Beyond a Failed Narrative
Americans are living a failed national narrative. Our almost universal belief in our exceptional status as a providentially “chosen people” suspends us in a beguiling myth beyond the reality of history. On September 11, 2001, we reacted with an almost child-like innocence. President George Bush soared in the polls when he doubled down on the familiar troupe that America has the ability to remake the world in our own image through the force of arms. Rather than summon imagination, wisdom and courage to offer an alternative, Democratic presidential hopefuls fell over themselves to support Bush in invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
In his most recent book Time No Longer, Patrick Lawrence movingly regrets the road not taken. The events of 2001 confronted us with choice. We could accept that our national narrative had failed and that the time had arrived to abandon our dreams of empire and dismantle our imperial presidency. Or we could resist change and remain in a state of denial that would compound our self-destructive conduct. The Republican and Democratic parties — who purport to lead America — choose wrongly. Instead of restoring separation of powers and embracing the constitutional exceptionalism of the American Republic, America would continue down the militarized path of telling the world what to do.
As Wolfgang Schivelbusch made eloquently clear in The Culture of Defeat, acknowledging failure opens the door to a different future. The American people have gone along with the two-party system that denies us the leadership we so desperately need. Patrick Lawrence hopes that America can transform itself from a nation with a manifest destiny back into a nation with liberty as our guiding purpose.
The Committee for the Republic is a citizen-based, non-partisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2003. The Committee sponsors speakers monthly on challenges to the American Republic, including the military-industrial complex, too-big-to-fail banks and U.S. competitiveness. For questions or requests email events@committeefortherepublic.org
I had to return to this presentation again. I was trying to remember where I’d seen you speaking. Duh, it’s the first post on your site.
Perhaps I’m the only person, maybe not (I hope), who has watched it twice. This time however, I wanted to check out your audience better, and hear the Q&A anew. It didn’t surprise me that the audience was replete with folks our age (I believe you and I are the same); young people have jobs and kids that make attending events like this not doable. I wondered about the profiles of those who comprised the attendees. Obviously as we are as old as we are, we’ve done things. I wanted to know who attends The Committee For The Republic gatherings. Who you might be talking too? Particularly, how many of the committee’s Board were there? I gathered Mr Fein, and perhaps the gentleman who appeared via vdo link. Maybe more that were quiet listeners only.
Whenever I’m confronted with some or another experts, thinktankers, govt folk, it is due diligence to get a read on what their background is. So, of course, I clicked on all board members names to read the committee’s website bio pieces. Then, for example, Bruce Fein, to google him, learn more, and John Henry. I would have enjoyed being there. Your thesis made perfect sense to me, but the Q&A had several moments that made me wish I had indeed been there. I will spare you most, but many thoughts occurred, as did my own answers to the questions from another perspective; philosophically.
A few notes:
The power of information management, is not just a govt tool, it’s been baked into current military strategy. This is something I study. Ukraine and the SMO made it necessary for me to get a grip on what Russia is thinking, then learn the American war college distillations of it. It’s quite revealing. As for the press, their complicity, the once upon a time sceptic’s stance that ought to be axiomatic to journalism has succumbed to a cautiousness, not to step out of line. In a sense the entire media has essentially been embedded. One of the lasting carryover effects of the gulf war. But it passes as “authentic” bc of access to insider voices of authority. No longer reporting, it’s public relations, isn’t it?
I’m sorry for these fragments of thoughts. Your presentation deserves intelligent conversation. More than one. Someone at your talk asked “what can we do?”. You noted, to educate ourselves, and then to educate others. To that last point I find the competing belief systems that define modern social discourse do very nearly preclude.
You quoted Bergson, who believed in progress, though I’m unsure of it. A difference, an adaptation, something we might call evolution, perhaps so, but it’s all too readily assumed by humans that we are “evolved”, not “evolving”. Species conceit, or in the case of American exceptionalism as you argued, is something religions have traditionally proffered (though not Buddhist dhamma), but in fact, if evolution is a natural fact, then we are just a point along an evolutionary arc, not the end of it. What teleology, virtuous or otherwise, is but obscure, and what “progression” may be justifiably proven by the data; this is only our imagination. As we are witnessing, things are changing. Historical epochs come and go, though not in a linear, ever improving way. Things can get worse (Stephen Pinker notwithstanding -is an apologist for global financial capitalism), or it cuts both ways. Even the notion that there’s such things as progress or regress is a function of conditioning. We believe in it because, others do, and we’re told it’s so. There’s certainly no such things in the physical world.
What to believe? You referred to Bergson, I’ll quote Russell. When analyzing such basics as what can be known, how we can know it, what is Good, and what he asked ultimately “merits belief”, he argued of course, it is only what logic, and sense perception infer. It was an argument against intuition, or “a priori” reason. There’s a clash of belief systems at play, as usual, Mysticism and Logic. Didn’t you once say something to the effect that people spend too much time believing, and not enough thinking? Perhaps geriatric entropy fogs my memory, but it’s apropos the current malaise. As for me, I have a concept that I call epistemological parsimony; believe as little as necessary. It’s a corollary to Occam’s Razor. His formulation was about ontological parsimony, but the idea is much the same.
What merits belief? Why is America as it is? What’s it take to course correct? And, as the vdo linked fellow noted, just bc some congressmen object to funding the slaughter in Ukraine doesn’t mean anything but they’d prefer to antagonize the situation in the Pacific. There are no saviors in congress. What can we do? I am not seeing how to divert the prevailing American values driven neocon foreign policy bc the money speaks, and as for our fellow citizens, the competing epistemes are like two Surovikin lines; well defended. It’s an unhappy evolution, a progression of events, but no progress involved.
Accommodation, as you noted (responding to “Anne”), is not correct, stopping it is, but can it be stopped? Sometimes what happens, happens despite all. I fear we shall see, but hope for a sort of singularity. Who can say about tomorrow.
Again, apologies for the ramble, but you provoke thinking.