopting opposition to globalization as their suitably nebulous signature issue. I have a hard time, though, with the idea that they are a serious threat to Western Civilization. The loopies seem to me a natural product of an unprecedented age of prosperity. When you have people that take their ease and their comfort totally for granted, when you have people so totally divorced from nature that their tendency to romanticize it can go totally unchecked, the loopie strain will emerge. A very similar philosophy sprung up in England and America during the lavishly prosperous 1920s.
I expect that the loopie phenomenon will be largely self-limiting. These ideas appeal mainly to the young; the appeal of dancing naked around the bonfire diminishes radically when we reach the age where the average waistline exceeds the average chestline. Sleeping on the floor, riding a bicycle, and denouncing all things material loose much of their appeal once animal instinct gets us by the genitals and we end up with a spouse and a kid or two.
I think it’ll pass, and I think the loopie ideas that do creep back to the mainstream will be tried, found wanting, and discarded. Possibly my confidence in the marketplace of ideas, and in other marketplaces as well, is misplaced, but I don’t think so.
It needs to be said, of course, that on the other side we have people who think that America has done no wrong and can do no wrong, that we wear the white hats and that whatever we do is right simply because we did it. These people would have us believe that no American policy has ever gone awry, no American act has ever had unintended consequences. Some would go so far as to say – and I actually heard these words from the mouth of an American missionary – that America does not now and never has owed an apology to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Somewhere between the extremes, of course, is reality. America is not responsible for all of the woes of the world. America does have something to do with a few of them. There are times, as often a consequence of good intentions gone awry as of malice, when things we do don’t work out the way we expected. That’s true of everyone, but when you hold great power, your mistakes resonate a great deal more. There are also problems that we did not cause that we have or may have the capacity to solve. You may or may not think we are in some way obligated to address these, depending on your point of view.
I don’t think that the greatest threat to Western Civilization comes from Islamic radicals, or Marxists, or loopies. They may pose real challenges, but I don’t think any of them are anywhere nearly so large that they can’t be managed. I think the real threat comes from inside, from the corrupting tendency of power, from the temptation to try and remake the world in our image – for their own good, of course – rather than helping others through the tortuous, extended, chaotic, and necessary process of remaking themselves.
The rest of your post concerns the problem raised by the fact that we are now the biggest swinging dick on the Planet. And nobody likes this but us.
This is true, of course. It’s largely a matter of perception. If most people are convinced that we intend to keep that swinging dick in our pants and use it with restraint and with the consent of others that are involved, the more moderate forms of anti-Americanism will be muted. If we swagger into town giving the impression that we are going to do whatever the hell we want with that big swingin’ thang, including tossing people over logs and giving them the Deliverance treatment, people are going to get upset.
we don't have a Philosopher/Prince to guide us through. Just good old "43" and his buddies.
The idea that Bush and his buddies or Gore and his buddies were the best this nation could come up with still horrifies me. I do hope that next time around we can contrive better choices than a couple of puppies who would never have had a political career if their fathers hadn't been prominent.
If 911 had not happened, "43" would have been quite content to take care of domestic concerns and leave the Foreign Policy driving to Powell.
Maybe, maybe not. I sort of suspect that if 9/11 hadn’t happened, Perle, Wolfowitz, and company would be desperately trying to convince us that China presents an imminent threat to our security. If you want an enemy badly enough, you’ll find one, and those boys wanted one pretty badly.
But, of course, "911 changed everything."
Did it really? I’m not convinced that it changed anything. It just woke a lot of people up to realities that they’d long forgotten. It was a rude awakening, and it evoked a lot of passion. That passion is understandable and probably necessary, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be an obstacle to designing effective responses.
Our response is getting the Muslim world even madder at us, and is annoying the Europeans no end. That really can't be helped, unless we were just going to set back, toss a few Cruise missiles around, and not do anything.
I am still not convinced that there are no options available between invasion and tossing a few missiles. |
