I was stunned and saddened by the vicious and unjustifiable attacks on Paris last Friday. We were just there on holiday this past summer and loved every minute of it. We also visited Carcassonne in the south of the country. You could not ask for more kindly, attentive, and helpful people. Paris was attacked precisely because it is the cultural capital of the world. We will go back as soon as we can.
I have been disgusted by what most of our politicians had to say concerning immigration policy, security, and Islam in reaction to these horrendous events. Also by the ignorance and hatred evident in so many Facebook posts. I would like to talk some sense about these matters, but it requires a brief excursion into history. Please bear with me for an instant.
Islam, the religion, and viciously ideological islamism are not the same thing, no more than the crusaders and Christianity are the same. The practice of Islam is based on what it calls the five pillars: 1) the confession that Allah is God (that is, that God is One and there is no other) and that Mohamed is his prophet, 2) five daily prayers, 3) alms for the poor, 4) the feast of Ramadan, and 5) the pilgrimage to Mecca. Practicing these precepts makes people good Muslims. When Europe was sunk in the darkest of the Dark Ages, the areas ruled by Islam (Persia, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, North Africa and Spain) experienced a brilliant flowering of culture including literature, medicine, science, and philosophy. They kept alive the knowledge of ancient Greek culture and practiced considerable tolerance toward the Jews and Christians that lived among them.
Ideological islamism is relatively recent, having arisen in the Wahhabi areas of Saudi Arabia in the early 20th century. They added two, strictly unofficial, tenets to the five pillars: 1) the West is still on a crusade to destroy Islam and 2) no Westerner is without culpability. Now official Islam rejects these tenets and they are scurrilously false. However, they drive the actions of the men (and a few women) who buy into them, making them feel falsely justified in killing any Westerner at any time. I see you catch my drift: the perpetrators of 9/11, of the Charlie Hebdo, of the downing of the Russian airliner, of the attack in Beirut last week, of the attacks on Paris on Friday and many other actions are wrongly convinced that they are doing right by God. I beg to differ with them.
Now, what can we do? I think I have some common-sense suggestions. The Islamic State, which is dominated by this ideology I described and has perpetrated the most recent horrors, claims to be a state or nation and has taken territory. We should call their bluff. When we attacked Iraq in 2003, we did it on false premises: there were no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had nothing to do with the attack by Al Qaeda on New York City. Our uninformed and hubristic administration destroyed everything that made Iraq, so it fell apart and then extremist islamists made their way in where there were none before. Now we understandably do not wish to commit any more troops there and probably will not because it would be politically untenable, but it is what we have to do: Send in hundreds of thousands of soldiers, destroy the Islamic State and try the perpetrators of lèse humanité as war criminals under the Geneva Conventions. We can get many countries to swell our ranks to do just that.
It will not be enough however. Afterwards, there should be a global convocation called in order to have the West listen to and learn from the countries most affected by this scourge, such as Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and so on. The purpose would be to learn from them how we can help. We must confess we have been ignorant of Islam and of the multiplicity of cultures of the countries which are majority Muslim. We must pledge to help them (in non-military ways) as they wish to be helped and follow up on our pledges religiously, if that term has not been too much tainted by events so that I may still use it without sounding sarcastic. Then there may be some hope of their controlling the extremists in their countries (the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and so on) without curtailing the liberties of the majority of their citizens.
Oh, yes. And we must convince Israel to get serious about helping establish a viable Palestinian state with solid borders and mutual respect and commerce. It is the only hope Israel has to remaining a Jewish state in the long run and it may well do wonders to settle the anger among many in Muslim countries.
Please check out my books at www.progressiverisingphoenix.com
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Global Warming and the Energy Companies: a New Approach
The evidence on global warming is there for all to see, so I will not bother you with arguments of any kind. The solution is not in ideological-political debate. We must listen under the noise to resolve it.
Imagine that you own an oil-mining company or that you have a major investment in one, or that you are employed by one in West Virginia. What would the talk of ending the use of coal to power electrical generation say to you? It means closing down the company, losing your investment, or losing your job in a place where you have little prospects for another. Of course you want to resist. Your livelihood is in danger. I am amazed that the politicians who favor conversion to clean power do not understand this.
I would like to propose an alternative approach. Say we see the wisdom of stopping all use of fossil fuels. We need the support of everyone. So, the government could tell the oil and coal companies that in a specified number of years, all subsidies for oil, gas, and coal production will end and that in a few more years after that, all energy production must be clean. However, subsidies will continue for any company that wishes to convert from fossil fuel production to clean energy production, with preference for solar and hydrogen cell technology. Beyond that, the government would guarantee the continued life of the company and full employment for a specified number of years and give out well-thought-out generous grants as needed. It would be a combination of incentives, deadlines, and guarantees, carefully set out so they will be doable, and with built-in flexibility so the government can continue to help if the progress towards clean energy and the prospects of success merit it.
In other words, see where people feel threatened and honor that. Give those people priority in retooling their business toward clean energy. Give monetary and regulatory support for however much time is needed, so long as significant progress is being made. Remove the threat, remove the opposition. Make it a win for everyone. Is anybody out there listening? That's all I'm saying.
Check out my Angela books at www.progressiverisingphoenix.com
Imagine that you own an oil-mining company or that you have a major investment in one, or that you are employed by one in West Virginia. What would the talk of ending the use of coal to power electrical generation say to you? It means closing down the company, losing your investment, or losing your job in a place where you have little prospects for another. Of course you want to resist. Your livelihood is in danger. I am amazed that the politicians who favor conversion to clean power do not understand this.
I would like to propose an alternative approach. Say we see the wisdom of stopping all use of fossil fuels. We need the support of everyone. So, the government could tell the oil and coal companies that in a specified number of years, all subsidies for oil, gas, and coal production will end and that in a few more years after that, all energy production must be clean. However, subsidies will continue for any company that wishes to convert from fossil fuel production to clean energy production, with preference for solar and hydrogen cell technology. Beyond that, the government would guarantee the continued life of the company and full employment for a specified number of years and give out well-thought-out generous grants as needed. It would be a combination of incentives, deadlines, and guarantees, carefully set out so they will be doable, and with built-in flexibility so the government can continue to help if the progress towards clean energy and the prospects of success merit it.
In other words, see where people feel threatened and honor that. Give those people priority in retooling their business toward clean energy. Give monetary and regulatory support for however much time is needed, so long as significant progress is being made. Remove the threat, remove the opposition. Make it a win for everyone. Is anybody out there listening? That's all I'm saying.
Check out my Angela books at www.progressiverisingphoenix.com
Friday, October 30, 2015
Our Shrinking Middle Class
Finally I am back to writing on my blog. After a five week trip in the UK, France, and Spain this summer, when we were refreshingly out of pocket, I returned to a pile of work and responsibilities that required attention and action. If possible, I will be posting twice per week now.
In our travels around western Europe, we were astounded at the cleanliness of the cities, the perfection of the motorways (freeways), though not always of the signage, especially in Spain, and the obvious affluence of the people. The people were nice to us everywhere. They are in good health and obesity is rare. Of course I lost 15 pounds just because of the constant walking and I returned feeling refreshed and energetic.
This set me to thinking. When I came to the US where I was born, from Argentina where I grew up, for college, I noticed the same sort of life here: healthy people, an abundance of wealth, a dollar which had amazing buying power, clean public spaces, and good roads. This was 1967, a the height of American power and affluence.
I won't belabor the contrast between then and now. The difference is clear to anyone who lifts eyes and looks around. Since the 60's, we have been told that lowering taxes for the rich would bring great prosperity, because they (the rich) would create jobs. That clearly has not happened: the rich have become unimaginably richer and the rest of us are faced with power, medical, and mortgage bills that eat up our income at an alarming rate.
In the 60's wealth was redistributed by a progressive income tax and high taxation on the biggest estates. The rich enjoyed lavish lifestyles and most of the rest lived comfortably with a great deal of affluence. Since then, for a number of reasons, the distribution of wealth has come to a standstill. It is instructive to look at Greece or Argentina to understand why this is. They borrowed large amounts from the IMF and, when it came time to pay, the IMF required them to impose austerity, that is, cut government spending so the taxes would go to pay the debt. But austerity meant that many people were out of a job or had to get lower-paying jobs. The result was that they paid less in taxes and bought less. Of course then the economy contracted: as sales went down more people lost their jobs and even fewer taxes came into the coffers. Argentina recovered when Nestor Kirchner became president and promptly refused to pay the IMF and ended all austerity measures. Economists said that it would spell disaster for Argentina. What happened instead was that the economy grew until the government had enough money from taxes to pay off the IMF in a single payment. Enough said.
What is needed in the US is to stimulate the economy, with care, of course. If the wealthiest people are taxed higher and the middle class are given tax relief, the government can spend on repairing our crumbling infrastructure. That would create jobs. The middle class would have more money to buy whatever. The more they and the newly employed buy, the more employment they create. The more employment there is, the more taxes are gathered. The more taxes are gathered, the easier the government can pay off its debts and the less it needs to borrow. It is a virtuous cycle.
That is how economy works. I bring this up as grist for thought as you decide whom to vote for. I for one am looking for a candidate who understands these matters because he (or she) thinks widely. As Bill Bryson says: That's all I'm saying.
In our travels around western Europe, we were astounded at the cleanliness of the cities, the perfection of the motorways (freeways), though not always of the signage, especially in Spain, and the obvious affluence of the people. The people were nice to us everywhere. They are in good health and obesity is rare. Of course I lost 15 pounds just because of the constant walking and I returned feeling refreshed and energetic.
This set me to thinking. When I came to the US where I was born, from Argentina where I grew up, for college, I noticed the same sort of life here: healthy people, an abundance of wealth, a dollar which had amazing buying power, clean public spaces, and good roads. This was 1967, a the height of American power and affluence.
I won't belabor the contrast between then and now. The difference is clear to anyone who lifts eyes and looks around. Since the 60's, we have been told that lowering taxes for the rich would bring great prosperity, because they (the rich) would create jobs. That clearly has not happened: the rich have become unimaginably richer and the rest of us are faced with power, medical, and mortgage bills that eat up our income at an alarming rate.
In the 60's wealth was redistributed by a progressive income tax and high taxation on the biggest estates. The rich enjoyed lavish lifestyles and most of the rest lived comfortably with a great deal of affluence. Since then, for a number of reasons, the distribution of wealth has come to a standstill. It is instructive to look at Greece or Argentina to understand why this is. They borrowed large amounts from the IMF and, when it came time to pay, the IMF required them to impose austerity, that is, cut government spending so the taxes would go to pay the debt. But austerity meant that many people were out of a job or had to get lower-paying jobs. The result was that they paid less in taxes and bought less. Of course then the economy contracted: as sales went down more people lost their jobs and even fewer taxes came into the coffers. Argentina recovered when Nestor Kirchner became president and promptly refused to pay the IMF and ended all austerity measures. Economists said that it would spell disaster for Argentina. What happened instead was that the economy grew until the government had enough money from taxes to pay off the IMF in a single payment. Enough said.
What is needed in the US is to stimulate the economy, with care, of course. If the wealthiest people are taxed higher and the middle class are given tax relief, the government can spend on repairing our crumbling infrastructure. That would create jobs. The middle class would have more money to buy whatever. The more they and the newly employed buy, the more employment they create. The more employment there is, the more taxes are gathered. The more taxes are gathered, the easier the government can pay off its debts and the less it needs to borrow. It is a virtuous cycle.
That is how economy works. I bring this up as grist for thought as you decide whom to vote for. I for one am looking for a candidate who understands these matters because he (or she) thinks widely. As Bill Bryson says: That's all I'm saying.
Monday, June 22, 2015
American Exceptionalism: A Summary Evaluation
The US is the only industrialized country that does not have a strong welfare system. As a result, an alarmingly large and growing percentage of our population is poor and barely eking out a living, while millions live on the verge of going under financially, as full-time jobs are converted to part time without benefits, the minimum wage has the lowest buying power ever in constant dollars, and automation, robots, and outsourcing threaten to create a permanent jobless class.
Of all the advanced countries, our health system is the lowest in quality and availability of care, while costing more than any other by a factor of around fifty. As people age, health care costs drain their savings dry. The poor have limited access to health care and thus suffer much more from illness than the better off. If they cannot get work, they cannot afford to cook healthy meals at home and if they do get hired, often they have no time to cook. The family winds up eating cheap processed food which is full of sugar and promotes obesity and all the illnesses that accompany it. This is an intolerable situation which requires an urgent solution. Our politicians will not do this for us.
We have a spotty record on human rights which becomes clear when we look at our history of slavery, genocide of our native peoples, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, and support for foreign regimes which torture their citizens. Our police disproportionately harass and detain minorities and our agriculture depends on foreign migrant workers who are tolerated when needed and persecuted when they are not. We put large numbers of citizens in danger by allowing almost anyone to own a gun.
When compared to most countries, on balance we do well. Our economy is still huge, we have widespread home ownership, people are awash in consumer goods, and we can go about our business, home life, and worship in relative safety most of the time. We are not one of the worse countries but rather one of the best. It would seem that if we acknowledge what is good about us, we will feel good about ourselves and have confidence in our society. If we are willing to acknowledge where we fall short, we can identify what needs to be done and get to work on it. However as long as we insist on the theme of American exceptionalism, it will keep us from progressing. The choice is before us: put our heads in the sand or face the future. Commerce will not solve our problems. That's not their job. We have to do it together, and to do that we need to throw out our political class and put other people in, people whose purpose is to serve and who will listen to us rather than to those who payroll their campaigns.
Of all the advanced countries, our health system is the lowest in quality and availability of care, while costing more than any other by a factor of around fifty. As people age, health care costs drain their savings dry. The poor have limited access to health care and thus suffer much more from illness than the better off. If they cannot get work, they cannot afford to cook healthy meals at home and if they do get hired, often they have no time to cook. The family winds up eating cheap processed food which is full of sugar and promotes obesity and all the illnesses that accompany it. This is an intolerable situation which requires an urgent solution. Our politicians will not do this for us.
We have a spotty record on human rights which becomes clear when we look at our history of slavery, genocide of our native peoples, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, and support for foreign regimes which torture their citizens. Our police disproportionately harass and detain minorities and our agriculture depends on foreign migrant workers who are tolerated when needed and persecuted when they are not. We put large numbers of citizens in danger by allowing almost anyone to own a gun.
When compared to most countries, on balance we do well. Our economy is still huge, we have widespread home ownership, people are awash in consumer goods, and we can go about our business, home life, and worship in relative safety most of the time. We are not one of the worse countries but rather one of the best. It would seem that if we acknowledge what is good about us, we will feel good about ourselves and have confidence in our society. If we are willing to acknowledge where we fall short, we can identify what needs to be done and get to work on it. However as long as we insist on the theme of American exceptionalism, it will keep us from progressing. The choice is before us: put our heads in the sand or face the future. Commerce will not solve our problems. That's not their job. We have to do it together, and to do that we need to throw out our political class and put other people in, people whose purpose is to serve and who will listen to us rather than to those who payroll their campaigns.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
My Introduction to American Exceptionalism
Borges said that he had been given the impression that the US was such a fabulous place that when he first visited this country, he was shocked to learn the there were flies here.
I had a similar experience. My first memories are of San José de Costa Rica, where my parents were learning Spanish at school and I was absorbing it from the caretakers at home, like you do when you're two years old. We then made a brief trip to the US and boarded a ship to Buenos Aires from New York. My parents adapted well to Costa Rica and then to Argentina and loved it, but of course they talked a lot about family and conditions back in the US. They made it sound as though it were the epitome of all that is good. People were honest, you could leave the doors at home unlocked, everything was clean. The shopping was great after World War II.
They also talked about growing up in rural areas, not having electricity, churning their own butter, and riding horses. It all sounded very old to me, growing up in the beautiful industrial and commercial center of Rosario, which had pretty much all the latest. I envisioned my parents' childhood in black and white, whereas mine was in color.
Later I realized that the contrast was country versus city, more than US versus Argentina. My parents grew up in sparsely populated areas where they were known to everyone around and thus had few opportunities to get in trouble and not have everyone know about it. That sort of thing makes one circumspect and careful. No one robbed from them as they grew up because they were out in the country and in the Great Depression most people had very little or nothing of value anyway. But on the trip to New York I mentioned, as we neared the great metropolis, someone stole one of our suitcases, the one which had my beloved record player in it.
Nevertheless, my parents emphasized a thoroughly ethical way of life. So when we came to the US for our first year-long furlough, expecting most people to be like my parents, I was shocked to hear about what was going on in Little Rock. The president sent troops to the city to ensure that African-American children could enroll in the previously all-white neighborhood school. People also talked in hushed tones, tones which implied a certain amount of concern if not fear, about Senator McCarthy. It was not particularly a happy time in the mid 1950's here. Neither was it in Argentina, where Perón was deposed shortly before our furlough and the military government which succeeded him rounded up and sent several dozen of his supporters to the firing squad.
Based on the attitudes and reactions of grownups, I intuited that not all was well in either country. It was the beginning of my developing what the anthropologists call cultural relativity.
On our second furlough, soon after arrival, the country was gripped by an expectant fear as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. Not long after, at the University of Alabama, governor George Wallace could be seen standing in the door to block African-Americans Vivian Malone and James A. Hood from entering classes. President Kennedy had to send troops to make him back down. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated shortly thereafter. Later that year Kennedy was murdered in the neighboring city of Dallas. We were told that Lee Harvey Oswald killed him, but I had heard a TV interview with the doctors at Parkland Hospital describe the wound in the back of the president's head as an exit wound. That interview has disappeared and never heard from again. History was repeating itself and I found myself juxtaposing the ideology of American exceptionalism with the reality of racism, political bullying, assassinations, and covering up of the truth. The US was certainly no worse than Argentina, but how much better was it, really? For me it was an open question into which I put a lot of thought in subsequent years.
Please check out my works of fiction at www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
I had a similar experience. My first memories are of San José de Costa Rica, where my parents were learning Spanish at school and I was absorbing it from the caretakers at home, like you do when you're two years old. We then made a brief trip to the US and boarded a ship to Buenos Aires from New York. My parents adapted well to Costa Rica and then to Argentina and loved it, but of course they talked a lot about family and conditions back in the US. They made it sound as though it were the epitome of all that is good. People were honest, you could leave the doors at home unlocked, everything was clean. The shopping was great after World War II.
They also talked about growing up in rural areas, not having electricity, churning their own butter, and riding horses. It all sounded very old to me, growing up in the beautiful industrial and commercial center of Rosario, which had pretty much all the latest. I envisioned my parents' childhood in black and white, whereas mine was in color.
Later I realized that the contrast was country versus city, more than US versus Argentina. My parents grew up in sparsely populated areas where they were known to everyone around and thus had few opportunities to get in trouble and not have everyone know about it. That sort of thing makes one circumspect and careful. No one robbed from them as they grew up because they were out in the country and in the Great Depression most people had very little or nothing of value anyway. But on the trip to New York I mentioned, as we neared the great metropolis, someone stole one of our suitcases, the one which had my beloved record player in it.
Nevertheless, my parents emphasized a thoroughly ethical way of life. So when we came to the US for our first year-long furlough, expecting most people to be like my parents, I was shocked to hear about what was going on in Little Rock. The president sent troops to the city to ensure that African-American children could enroll in the previously all-white neighborhood school. People also talked in hushed tones, tones which implied a certain amount of concern if not fear, about Senator McCarthy. It was not particularly a happy time in the mid 1950's here. Neither was it in Argentina, where Perón was deposed shortly before our furlough and the military government which succeeded him rounded up and sent several dozen of his supporters to the firing squad.
Based on the attitudes and reactions of grownups, I intuited that not all was well in either country. It was the beginning of my developing what the anthropologists call cultural relativity.
On our second furlough, soon after arrival, the country was gripped by an expectant fear as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. Not long after, at the University of Alabama, governor George Wallace could be seen standing in the door to block African-Americans Vivian Malone and James A. Hood from entering classes. President Kennedy had to send troops to make him back down. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated shortly thereafter. Later that year Kennedy was murdered in the neighboring city of Dallas. We were told that Lee Harvey Oswald killed him, but I had heard a TV interview with the doctors at Parkland Hospital describe the wound in the back of the president's head as an exit wound. That interview has disappeared and never heard from again. History was repeating itself and I found myself juxtaposing the ideology of American exceptionalism with the reality of racism, political bullying, assassinations, and covering up of the truth. The US was certainly no worse than Argentina, but how much better was it, really? For me it was an open question into which I put a lot of thought in subsequent years.
Please check out my works of fiction at www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
More on the Effects of American Exceptionalism
Since I have been living in Fort Worth and teaching at TCU, there have been numerous derailments, impacts at railroad crossings, and other train accidents of various kinds, many with serious consequences. Recently a train hit a curve at 100 mph and flipped over in the northeastern US, causing Amtrak to commit to automatic positive train control to avoid future accidents due to excessive speed or proximity to other trains.
Argentina, a country of extensive railways, is of course not immune to accidents either. When I was still living there and attending the American high school, there was a serious train accident. The radio and television news and the newspapers covered it extensively and analyzed the various explanations that were being offered as hypotheses before all the investigation was complete. The day after the accident some of us at school were talking about it in the hearing of our eleventh-grade English teacher. She heard us mention the various explanations, which included brake failure, automatic signalling failure, and others. She said:
"Hmph! It's obviously operator failure. These Argentines..." and went on to imply that the people she lived among were somehow deficient and that in the US such a thing would not happen.
Naturally I was not pleased with that attitude, but I had encountered it before. Besides, I was already tired of defending Argentines to Americans and Americans to Argentines. My family had previously had occasion to fly all over Argentina in the local airlines. The pilots, navigators, and flight engineers were highly professional and had an enviable safety record. After reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" in Outliers, I assume now that part of that has to do with the fact that Argentines speak their minds openly and no co-pilot is going to let the pilot slip up without telling him or her about it in no uncertain terms.
We are not the only people who have this kind of attitude about people of other countries, but that is no excuse. They are no worse, and no better, than we are. We are no better, and no worse, than they are. If we have been paying attention, we see that our technology from time to time slips out of our grasp and bad things happen. It goes on everywhere.
I sometimes wonder whether our national cultural theme of exceptionalism has contributed to our neglect of our infrastructure. We are so used to thinking we are at the top and that no one else has reached where we are that we often think it's a given for everything to work great and we don't worry about the inevitable breakdown of machines and structures if not kept up. We became great by putting a lot of money into public works of all kinds, including the Interstate Highway system which used to be envied. Now its condition is rapidly deteriorating. Of course our gridlocked politics has a lot to do with our failure to act. If we keep cutting taxes, of course we will not have funds to repair the infrastructure.
We cannot sit back and rest. We must set our formidable capabilities to the task of moving ahead. The corporate world will not do that for us.
Argentina, a country of extensive railways, is of course not immune to accidents either. When I was still living there and attending the American high school, there was a serious train accident. The radio and television news and the newspapers covered it extensively and analyzed the various explanations that were being offered as hypotheses before all the investigation was complete. The day after the accident some of us at school were talking about it in the hearing of our eleventh-grade English teacher. She heard us mention the various explanations, which included brake failure, automatic signalling failure, and others. She said:
"Hmph! It's obviously operator failure. These Argentines..." and went on to imply that the people she lived among were somehow deficient and that in the US such a thing would not happen.
Naturally I was not pleased with that attitude, but I had encountered it before. Besides, I was already tired of defending Argentines to Americans and Americans to Argentines. My family had previously had occasion to fly all over Argentina in the local airlines. The pilots, navigators, and flight engineers were highly professional and had an enviable safety record. After reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" in Outliers, I assume now that part of that has to do with the fact that Argentines speak their minds openly and no co-pilot is going to let the pilot slip up without telling him or her about it in no uncertain terms.
We are not the only people who have this kind of attitude about people of other countries, but that is no excuse. They are no worse, and no better, than we are. We are no better, and no worse, than they are. If we have been paying attention, we see that our technology from time to time slips out of our grasp and bad things happen. It goes on everywhere.
I sometimes wonder whether our national cultural theme of exceptionalism has contributed to our neglect of our infrastructure. We are so used to thinking we are at the top and that no one else has reached where we are that we often think it's a given for everything to work great and we don't worry about the inevitable breakdown of machines and structures if not kept up. We became great by putting a lot of money into public works of all kinds, including the Interstate Highway system which used to be envied. Now its condition is rapidly deteriorating. Of course our gridlocked politics has a lot to do with our failure to act. If we keep cutting taxes, of course we will not have funds to repair the infrastructure.
We cannot sit back and rest. We must set our formidable capabilities to the task of moving ahead. The corporate world will not do that for us.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Some Effects of American Exceptionalism
What follows are some effects of our default exceptionalist mode, in no particular order.
Since the metric system was developed in France and not in the US, we assume that surely it is not is good as what we use. We are happily unaware that our measurement system dates from ancient Roman times as handed down through the Middle Ages. It a mishmash of ad hoc values for weight, distance, and volume which gives headaches to every school child and wastes many hours in attaining mastery. Several years ago, NASA lost a Mars lander which crashed into the planet instead of entering a smooth orbit prior to touchdown. The cause was traced back to a single programmer in a company NASA had contracted to create the software for the approach and landing phase. NASA does its measurements in metric, as do all scientists. It never occurred to the programmer, however, that anyone uses anything other than our old imperial system and put the instructions in miles instead of kilometers. This could only happen because of an assumption that no one would choose to do things differently from the way we do them, which in turn is based on the tenet that we are the epitome of all the best.
We have always assumed that we are the pinnacle of human social evolution. Consequently we view our government as the most advanced in the world rather than as a product of a particular culture, as are all governments. We share this trait with some of the European countries. When they granted independence to almost all of their colonial holdings following World War II, they drew boundaries to create "countries" meant to be nation-states like France, the United Kingdom, or Germany. There were two big problems with their procedure. The first is that these new countries contained numerous ethnic groups with competing cultures and values and speaking numerous different languages. As if that were not bad enough, several ethnic groups were split into two, and sometimes three countries. In consequence, they lacked the social and cultural cohesion that European countries forged over centuries and which is not complete even there. The other problem is that political systems are part of a people's culture. Every ethnic group has a set of values, procedures, and power arrangements which they take as natural as breathing. The situation has led to instability, oppressive governments, wars, and genocide. Africa would be much better off if the Europeans had never gone there.
We apparently think we are so much better, that if we intervene in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, or any other place, people will share our democratic values and happily adopt our political system. We see the effect of that: it has never worked. Having grown up in Argentina from age 3 to 18 and having lived in Brazil for four years as an adult, it is my sad duty to report that although Latin Americans are glad to know individual Americans and give them the benefit of the doubt at first, they thoroughly detest our foreign policy.
I went to Argentine schools before high school, when I entered the American Community School in a suburb of Buenos Aires, where I did my last three years in preparation for college in the US. The American community would never consider having their elementary-school children in Argentine schools (it gets too complicated in high school for people to transfer in and out). They all congregated in wealthy neighborhoods, living in houses as big as the ones they could have in the States. There they replicated American life and seldom interacted with Argentines and thus missed the warmth of friendship, the cultural memory of Europe, the wonderful food, and the adventure of absorbing a new culture Argentina could give them. The British have more schools than we do down there. My sisters attended some of them for many years. The Germans also have schools all over the country. They, as well as we, are averse to accepting other cultures.
When we lived in Comodoro Rivadavia, the main city of the Patagonia and a major port in a stunning location, American oil companies had extensive concessions for petroleum exploration and extraction. They shipped in prefabricated houses from the US and created a small American town on the other side of the mountain from the city. People noticed, of course. They and their ways are not good enough for us. That's the message.
So my point is that we are making enemies and setting potential friends against us because of our assumption of superiority. We are damaging our own interests. If we just understood that we are one country among others, acted with humility, and learned other cultures before acting, our many great accomplishments would begin to get a hearing and the world would like us much better.
Since the metric system was developed in France and not in the US, we assume that surely it is not is good as what we use. We are happily unaware that our measurement system dates from ancient Roman times as handed down through the Middle Ages. It a mishmash of ad hoc values for weight, distance, and volume which gives headaches to every school child and wastes many hours in attaining mastery. Several years ago, NASA lost a Mars lander which crashed into the planet instead of entering a smooth orbit prior to touchdown. The cause was traced back to a single programmer in a company NASA had contracted to create the software for the approach and landing phase. NASA does its measurements in metric, as do all scientists. It never occurred to the programmer, however, that anyone uses anything other than our old imperial system and put the instructions in miles instead of kilometers. This could only happen because of an assumption that no one would choose to do things differently from the way we do them, which in turn is based on the tenet that we are the epitome of all the best.
We have always assumed that we are the pinnacle of human social evolution. Consequently we view our government as the most advanced in the world rather than as a product of a particular culture, as are all governments. We share this trait with some of the European countries. When they granted independence to almost all of their colonial holdings following World War II, they drew boundaries to create "countries" meant to be nation-states like France, the United Kingdom, or Germany. There were two big problems with their procedure. The first is that these new countries contained numerous ethnic groups with competing cultures and values and speaking numerous different languages. As if that were not bad enough, several ethnic groups were split into two, and sometimes three countries. In consequence, they lacked the social and cultural cohesion that European countries forged over centuries and which is not complete even there. The other problem is that political systems are part of a people's culture. Every ethnic group has a set of values, procedures, and power arrangements which they take as natural as breathing. The situation has led to instability, oppressive governments, wars, and genocide. Africa would be much better off if the Europeans had never gone there.
We apparently think we are so much better, that if we intervene in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, or any other place, people will share our democratic values and happily adopt our political system. We see the effect of that: it has never worked. Having grown up in Argentina from age 3 to 18 and having lived in Brazil for four years as an adult, it is my sad duty to report that although Latin Americans are glad to know individual Americans and give them the benefit of the doubt at first, they thoroughly detest our foreign policy.
I went to Argentine schools before high school, when I entered the American Community School in a suburb of Buenos Aires, where I did my last three years in preparation for college in the US. The American community would never consider having their elementary-school children in Argentine schools (it gets too complicated in high school for people to transfer in and out). They all congregated in wealthy neighborhoods, living in houses as big as the ones they could have in the States. There they replicated American life and seldom interacted with Argentines and thus missed the warmth of friendship, the cultural memory of Europe, the wonderful food, and the adventure of absorbing a new culture Argentina could give them. The British have more schools than we do down there. My sisters attended some of them for many years. The Germans also have schools all over the country. They, as well as we, are averse to accepting other cultures.
When we lived in Comodoro Rivadavia, the main city of the Patagonia and a major port in a stunning location, American oil companies had extensive concessions for petroleum exploration and extraction. They shipped in prefabricated houses from the US and created a small American town on the other side of the mountain from the city. People noticed, of course. They and their ways are not good enough for us. That's the message.
So my point is that we are making enemies and setting potential friends against us because of our assumption of superiority. We are damaging our own interests. If we just understood that we are one country among others, acted with humility, and learned other cultures before acting, our many great accomplishments would begin to get a hearing and the world would like us much better.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Origins of American Exceptionalism III
Perhaps the Civil War and its immediate aftermath shook the confidence of the nation temporarily. The British Empire was entering the height of its power and several European countries had foreign holdings of various sizes and types, particularly in northern, central, and western Africa. We, by contrast, had no imperial ambitions. As the century was drawing to a close, however, the US and Spain went to war. The American forces proved stronger and suddenly we were an imperial power, with holdings in the Caribbean (Cuba) and the Pacific (The Philippines). We also bought Alaska from Russia. An era of affluence and technological advance ensued and as a result we were feeling confident again but, it seems to me, not quite as cocky as before. Massive immigration and industrialization absorbed our attention and many people were busy building fortunes.
During the same period (after the Civil War and into the early 20th century) the US and Britain underwent a spiritual awakening which brought about a rapid growth of Christian denominations belonging to the more radical Reformation: Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals, among others. The Baptists, especially, were gripped by missionary fervor and began sending missionaries all over the world.
When the Great Depression hit in the 1930's, these churches became a source of strength, comfort, and support for many Americans. Being in need and not knowing for sure where the sustenance for the next day will come has a way of focusing one on the essentials of life. Ideology was set aside to make room for survival. The experience devastated some people but strengthened others. Those who lived off the land and were accustomed to self-reliance did well.
We did not come out of economic depression until the second World War forced the government to inject unprecedented amounts of money into the economy in order to build all the materiel that would be needed (guns, airplanes, ships, tanks, artillery, ammunition, uniforms, and so on) and to employ thousands upon thousands of Americans as soldiers, pilots, sailors, and all sorts of support staff. The war was unusual in that it was thrust on us, who did not really want it, and in that it had clear villains who had to be defeated in order to ensure the continued path of the country.
Through unprecedented tenacity and sacrifice and under horrible conditions, and largely single handed, the US fought the Japanese back westward across the Pacific, one island at a time. At the same time we had armies in Europe working in concert with Britain and France. The war was won on both fronts and the US emerged rich and strong. The factories switched from making the war machine to turning out consumer goods. They continued to employ workers to make that possible, therefore putting good money into the hands of millions of people who proceeded to spend it with alacrity. The country started into its period of greatest affluence for the largest number people, which lasted from the late forties into the late nineteen-sixties. We were the wonder of the world.
The believers in American exceptionalism returned in force. What could be clearer than our superiority to the rest of the world? Now we had huge numbers of Evangelicals who were eager to embrace the idea that God was on our side. Suddenly the Soviet Union, with its atheist ideology, rose up to counterbalance us and the fight began between "godless communism" and "godly free-market America," the favorite of God. Anyone who wished to express a more nuanced, considered, and analytic approach was considered dangerous (unbelieving and un-American) and effectively silenced.
Next: the effects of American strength coupled with the ideology of exceptionalism.
www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
During the same period (after the Civil War and into the early 20th century) the US and Britain underwent a spiritual awakening which brought about a rapid growth of Christian denominations belonging to the more radical Reformation: Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals, among others. The Baptists, especially, were gripped by missionary fervor and began sending missionaries all over the world.
When the Great Depression hit in the 1930's, these churches became a source of strength, comfort, and support for many Americans. Being in need and not knowing for sure where the sustenance for the next day will come has a way of focusing one on the essentials of life. Ideology was set aside to make room for survival. The experience devastated some people but strengthened others. Those who lived off the land and were accustomed to self-reliance did well.
We did not come out of economic depression until the second World War forced the government to inject unprecedented amounts of money into the economy in order to build all the materiel that would be needed (guns, airplanes, ships, tanks, artillery, ammunition, uniforms, and so on) and to employ thousands upon thousands of Americans as soldiers, pilots, sailors, and all sorts of support staff. The war was unusual in that it was thrust on us, who did not really want it, and in that it had clear villains who had to be defeated in order to ensure the continued path of the country.
Through unprecedented tenacity and sacrifice and under horrible conditions, and largely single handed, the US fought the Japanese back westward across the Pacific, one island at a time. At the same time we had armies in Europe working in concert with Britain and France. The war was won on both fronts and the US emerged rich and strong. The factories switched from making the war machine to turning out consumer goods. They continued to employ workers to make that possible, therefore putting good money into the hands of millions of people who proceeded to spend it with alacrity. The country started into its period of greatest affluence for the largest number people, which lasted from the late forties into the late nineteen-sixties. We were the wonder of the world.
The believers in American exceptionalism returned in force. What could be clearer than our superiority to the rest of the world? Now we had huge numbers of Evangelicals who were eager to embrace the idea that God was on our side. Suddenly the Soviet Union, with its atheist ideology, rose up to counterbalance us and the fight began between "godless communism" and "godly free-market America," the favorite of God. Anyone who wished to express a more nuanced, considered, and analytic approach was considered dangerous (unbelieving and un-American) and effectively silenced.
Next: the effects of American strength coupled with the ideology of exceptionalism.
www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Origins of American Exceptionalism II
The Puritan line of ultra-Calvinism was so protective of the sovereignty of God (a reaction to the claims to sovereignty of Roman popes of that time) that they considered it encroaching on God's purview to say that they could be sure they were right with him. Only God could determine who is to be given grace and entry into his Kingdom.
Their strong emphasis on the Hebrew Scriptures helped them form the idea that wealth and health were signs of God's favor, so they worked hard to be affluent. It's an illogical procedure but they derived comfort and affirmation nonetheless. They saw the richness of the British colonies as proof of their righteousness and therefore of their superiority. They should have stopped to think that Jesus was most concerned with the poor, dispossessed, unprotected, deprived, needy, and ill: all the people on the margins. His offer of salvation extended to all people, including the rich, but it was for the rich and powerful of the religious establishment of his day that he had the harshest criticisms. the Puritans did not see that part of scripture clearly, however.
The defeat of the British in the war of the American Revolution was taken as proof that God favored us (disclosure: I already had British and Native American ancestors in the land) and that therefore we were clearly better than other countries. This is called jumping to conclusions. It is all very understandable, so we should not judge them, and let's keep in mind that not all Americans shared this way of thinking.
The move westward in the following (19th) century is well known by most of us. After the war with Mexico, we had suddenly doubled in size. If we did not think about the people who were being dispossessed, it seemed clear, as they liked to say, that it was our manifest destiny to expand to the Pacific and become a large and well-endowed nation. The Civil War of the 1860's was of course a crisis which set up some major contradictions in who we are as a country.
We are not alone in expansionist mentality and in contradictory thinking. After declaring independence, Argentina waged a war against Spain which sought to make a grand country out of the lower third of South America, which it pulled off only in part. To do this, the Argentine army bought thousands of African-descended slaves to fight as soldiers. They fought valiantly and died in huge numbers. The remainder was liberated and slavery ended, but then the country pursued a European-Argentine policy and to this day African-Argentines keep a very low profile. Like the US, Argentina waged war against its native peoples at about the same we did, and came close to wiping them out altogether.
Both countries came to see themselves as the world's breadbasket and a land of promise. The difference was religion. Argentina, officially Catholic, saw itself as part of a larger Christendom under the spiritual (but not temporal) leadership of Rome. The US disestablished religion but embraced the idea that the emerging greatness and the rich bounty of the country were signs of God's special favor and became more religious-minded than Argentina. Not everyone agreed with all parts of this thinking, but it developed into a powerful cultural theme.
If interested, please check out my fiction at www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
Their strong emphasis on the Hebrew Scriptures helped them form the idea that wealth and health were signs of God's favor, so they worked hard to be affluent. It's an illogical procedure but they derived comfort and affirmation nonetheless. They saw the richness of the British colonies as proof of their righteousness and therefore of their superiority. They should have stopped to think that Jesus was most concerned with the poor, dispossessed, unprotected, deprived, needy, and ill: all the people on the margins. His offer of salvation extended to all people, including the rich, but it was for the rich and powerful of the religious establishment of his day that he had the harshest criticisms. the Puritans did not see that part of scripture clearly, however.
The defeat of the British in the war of the American Revolution was taken as proof that God favored us (disclosure: I already had British and Native American ancestors in the land) and that therefore we were clearly better than other countries. This is called jumping to conclusions. It is all very understandable, so we should not judge them, and let's keep in mind that not all Americans shared this way of thinking.
The move westward in the following (19th) century is well known by most of us. After the war with Mexico, we had suddenly doubled in size. If we did not think about the people who were being dispossessed, it seemed clear, as they liked to say, that it was our manifest destiny to expand to the Pacific and become a large and well-endowed nation. The Civil War of the 1860's was of course a crisis which set up some major contradictions in who we are as a country.
We are not alone in expansionist mentality and in contradictory thinking. After declaring independence, Argentina waged a war against Spain which sought to make a grand country out of the lower third of South America, which it pulled off only in part. To do this, the Argentine army bought thousands of African-descended slaves to fight as soldiers. They fought valiantly and died in huge numbers. The remainder was liberated and slavery ended, but then the country pursued a European-Argentine policy and to this day African-Argentines keep a very low profile. Like the US, Argentina waged war against its native peoples at about the same we did, and came close to wiping them out altogether.
Both countries came to see themselves as the world's breadbasket and a land of promise. The difference was religion. Argentina, officially Catholic, saw itself as part of a larger Christendom under the spiritual (but not temporal) leadership of Rome. The US disestablished religion but embraced the idea that the emerging greatness and the rich bounty of the country were signs of God's special favor and became more religious-minded than Argentina. Not everyone agreed with all parts of this thinking, but it developed into a powerful cultural theme.
If interested, please check out my fiction at www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Origins of American Exceptionalism I
There are numerous historical and cultural reasons for our exaggerated sense of nationhood. Let us go easy on ourselves, try to understand, and after that see what we may want to do about it.
The second British colony in North America is the starting point. The Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts Bay, like the Virginians of the first colony, were running a publicly traded corporation. Unlike Virginia, the settlers owned majority stock in the company and therefore were self-governing, Also unlike the first colony, the settlers all belonged to a fervent Christian denomination of Separatists characterized by congregational governance and an ultra-Calvinist outlook on life. They often called their colony the City on the Hill, a reference to a saying by Jesus which meant they saw their society as pointing the way to righteousness, Inherent in that concept is the idea that they were closer to God than the rest of the world and inescapably superior.
In 1647 the colony passed the well-known Old Deluder Satan Act, which mandated the teaching of reading to all children. The purpose was to counteract ignorance, which according to them is a recipe for sin, and to enable them to read the Bible for themselves. With it and two prior laws, Massachusetts took the lead in education in the colonies. Such has been the influence of this push for education, that many Americans mistakenly think that Massachusetts was the first colony, a misconception the colony and subsequent state has not felt any need to correct.
The resulting conflation of government, religion, and education continued well into the 20th century. It is one reason that the schools taught that the US was superior to all other countries and in turn why so many still accept the idea without questioning it and resent those who want to rethink our concept.
A questionable logic derives from this tradition the conclusion that God must be on our side. If Biblical principles are the foundation of our law and if we are the City on the Hill, then we are by definition the best, a sort of new chosen people. Please note the fallacy: the premises are not necessarily acceptable and there is no middle term, therefore the conclusion does not follow. No matter, that is lost on most people. It is much more comfortable and tempting to see ourselves as morally superior and therefore enjoying a status no other country has. To think that in God's eyes we are just like all the other people in the world is an intolerable reduction in status.
A dispassionate and open reading of the Bible is a vivifying dose of humility that we all need.
If you are interested, please take a look at my fiction at www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
The second British colony in North America is the starting point. The Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts Bay, like the Virginians of the first colony, were running a publicly traded corporation. Unlike Virginia, the settlers owned majority stock in the company and therefore were self-governing, Also unlike the first colony, the settlers all belonged to a fervent Christian denomination of Separatists characterized by congregational governance and an ultra-Calvinist outlook on life. They often called their colony the City on the Hill, a reference to a saying by Jesus which meant they saw their society as pointing the way to righteousness, Inherent in that concept is the idea that they were closer to God than the rest of the world and inescapably superior.
In 1647 the colony passed the well-known Old Deluder Satan Act, which mandated the teaching of reading to all children. The purpose was to counteract ignorance, which according to them is a recipe for sin, and to enable them to read the Bible for themselves. With it and two prior laws, Massachusetts took the lead in education in the colonies. Such has been the influence of this push for education, that many Americans mistakenly think that Massachusetts was the first colony, a misconception the colony and subsequent state has not felt any need to correct.
The resulting conflation of government, religion, and education continued well into the 20th century. It is one reason that the schools taught that the US was superior to all other countries and in turn why so many still accept the idea without questioning it and resent those who want to rethink our concept.
A questionable logic derives from this tradition the conclusion that God must be on our side. If Biblical principles are the foundation of our law and if we are the City on the Hill, then we are by definition the best, a sort of new chosen people. Please note the fallacy: the premises are not necessarily acceptable and there is no middle term, therefore the conclusion does not follow. No matter, that is lost on most people. It is much more comfortable and tempting to see ourselves as morally superior and therefore enjoying a status no other country has. To think that in God's eyes we are just like all the other people in the world is an intolerable reduction in status.
A dispassionate and open reading of the Bible is a vivifying dose of humility that we all need.
If you are interested, please take a look at my fiction at www.amazon.com/author/bedforddavid
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
America the Beautiful
The US is blessed with an abundance of breathtakingly beautiful nature: the Grand Canyon, Appalachia, the basin-and-range areas of New Mexico, the San Francisco Bay, just to mention a few. I had seen much of it as a child when my parents were on furlough in the US. So when I came to college, I had these beautiful vistas in mind.
I landed in Dallas and rode the bus out to New Mexico, where my grandmothers and some other relatives lived. To help pass the time, I bought a copy of Mad Magazine before boarding. Its featured article was "America the Beautiful." Of course, in its inimitably unsubtle style, it treated the reader to drawing after drawing of strip malls, outsize roadside advertising signs, auto junkyards, strip mines, smoggy cities, and litter-filled highways. The point was clear: our lack of aesthetic control over our construction and our carelessness about what we were doing to nature threatened the very beauty we so lustfully sing about.
As I watched the scenery go by outside the bus window, I noticed, to my horror, that every little bit an ugly blight such as those depicted in the magazine came into view. The problem may have been more in evidence in western Texas than in many other parts of the country owing to the lack of regulation and of woods to cover the warehouses, car dealerships, feedlots, and other unsightly results of our wasteful practices. Having come from one of the world-class cities known for its beauty, even though I also knew its bad areas and shanty towns, and having heard so often from so many lips how exceptional the US was, I arrived in Portales, New Mexico, in shock.
Having such a strong economy, a penchant for cleanliness, and a can-do mentality, how was it possible that such ugliness was allowed to accumulate? With time, I was able to come up with some, though certainly not all, the answers to that question. We were so convinced at the time of our exceptionalism, that we could not envision how things could be done better. We were already at the top, so how could we improve? It would be a waste of time and effort to try. The same outlook also meant that we never bothered to take a look at other countries: how they built cities, what they allowed and did not allow, what protections they afforded nature and their historical patrimony. We never considered that countries much older than ours may have something to teach us.
The assumption of our superiority is a strongly held cultural belief that affects us all do some degree. We are more open to other places than we used to be, but our country is so large and our economy so powerful that it is hard to look beyond our borders. All countries, as best I can tell, have cultural themes that affect them negatively and change very slowly if at all. Where I grew up in Argentina. for example, people are convinced that their country is inferior to North America and Europe, so convinced that they have never made a real effort to bring it to fulfill its potential. Every downturn in economy and every calamity that happens just reinforces this view. So we are not alone in the US by any means in being hampered by our cultural assumptions. That is the point: we have been a great country, yes, but we still are one of over 150 nations. It would help us to see ourselves as part of that world and not separate from it.
I landed in Dallas and rode the bus out to New Mexico, where my grandmothers and some other relatives lived. To help pass the time, I bought a copy of Mad Magazine before boarding. Its featured article was "America the Beautiful." Of course, in its inimitably unsubtle style, it treated the reader to drawing after drawing of strip malls, outsize roadside advertising signs, auto junkyards, strip mines, smoggy cities, and litter-filled highways. The point was clear: our lack of aesthetic control over our construction and our carelessness about what we were doing to nature threatened the very beauty we so lustfully sing about.
As I watched the scenery go by outside the bus window, I noticed, to my horror, that every little bit an ugly blight such as those depicted in the magazine came into view. The problem may have been more in evidence in western Texas than in many other parts of the country owing to the lack of regulation and of woods to cover the warehouses, car dealerships, feedlots, and other unsightly results of our wasteful practices. Having come from one of the world-class cities known for its beauty, even though I also knew its bad areas and shanty towns, and having heard so often from so many lips how exceptional the US was, I arrived in Portales, New Mexico, in shock.
Having such a strong economy, a penchant for cleanliness, and a can-do mentality, how was it possible that such ugliness was allowed to accumulate? With time, I was able to come up with some, though certainly not all, the answers to that question. We were so convinced at the time of our exceptionalism, that we could not envision how things could be done better. We were already at the top, so how could we improve? It would be a waste of time and effort to try. The same outlook also meant that we never bothered to take a look at other countries: how they built cities, what they allowed and did not allow, what protections they afforded nature and their historical patrimony. We never considered that countries much older than ours may have something to teach us.
The assumption of our superiority is a strongly held cultural belief that affects us all do some degree. We are more open to other places than we used to be, but our country is so large and our economy so powerful that it is hard to look beyond our borders. All countries, as best I can tell, have cultural themes that affect them negatively and change very slowly if at all. Where I grew up in Argentina. for example, people are convinced that their country is inferior to North America and Europe, so convinced that they have never made a real effort to bring it to fulfill its potential. Every downturn in economy and every calamity that happens just reinforces this view. So we are not alone in the US by any means in being hampered by our cultural assumptions. That is the point: we have been a great country, yes, but we still are one of over 150 nations. It would help us to see ourselves as part of that world and not separate from it.
Monday, June 8, 2015
A Last Anecdote Concerning American Exceptionalism
During my first year in the US for college, I had occasion to go to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled for a medication which in Argentina, at that time, I could just ask for at the local pharmacy and get, in the original packaging from the supplier. I mentioned this to the pharmacist, just by way of making conversation. His comment was:
"Yeah, well, everything is loosey-goosey south of the border."
His tone and demeanor clearly showed his disdain for medical care outside the US and an inability to distinguish one Latin American country from another. While it is true that it was not a good idea to hand out medications without the doctor's prescription, a practice which has now been discontinued, Argentina nonetheless had excellent medical care with reasonable, though not optimal, availability to the public. Some Latin American countries have poor medical care while others, like that of Costa Rica, are among the best in the world.
The attitude of the pharmacist in Lubbock of course is not universal, but it is widespread. If you hold to the tenet that everything American is superior, you class everyone else as inferior and not worthy of notice. As a result you will not learn about them. At the time, Argentines had a longer life expectancy than Americans and a lower child mortality rate. If I pointed out these statistics to people, they were at best reluctant to believe them. They violated the dearly loved axiom that everything American is better.
When I was in college I was a blundering hothead and felt intensely bothered by the ignorance of my fellow citizens. Now I take these things in stride, knowing that I am dealing with a deeply-seated cultural theme that goes far back to the beginnings of our country as an independent nation. With humor and understanding, little by little, those of us who have extensive experience living in other countries are getting through.
When I was in college and I mentioned I had come from Argentina, where I grew up, people would say "Oh! That's the capital of Brazil, isn't it?" or ask me if I rode a horse to school. Now, when I introduce myself to my classes at TCU and tell my students where I'm from, they say "My parents just got back from there and they love it!" They know where it is and have some concept of what it is like. Study abroad has become common. The younger upper middle-class generation is more open-minded and has a wider experience of the world than was common 40 years ago. We should listen to them.
"Yeah, well, everything is loosey-goosey south of the border."
His tone and demeanor clearly showed his disdain for medical care outside the US and an inability to distinguish one Latin American country from another. While it is true that it was not a good idea to hand out medications without the doctor's prescription, a practice which has now been discontinued, Argentina nonetheless had excellent medical care with reasonable, though not optimal, availability to the public. Some Latin American countries have poor medical care while others, like that of Costa Rica, are among the best in the world.
The attitude of the pharmacist in Lubbock of course is not universal, but it is widespread. If you hold to the tenet that everything American is superior, you class everyone else as inferior and not worthy of notice. As a result you will not learn about them. At the time, Argentines had a longer life expectancy than Americans and a lower child mortality rate. If I pointed out these statistics to people, they were at best reluctant to believe them. They violated the dearly loved axiom that everything American is better.
When I was in college I was a blundering hothead and felt intensely bothered by the ignorance of my fellow citizens. Now I take these things in stride, knowing that I am dealing with a deeply-seated cultural theme that goes far back to the beginnings of our country as an independent nation. With humor and understanding, little by little, those of us who have extensive experience living in other countries are getting through.
When I was in college and I mentioned I had come from Argentina, where I grew up, people would say "Oh! That's the capital of Brazil, isn't it?" or ask me if I rode a horse to school. Now, when I introduce myself to my classes at TCU and tell my students where I'm from, they say "My parents just got back from there and they love it!" They know where it is and have some concept of what it is like. Study abroad has become common. The younger upper middle-class generation is more open-minded and has a wider experience of the world than was common 40 years ago. We should listen to them.
Friday, June 5, 2015
The Logic of Exceptionalism
I usually listen to NPR while I'm driving. NPR provides extensive coverage of all the major issues facing the country and the world, and strives to do so as accurately and impartially as possible. To that end, it gives air time to the entire spectrum of opinion and does in-depth interviews with people representing all sides of the issues.
One day back in the first decade of this century I heard the president answer a question as follows: "America (he pronounced it Amurrca) has the most modern factories in the world and the best workers, therefore all countries should have free markets."
There are so many things wrong with this statement, I have a hard time knowing where to begin. The president was attempting to make an argument, so let us analyze it on its terms. It begins with two premises (we have the most modern factories in the world and the best workers). Arguments should take one premise at a time, but we can give him a pass on that. The real problem is that both premises are at best questionable and probably demonstrably false, so the argument falls from the beginning.
The second problem is that there is no middle term. An argument (also known as a syllogism) must have three terms, for example: 1. All normal humans have two ears. 2. Joe is a normal human. 3. Therefore Joe has two ears. This is an argument of practically no importance, but it has a use: to illustrate how to construct a syllogism. So the argument the president was making lacked the part corresponding to 2 and thus has no validity as a syllogism. It is incomplete.
Now you will notice in my sample syllogism that the conclusion follows from the premise and the middle term. All three terms are interrelated. In the president's argument, the conclusion concerning the advisability of free markets bears no relation to the factories or their workers. That is technically called a non sequitur (something that does not follow). Consequently it fails on all counts.
Why in the world did we elect as president someone who has no idea of how to make an argument? Think about it: that means that he was unable to detect the falsity of arguments presented to him. As a result he was subject to being swayed by manipulators using faulty argumentation. I never heard anyone call him on that, not even NPR. Far too many of us have never bothered with making or analyzing true arguments, which leaves us as a people open to being manipulated by politicians and advertisers.
There is, however, another aspect to it that is even more troubling. He was convinced that the US is more advanced than any other country and superior to them all. When one is so convinced, there is no motivation to question whether, for example, the people of Iraq share our values and would want a government and a society such as ours, we fail to learn, and we make mistakes with tragic consequences.
One day back in the first decade of this century I heard the president answer a question as follows: "America (he pronounced it Amurrca) has the most modern factories in the world and the best workers, therefore all countries should have free markets."
There are so many things wrong with this statement, I have a hard time knowing where to begin. The president was attempting to make an argument, so let us analyze it on its terms. It begins with two premises (we have the most modern factories in the world and the best workers). Arguments should take one premise at a time, but we can give him a pass on that. The real problem is that both premises are at best questionable and probably demonstrably false, so the argument falls from the beginning.
The second problem is that there is no middle term. An argument (also known as a syllogism) must have three terms, for example: 1. All normal humans have two ears. 2. Joe is a normal human. 3. Therefore Joe has two ears. This is an argument of practically no importance, but it has a use: to illustrate how to construct a syllogism. So the argument the president was making lacked the part corresponding to 2 and thus has no validity as a syllogism. It is incomplete.
Now you will notice in my sample syllogism that the conclusion follows from the premise and the middle term. All three terms are interrelated. In the president's argument, the conclusion concerning the advisability of free markets bears no relation to the factories or their workers. That is technically called a non sequitur (something that does not follow). Consequently it fails on all counts.
Why in the world did we elect as president someone who has no idea of how to make an argument? Think about it: that means that he was unable to detect the falsity of arguments presented to him. As a result he was subject to being swayed by manipulators using faulty argumentation. I never heard anyone call him on that, not even NPR. Far too many of us have never bothered with making or analyzing true arguments, which leaves us as a people open to being manipulated by politicians and advertisers.
There is, however, another aspect to it that is even more troubling. He was convinced that the US is more advanced than any other country and superior to them all. When one is so convinced, there is no motivation to question whether, for example, the people of Iraq share our values and would want a government and a society such as ours, we fail to learn, and we make mistakes with tragic consequences.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Surely No One Does it as Well as We Do
Some years ago after a trip to Buenos Aires to visit her parents, my wife brought back new eyeglass frames for me. They were for rimless glasses, all the rage at the time. As in the case of all rimless frames, the earpieces are set into plastic stand-in lenses until they are sent off to have the prescription filled.
There was an optometrist's establishment within walking distance of our house, so I decided to give them my business. The man who waited on me was in his late fifties or a little older. I explained that I used progressive lenses and that I wanted to use the frames which I showed him.
"Hmm! I've never seen these frames before," he said.
"They're from Argentina, I answered," thinking it would explain why they were unfamiliar.
"Are these optometry grade?" he asked, his attitude showing clear disgust.
Now think about it. First of all, the frames themselves cannot be optometry grade. They merely hold the lenses. All that is required is that they keep the entire assembly in place. So it really was rather a senseless question. Behind what he asked was the assumption that if the frames came from another country, they are at least suspect, if not frankly inferior.
It turned out that the optometrist I wanted to examine my eyes was away, which provided me cover to withdraw graciously. Obviously, the man's attitude was not common among optometry professionals. I took the frames and my business to a well-known franchise, which never once questioned the frames and who provided me with the outstanding lenses I needed in order to perform my work, to drive, to see the faces of the members of my family.
One could assume, then, that most people in the US are not disdainful of other countries, cultures, and products. However, the neocons in the government who took us into the Iraq war did so in the certainty that, given the chance, all people would embrace American-type democracy and move on to higher and better things. After all, we are the model for the whole world, they believed. We all know what happened instead. We did not challenge them when there was still the chance. I guess there are are not yet enough of us who question our supposed exceptionalism to overcome politicians who are taking advantage of our fears.
There was an optometrist's establishment within walking distance of our house, so I decided to give them my business. The man who waited on me was in his late fifties or a little older. I explained that I used progressive lenses and that I wanted to use the frames which I showed him.
"Hmm! I've never seen these frames before," he said.
"They're from Argentina, I answered," thinking it would explain why they were unfamiliar.
"Are these optometry grade?" he asked, his attitude showing clear disgust.
Now think about it. First of all, the frames themselves cannot be optometry grade. They merely hold the lenses. All that is required is that they keep the entire assembly in place. So it really was rather a senseless question. Behind what he asked was the assumption that if the frames came from another country, they are at least suspect, if not frankly inferior.
It turned out that the optometrist I wanted to examine my eyes was away, which provided me cover to withdraw graciously. Obviously, the man's attitude was not common among optometry professionals. I took the frames and my business to a well-known franchise, which never once questioned the frames and who provided me with the outstanding lenses I needed in order to perform my work, to drive, to see the faces of the members of my family.
One could assume, then, that most people in the US are not disdainful of other countries, cultures, and products. However, the neocons in the government who took us into the Iraq war did so in the certainty that, given the chance, all people would embrace American-type democracy and move on to higher and better things. After all, we are the model for the whole world, they believed. We all know what happened instead. We did not challenge them when there was still the chance. I guess there are are not yet enough of us who question our supposed exceptionalism to overcome politicians who are taking advantage of our fears.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Amusing anecdote
After receiving two degrees from Texas Tech, I moved to Austin to pursue my doctorate at The University of Texas at Austin. I was a teaching assistant, which at UT meant I was the instructor of a couple of Spanish classes every semester. Austin is a great city and the university proved comfortably challenging.
In one class I was using comic strips from Mafalda, a popular Argentine series that ran for 10 years, 1964 to 1973. My purpose was to practice everyday conversational Spanish and to introduce various cultural topics. In one strip, Mafalda asks her mother "Mamá, ¿tu primer novio fue éste o quien? (Mom, was Dad your first boyfriend or was it someone else?). Her mother reacts guiltily and her father emphatically sends her to bed, telling her that the hour is too late to be coming up with impertinent questions. After Mafalda goes off to bed, her father turns to her mother and asks: "¿En quién estás pensando, vos?" (Who are you thinking of?).
I was temporarily flummoxed when one of my students asked, with every evidence of surprise: "Do they let them talk about those topics down there?" I had to stop and think what he meant. Then it struck me: my student assumed that the strip meant that Mafalda's parents were not married. Moreover, it revealed that he assumed that, since in the US talking in the media about couples living together without marrying was rather new and controversial at the time, other countries had to be behind the US and therefore would not yet allow those topics in the media at all. It was another example of people of all ideologies buying in to the doctrine of American exceptionalism.
The question also revealed a lack of knowledge of cultures outside the US. In fact, Argentines have never been puritanical about relations between men and women and family situations that many Americans used to (and some of whom still do) consider irregular have always been common. But in this strip, an entirely different matter was at issue. The generation in which Mafalda's parents grew up considered engagement to be an almost unbreakable promise to marry and men or women who broke off an engagement were considered less than desirable or reliable as people. Given those values, the expectation often was that your spouse had not only never been married before but had never been engaged before. Dating as we practice it here was always done with only one person at a time and was tantamount to getting engaged.
So Mafalda's question was made in that context and embarrassed her parents because it was not a proper topic of conversation, for reasons very different than those that governed the motion picture and TV code in the US. That code, and that way of thinking about engagement in Argentina, both went by the wayside at about that time. My student, who considered himself very liberal and open-minded, had no concept at all of other cultures. His certainty that the US must be better and more advanced than all other countries put blinders on him.
In all my years living in the US, especially these last 20 teaching at TCU, I have met numerous lovely Americans. You could not ask for nicer and better people. Many of them have traveled widely and they are much more knowledgeable than my student at UT. That is encouraging, but the actions of the neocons in the GW Bush administration show that arrogant exceptionalism is still alive among us. It does not do us any good.
In one class I was using comic strips from Mafalda, a popular Argentine series that ran for 10 years, 1964 to 1973. My purpose was to practice everyday conversational Spanish and to introduce various cultural topics. In one strip, Mafalda asks her mother "Mamá, ¿tu primer novio fue éste o quien? (Mom, was Dad your first boyfriend or was it someone else?). Her mother reacts guiltily and her father emphatically sends her to bed, telling her that the hour is too late to be coming up with impertinent questions. After Mafalda goes off to bed, her father turns to her mother and asks: "¿En quién estás pensando, vos?" (Who are you thinking of?).
I was temporarily flummoxed when one of my students asked, with every evidence of surprise: "Do they let them talk about those topics down there?" I had to stop and think what he meant. Then it struck me: my student assumed that the strip meant that Mafalda's parents were not married. Moreover, it revealed that he assumed that, since in the US talking in the media about couples living together without marrying was rather new and controversial at the time, other countries had to be behind the US and therefore would not yet allow those topics in the media at all. It was another example of people of all ideologies buying in to the doctrine of American exceptionalism.
The question also revealed a lack of knowledge of cultures outside the US. In fact, Argentines have never been puritanical about relations between men and women and family situations that many Americans used to (and some of whom still do) consider irregular have always been common. But in this strip, an entirely different matter was at issue. The generation in which Mafalda's parents grew up considered engagement to be an almost unbreakable promise to marry and men or women who broke off an engagement were considered less than desirable or reliable as people. Given those values, the expectation often was that your spouse had not only never been married before but had never been engaged before. Dating as we practice it here was always done with only one person at a time and was tantamount to getting engaged.
So Mafalda's question was made in that context and embarrassed her parents because it was not a proper topic of conversation, for reasons very different than those that governed the motion picture and TV code in the US. That code, and that way of thinking about engagement in Argentina, both went by the wayside at about that time. My student, who considered himself very liberal and open-minded, had no concept at all of other cultures. His certainty that the US must be better and more advanced than all other countries put blinders on him.
In all my years living in the US, especially these last 20 teaching at TCU, I have met numerous lovely Americans. You could not ask for nicer and better people. Many of them have traveled widely and they are much more knowledgeable than my student at UT. That is encouraging, but the actions of the neocons in the GW Bush administration show that arrogant exceptionalism is still alive among us. It does not do us any good.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Coming to the US
It was the week before my first semester in college at Texas Tech and I was going through the process of settling in to the dorm and finding my bearings, when I saw several of the guys carrying around punch cards. From their talk it became obvious that they were using them for registration.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's a registration permit," one guy answered. "Don't you have one'"
"No," I said.
"Well, you have to have one to register."
"How did you get yours? I never got one."
"The registrar's office mailed it."
I headed to the registrar to find out what to do. They assured me they had sent it weeks before and suggested I try the campus post office to see if it had been returned. I dutifully followed their suggestion and, when I made inquiries at the post office, they rummaged through the returned mail and found a letter for me containing the registration permit.
"It came back," they said.
I looked at the stamp: they had addressed it to my house in Buenos Aires but put a six-cent stamp on it. No wonder. You could not get mail to an international address with six cents, the national rate. I pointed this out to them and they simply shrugged.
This scenario repeated for every semester at Texas Tech until I graduated. They never managed to understand that international postage was required for an address in Argentina. You see, my parents were missionaries in Argentina for forty years. I was born in Fort Worth, Texas, where I now live, but when I was three years old we traveled to Argentina, where I grew up until I finished high school.
I found on arrival in the US that everyone assumed that the US is exceptional, the best and most advanced country in the world, that we are so much better than everyone else that other countries do not matter. They could not distinguish Argentina from Australia, or asked if we rode horses to school, or assumed we liked Mexican food, which in fact could not be more different than Argentine cuisine. At the time I was understandably irritated and annoyed by this attitude, which still persists in various ways. We shoot ourselves in the foot by assuming we know best: we meddle in other countries militarily and are amazed at never achieving what we set out to achieve, we never learn from other countries how to lay out cities to make them pleasant and fill our needs, to use the metric system to simplify calculations, to value culture over commerce, or to draw lessons from history.
I know many Americans who do not fit this mold, who have traveled and read widely, and who appreciate other cultures, but it still has not shaken our national ethos nor our foreign policy from their course. We have a lot going for us, but we are not the only country in the world.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's a registration permit," one guy answered. "Don't you have one'"
"No," I said.
"Well, you have to have one to register."
"How did you get yours? I never got one."
"The registrar's office mailed it."
I headed to the registrar to find out what to do. They assured me they had sent it weeks before and suggested I try the campus post office to see if it had been returned. I dutifully followed their suggestion and, when I made inquiries at the post office, they rummaged through the returned mail and found a letter for me containing the registration permit.
"It came back," they said.
I looked at the stamp: they had addressed it to my house in Buenos Aires but put a six-cent stamp on it. No wonder. You could not get mail to an international address with six cents, the national rate. I pointed this out to them and they simply shrugged.
This scenario repeated for every semester at Texas Tech until I graduated. They never managed to understand that international postage was required for an address in Argentina. You see, my parents were missionaries in Argentina for forty years. I was born in Fort Worth, Texas, where I now live, but when I was three years old we traveled to Argentina, where I grew up until I finished high school.
I found on arrival in the US that everyone assumed that the US is exceptional, the best and most advanced country in the world, that we are so much better than everyone else that other countries do not matter. They could not distinguish Argentina from Australia, or asked if we rode horses to school, or assumed we liked Mexican food, which in fact could not be more different than Argentine cuisine. At the time I was understandably irritated and annoyed by this attitude, which still persists in various ways. We shoot ourselves in the foot by assuming we know best: we meddle in other countries militarily and are amazed at never achieving what we set out to achieve, we never learn from other countries how to lay out cities to make them pleasant and fill our needs, to use the metric system to simplify calculations, to value culture over commerce, or to draw lessons from history.
I know many Americans who do not fit this mold, who have traveled and read widely, and who appreciate other cultures, but it still has not shaken our national ethos nor our foreign policy from their course. We have a lot going for us, but we are not the only country in the world.
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