Others are doing the careful dissection and analysis of current events, certainly better than me right now. I don’t have the patience anymore. My response to this nonsense is and has been, “well, what did you expect?”
There is an American posture that in previous eras never rose to the level of policy, but now seems to be riding roughshod over everything. It is the assertion that what needs doing is the kicking of ass. Just go in there and beat the hell out of them, whoever they may be. We can trace this back to various eras, but this morning I am remembering all the comic book heroes punching Hitler in the jaw. Captain America chief among them. That’s all we need to do! That will fix everything! Just wade in and knock them all down and the world will automatically right itself!
This is what comes of soft-pedaling history when it might count. Reduce everything to a might makes right equation, nuance be damned, and that will serve as guideline going forward. Students matriculate annually from high schools that underplayed all manner of causal understanding of everything from the Revolution to the Civil War to World War II and Vietnam.
As a for instance, I’ve been seeing a lot of bloviating in certain quarters about Iran now being “paid back” for 1979. “They hate us, so screw ‘em!” How dare they take Americans hostage! No stopping to ask why.
Because why matters. Maybe not to the frat boys who think being tough is all that counts, but it has meaning to those who will be blown apart in a conflict that begs so many questions.
Rhetorical question: why do we learn so slowly and poorly?
There was never any question that Saddam Hussein was a horrible creature and that his removal from power would have been a plus to humankind. He was odious. But that does not justify the shithouse mess we made of Iraq.
There is no question that the regime in Iran is oppressive and horrible. But the manner of its removal matters. Because what comes after will not be what we expect and the doing of one horrible thing is never justification for doing more horrible things. We should by now have inrernalized this lesson, but our moral adjustment continues to be undermined by our penchant for dominance. Letting something be when it doesn’t conform to our prejudices seems not to be in our character.
The meddling we indulged since WWII has been, bit by bit, coming back to bite us. We convinced ourselves that we had the best intentions, that if left to their own devices these places and peoples we presumed to know better than they themselves would spiral down terrible rabbit holes. As it transpired, they did anyway, just different kinds, ones which seemed to require us to continue meddling.
In the past our leaders possessed sufient conscience to give them pause, which occasionally made things worse. Listening to their inner ethicists too often came late in the game and led to botched endgames. We’ve solved that particular problem by electing one who has no obvious conscience and seems incapable of understanding any reason for an endgame. He exhibits the juvenile attitude that if we only knock the other guy on his ass, all other problems will magically take care of themselves. As noted above, the Way of the Kicked Ass.
But adults knew this was a poor policy. We solved that problem by electing a guy who fired all the adults.
To quote Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence, you can have anything you want, but you can’t want what you want. It’s a twisty sentiment, but basically some things we’re just stuck with, wishful thinking notwithstanding. Insofar as there is something resembling a principle in all this, the isolationists have pushed their desire to the forefront. America should be all self-sufficient, closed off, reserved for the Chosen. We should not be concerned with or rely on anyone else on the planet. But we can’t have that. We can’t want that in any realistic way, because we aren’t any of us capable of that kind of independence. We need each other, whether we like it or not, whether we want to or not. When nations retreat into themselves with the idea that they will go it entirely alone, no good comes out of it. One example? North Korea. Miserable place, retrograde and sullen. Nothing to emulate.
Through all this, the question that remains more of less unanswered—probably because any answer that covers all these things is just too radical for most people to accept—is what, in the end, do the people supporting all this want the country to look like when their ends are achieved?
Well, consider. Almost everything on their wish-list of things they wish banished have to do with alternatives. Isolationism ultimately has one ultimate goal, to hermetically seal off our collective awareness of anything other than preferred doctrine. It seems fairly clear that everything hoped for by this manifestation of political fever dream has to do with unwanted changes in what is acceptable. Anything that comes from outside the bubble of comfortable dogma.
No foreigners.
No gays.
No transgenders.
Women removed from public involvement.
No concerns that place barriers to traditional avenues of commerce.
No people of color accorded the respect of actual equality.
Nothing that calls the sacred narrative of American exceptionalism into question.
Add in a sprinkling of Biblical literalists who believe the divine privileges white people and the shape of all this begins to cohere.
But the foundational wish for all this is stasis. To stop or even reverse changes that require us to adapt, to accommodate, to accept things we may never have expected we would have to. I suppose that goes to indentity, but frankly such a stunted one as to resemble most a strait-jacket.
And this war? Well, it bears the hallmarks of an adolescent trying to obliterate anything that challenges those preconceptions. And, of course, it serves as a major distraction. All the other indulgences are threatening to come to light and the assumed right to exercise power any old way desired as finally reaching its limits. Time to blow something up before the bill comd due.
None of this is inexplicable. What is to some degree is why we did this to ourselves. It really wasn’t that hard to see what would happen. How that was preferable is…well, sad.
But before I drift too far from my point, this does come from a characteristic most of us seem to share, regardless of which end of the spectrum on which we find ourselves. Namely, the conviction that we know better. That of course is one of the things a functional democracy is supposed to guard against. Which is why full participation is so important. We managed to build something here that over a quarter of a millennium has solved more problems and served a basic good well enough that a certain hubris around our successes is to be expected. The unfortunate habit we also have of constantly suppressing knowledge of our mistakes is proof that we need our humility and anyone railing against shining spotlights on the messes is in the longrun an enemy of the striving for the more perfect union.
That…and we really need to internalize the knowledge that kicking ass really doesn’t fix a damn thing.
The Distal Muse
Kicking Ass
Others are doing the careful dissection and analysis of current events, certainly better than me right now. I don’t have the patience anymore. My response to this nonsense is and has been, “well, what did you expect?”
There is an American posture that in previous eras never rose to the level of policy, but now seems to be riding roughshod over everything. It is the assertion that what needs doing is the kicking of ass. Just go in there and beat the hell out of them, whoever they may be. We can trace this back to various eras, but this morning I am remembering all the comic book heroes punching Hitler in the jaw. Captain America chief among them. That’s all we need to do! That will fix everything! Just wade in and knock them all down and the world will automatically right itself!
This is what comes of soft-pedaling history when it might count. Reduce everything to a might makes right equation, nuance be damned, and that will serve as guideline going forward. Students matriculate annually from high schools that underplayed all manner of causal understanding of everything from the Revolution to the Civil War to World War II and Vietnam.
As a for instance, I’ve been seeing a lot of bloviating in certain quarters about Iran now being “paid back” for 1979. “They hate us, so screw ‘em!” How dare they take Americans hostage! No stopping to ask why.
Because why matters. Maybe not to the frat boys who think being tough is all that counts, but it has meaning to those who will be blown apart in a conflict that begs so many questions.
Rhetorical question: why do we learn so slowly and poorly?
There was never any question that Saddam Hussein was a horrible creature and that his removal from power would have been a plus to humankind. He was odious. But that does not justify the shithouse mess we made of Iraq.
There is no question that the regime in Iran is oppressive and horrible. But the manner of its removal matters. Because what comes after will not be what we expect and the doing of one horrible thing is never justification for doing more horrible things. We should by now have inrernalized this lesson, but our moral adjustment continues to be undermined by our penchant for dominance. Letting something be when it doesn’t conform to our prejudices seems not to be in our character.
The meddling we indulged since WWII has been, bit by bit, coming back to bite us. We convinced ourselves that we had the best intentions, that if left to their own devices these places and peoples we presumed to know better than they themselves would spiral down terrible rabbit holes. As it transpired, they did anyway, just different kinds, ones which seemed to require us to continue meddling.
In the past our leaders possessed sufient conscience to give them pause, which occasionally made things worse. Listening to their inner ethicists too often came late in the game and led to botched endgames. We’ve solved that particular problem by electing one who has no obvious conscience and seems incapable of understanding any reason for an endgame. He exhibits the juvenile attitude that if we only knock the other guy on his ass, all other problems will magically take care of themselves. As noted above, the Way of the Kicked Ass.
But adults knew this was a poor policy. We solved that problem by electing a guy who fired all the adults.
To quote Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence, you can have anything you want, but you can’t want what you want. It’s a twisty sentiment, but basically some things we’re just stuck with, wishful thinking notwithstanding. Insofar as there is something resembling a principle in all this, the isolationists have pushed their desire to the forefront. America should be all self-sufficient, closed off, reserved for the Chosen. We should not be concerned with or rely on anyone else on the planet. But we can’t have that. We can’t want that in any realistic way, because we aren’t any of us capable of that kind of independence. We need each other, whether we like it or not, whether we want to or not. When nations retreat into themselves with the idea that they will go it entirely alone, no good comes out of it. One example? North Korea. Miserable place, retrograde and sullen. Nothing to emulate.
Through all this, the question that remains more of less unanswered—probably because any answer that covers all these things is just too radical for most people to accept—is what, in the end, do the people supporting all this want the country to look like when their ends are achieved?
Well, consider. Almost everything on their wish-list of things they wish banished have to do with alternatives. Isolationism ultimately has one ultimate goal, to hermetically seal off our collective awareness of anything other than preferred doctrine. It seems fairly clear that everything hoped for by this manifestation of political fever dream has to do with unwanted changes in what is acceptable. Anything that comes from outside the bubble of comfortable dogma.
No foreigners.
No gays.
No transgenders.
Women removed from public involvement.
No concerns that place barriers to traditional avenues of commerce.
No people of color accorded the respect of actual equality.
Nothing that calls the sacred narrative of American exceptionalism into question.
Add in a sprinkling of Biblical literalists who believe the divine privileges white people and the shape of all this begins to cohere.
But the foundational wish for all this is stasis. To stop or even reverse changes that require us to adapt, to accommodate, to accept things we may never have expected we would have to. I suppose that goes to indentity, but frankly such a stunted one as to resemble most a strait-jacket.
And this war? Well, it bears the hallmarks of an adolescent trying to obliterate anything that challenges those preconceptions. And, of course, it serves as a major distraction. All the other indulgences are threatening to come to light and the assumed right to exercise power any old way desired as finally reaching its limits. Time to blow something up before the bill comd due.
None of this is inexplicable. What is to some degree is why we did this to ourselves. It really wasn’t that hard to see what would happen. How that was preferable is…well, sad.
But before I drift too far from my point, this does come from a characteristic most of us seem to share, regardless of which end of the spectrum on which we find ourselves. Namely, the conviction that we know better. That of course is one of the things a functional democracy is supposed to guard against. Which is why full participation is so important. We managed to build something here that over a quarter of a millennium has solved more problems and served a basic good well enough that a certain hubris around our successes is to be expected. The unfortunate habit we also have of constantly suppressing knowledge of our mistakes is proof that we need our humility and anyone railing against shining spotlights on the messes is in the longrun an enemy of the striving for the more perfect union.
That…and we really need to internalize the knowledge that kicking ass really doesn’t fix a damn thing.
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