An Orgy of Hypocrisy

Today's New York Times devoted no less than four articles to President Trump referring to some other countries as "shitholes." Why the uproar? We knew that the President is a crude and vulgar person. He expresses himself in ways that offend many people. But many people also agree with the sentiments he puts into his unpleasant language. His contempt for most foreign countries, except Norway, and their inhabitants is simply an expression of nationalism that has been a serious component of his platform from the very beginning.

This nationalism consists of two major theses. The first of these describes the United States as one unified nation. Politicians constantly talk about the wishes of "the American people" as if we all wanted the same thing. But that is an obviouspropaganda move to assert that all citizens want what this Senator's or Congressperson's campaign donors want. The politicians speak for the donors to their campaigns and try to persuade the people who vote for them that they want the same thing.

This being, as we keep repeating daily, a nation of immigrants we are, in fact, fairly uncertain about our identity as one nation. Why else would we make our school children repeat five mornings a week that ours is "one nation indivisible"? The original author of the Pledge of Allegiance project was a retired admiral and then public school educator concerned to inculcate nationalism in the children of immigrants. (Among later versions of the pledge one was the brainchild of a man who wanted to sell American flags to schoolchildren.)

The talk about this one united American nation is, moreover, telling a big lie. Native Americans are not members of this American nation, neither are African-Americans, immigrants from south of the Rio Grande, chicanos. The President who advocates nationalism does not pass a day without bad mouthing his Black predecessor for no other reason than he is Black. For years he asserted that Barack Obama was not an American. The unified American nation leaves out many who dwell on this North American continent.

Even those included do not speak with the same voice or speak quite the same language. There are many deep cleavages between the inhabitants of Northern New England and the folks who live in the south of Louisiana , Mississippi, or Alabama.  “One nation indivisible” has always been wishful thinking.

This first thesis of nationalism, that there is one unified American nation, is as false as the second one, namely that this nation is the most perfect nation history has ever seen. The bumper sticker "USA # 1” is an especially inarticulate expression of that belief. But we encounter it anywhere when people tell you that our educational system, our health care, our standard of living, or what have you, is better than corresponding institutions anywhere else in the world. A quick look on Google will show you that on the different dimensions of education, of health, of quality of life, etc., ten or twenty countries in the world are ahead of us. Given the amount of money we have and spend, we are actually not doing very well.

Nationalism rests on colossal self deceptions. It can maintain itself only by constantly reiterating falsehoods and that of course is what the President is doing and why so many people love him. Hearing him repeat the lies about national unity or how we are better than anyone else reassures people who have their secret doubts about this.

All the people who are nice nationalists, who don't swear when journalists hear them, who don't use vulgar names to refer to other countries, at least not publicly, have a complete fit if the arrogant nationalism so pervasive in this America is phrased vulgarly. They don't want their belief in American superiority put in the barnyard language.

But the truth is that there is no way of being a nice nationalist because to be any kind of nationalist you have to be a hypocrite and a liar and that is definitely not nice.  You have to lie about America being one unified nation. You have to be a hypocrite when you ignore the failures of our health care and large parts of our education system. You have to be a hypocrite to denigrate foreigners as well as inhabitants of this continent while bragging about our dedication to equality and democracy.

Memorial Day 2014

 It's Memorial Day again and we are remembering men and women who died in American wars.

It is clearly fitting to remember them, but it is curious that there are many other heroic Americans who do not have their day of remembrance. Think of the many Americans – the majority African Americans – who died in the struggle for racial equality. Martin Luther King got his day but there are no days for Malcolm X. or Medgar Evers and the many less well known victims of racial violence.

While we are remembering heroic lives, why are we not talking about the parents who for many years worked two or even three jobs to provide a better life for their children, essentially giving up their own. Why do we not think of grandparents, barely finished raising their children, only to start all over raising their grandchildren because their children were unable or unwilling to do so.

When are we remembering the men and women who faithfully went off to work one day, as they had gotten so many days before, and died in a workplace accident?

Heroism takes many forms. Why only remember heroes killed in wars?

What makes Memorial Day different is the nationalist mythology that is regularly rehearsed on that day. Inevitably speakers will say that the soldiers who died were all heroes. They died, the speakers will add, to preserve American freedoms.

Let's look at the reality of that.

The period between World War I and World War II, approximately 25 years, was the longest period the United States was at peace. The average time between wars in our history was more like 10 years. The war that claimed most casualties by far was the Civil War in which, according to different estimates, between 600,000 and 750,000 soldiers died. That war clearly contributed to the agonizingly slow liberation of slaves. It is not clear that it preserved anything for whites, or Hispanics, or Native Americans, or various other groups.

The largest number of our wars were fought against Native Americans. The free institutions we boast of owed a great deal to the political practices of some of the Native American tribes. Yet, ironically, these wars clearly did not contribute to their freedom. It cleared space for the rest of us to live however we chose to live.

The soldiers who died in World War II may have protected us against authoritarian regimes. But that is by no means self-evident. It would be difficult to argue that. It is definitely not true of any of the wars we fought since then. The Asian wars were clearly defeats but our institutions remain the same. It is not obvious how the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan preserved American institutions.

The attacks of 9/11 have clearly resulted in restrictions of American freedoms but those were not imposed by Osama bin Laden or by Al Qaeda, but were made in Washington with the approval of the majority of American citizens. To the extent that our institutions are less free than they once were – and that is a plausible claim – we deprived ourselves of those freedoms.

The transition from a popular democracy to an oligarchy of the very rich was not imposed on us by any foreign nation. The very rich and those they bought managed to do that all by themselves.

All wars, whether domestic or foreign, where only peripherally related to the maintenance of American freedoms. The foreign wars were all efforts to maintain our imperial power, to become, to be and to remain the most powerful nation on earth. We are still involved in that project. Congress just appropriated more than $600 billion for the military.

Memorial Day is part of the propaganda that is used to justify this brute striving for power. It tells us that we are not trying to dominate the globe. We are just trying to preserve our freedom.

But that is a blatant lie. It dishonors the men and women who died in all of foreign wars. The least we can do is not to turn they are deaths into a another propaganda tool.