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Zonie63 -> RE: New poll: do you see the US as an ideal (3/15/2012 12:13:17 PM)
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
To be honest, I don't see these events (Iraq, Afghanistan) as being that much different or any more or less justifiable than anything else we've done since at least the 1940s. That's why I can't understand the so-called "lost faith" here, since it implies that there was once faith in America prior to our invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq.
We've always been ambivalent about the USA here in the UK and there have always been good reasons for that ambivalence - it's just that, from Nixon onwards, the less pleasant side of American political culture has increasingly come into focus across the world. Reagan encapsulated both sides: on the one hand, he was the embodiment of the pioneering cowboy who had no time for the stuffed-up conservatism that has dogged British culture for so long. Brits like to think of Americans that way: as frontiersmen - gutsy, tough, willing to take risks, able to fight bears.
But on the other hand, Reagan was a reactionary, warmongering fuckwit. He made British traditional conservatism - that is, the pre-Thatcherite sort - look, if not fresh ('fresh' is never a word you'd apply to conservatism here), then benign, again. Alex Haley's 'Roots' had been serialised on UK television in the 1970s and had been a massive hit. People were primed, now, to see the nastily right wing in US society rather than that anti-stuffed-up pioneering stuff. Suddenly we all saw the Jim Crow laws, the conscription for VietNam, the arms race, the lunatic religious fringe . . . . We began to feel that the USA was, well, just too different. Friends who'd done long trips to the USA all voiced a similar opinion: 'It's weird - though Europeans speak different languages, I still feel much more like them than I am to Americans'.
Your perceptions are not that much different from mine. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so I remember all the changes taking place. I was in junior high school when "Roots" came out, and I had already been familiar with America's history with slavery and expansionism. However, there were still dual influences at the time, one from the older, traditional America and one that was more liberal and modern. I also view America's history from the perspective of my own family history, as well as the varying sub-cultures of different branches of my family within different parts of America - spread out all over the country. America is a pretty big and diverse place, where even I feel different in some areas of the country.
I was a bit too young to understand the happenings in Vietnam at the time, although I do remember Nixon and Watergate and a sense of widespread cynicism in the country at the time. In the 1970s, I remember the old folks lamenting over better days and how the country is going to hell in a handbasket, while the younger ones were thinking that we were all going to be dead before the year 2000, so let's have as much fun while we can. There was already a great deal of lost faith, mainly because people were taking a good hard look at their country and the darker aspects of our history. It's not surprising that similar views of America would take hold in other countries as well.
For me personally, I started to take an avid interest in the Cold War and the Soviet Union, wanting to learn more about the country which was viewed as our big enemy which wanted to blow us up. I developed an interest in geopolitics and history at that time, something that most others in my age group thought was "boring." I was still somewhat hopeful for America's future, though. Considering that whatever evils may have been perpetrated in the past, we were developing a moral conscience and reproving ourselves - or so it seemed at the time.
We were rapidly changing as a nation, as there was a greater focus on righting the wrongs of the past, promoting racial and gender equality, and generally improving the overall situation for people. The Jim Crow laws were banned, segregation was outlawed, conscription was ended, and we were starting to come to terms with who we were as a nation, what we had done in the past, and what we were doing in the present. We even felt there was hope in dealing with the Soviet Union and China without bringing us to the brink of nuclear war.
Things were still a bit shaky economically, and energy was still a big issue. Carter didn't seem able to do much of anything about these problems, but what really killed his presidency was the overthrow of the Shah and the subsequent seizure of our embassy in Iran. I think that took Americans totally by surprise, and it was probably that single event which caused America to shift from a reproving, more responsible nation to one shifting further to the right under Reagan. Carter was viewed as too weak, and this was coupled by revelations that the U.S. military had grown weak and unprepared under Carter. (It has been suggested that the Reagan campaign had actually made a secret deal with the Iranians to extend the hostage crisis so that it would make Carter continue to look bad and help put Reagan into office.)
How ironic that it was the Iranians, of all people, who were complicit in causing America's political center to shift further to the right. I'm not sure if they knew what they were doing or if that's what they really wanted, but that's how it turned out.
The idea of Muslims launching a holy war against America ("The Great Satan") also seemed to fuel the fanaticism of the religious right, which gained a great deal more political strength and popularity.
I never liked Reagan that much, although what I remember most about the 1980s was the prevalence of those I fondly referred to as "Ronnie Robots," completely unabashed Reagan fanatics who acted not unlike members of a religious cult. I think that most of the current criticisms of America today seem to involve many of the changes made during the Reagan era, both in terms of our geopolitics, our military/foreign policies, and especially our economic policies.
I think that the Republicans successfully managed to use the cynicism of the 1960s and 70s and turn it into outright fear and paranoia in the 1980s and beyond. There really were people who believed that movies like Red Dawn could really happen to America. I remember watching a video in school produced by the American Conservative Union which predicted that if we don't stop the Communists in Nicaragua, then they'll take over the rest of Central America, then Mexico, then the United States. People really believed this stuff, and to a large extent, I think it still has left an indelible mark on the American psyche. The issue of Vietnam was also revisited, and public opinion seemed to shift regarding America's use of military force. Even Nixon was resurrected as an elder statesman.
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Amongst those I know who'd done a liberal arts sort of education, the worst - the pits, by far - came with George Dubya. The lowest, most despicably uncivilised thing of all, is to condone torture - and that's what he and his henchmen did. I think the disgust we all felt at the idea of the most powerful man on Earth supporting full-blooded Christian values on the one hand, and and torture on the other, was the last straw. Humans are supposed to get better as time goes on, not worse. What is the point in human society, otherwise?
I agree. I'm not sure that he would be the worst, since we've had other presidents condone similar atrocities in the past.
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By now, there's a weird bipolarity about the USA, here. Kids will still ape American linguistic expressions. They will still spend their pocket money and meagre wages on Levi jeans and wear them hanging half-way down their arses like US "gangstas". The 'coolest' of them will even refer to British coppers (in a way that causes deeply embarrassed cringes amongst the over-25s) as "Feds". Yet the educated types will be openly contemptuous of American politics, economics and culture . . . .
I guess, for me and most people I know (which is to say, educated, pretty middle class English types), the truth is that the USA has both the best and the worst. It doesn't seem to do 'moderation' which, of course, means both good and bad. The USA has the capacity either to improve the world beyond anyone's imagining over the next generation - but it also has the power to fuck it up beyond anyone's imagining. I do see it going one way or the other over the next twenty five years.
If I were to say one thing to Americans, it'd be this: be responsible. It goes hand-in-hand with the power that you have. Time to put kids' toys away.
I think that most Americans want to be responsible, but very few can seem to agree exactly what it means to be responsible. I'm sure that even those regarded as warmongers genuinely believed that they were being responsible in their own way. They would argue that it's irresponsible to do nothing in the face of potential security threats or the possible upset in the balance of power in different regions of the world. I'm not saying that they're correct, but in their own minds, they would see themselves as supporting a responsible course of action for America to take. In some cases, they even had to restrain some of their own warmongers who might have gone too far (such as MacArthur during the Korean War).
So, as bad as we may have been, we could have been a hell of a lot worse.
Where we go from here is anybody's guess, although I think we'll eventually reach a point where we just won't be able to afford it anymore. The fiscal and economic irresponsibility is what's killing us the most. Depending on how desperate the people get, it could go either way. America's ability to exert its influence on the world could be severely hampered in the event of some internal upheaval either due to economic disaster or ever-widening political divisions.
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