The (Im)perfect Storm

"Flash in the Pan" is the archaic phrase that comes most to my mind when I consider the history of the American republic and its latter-day, very short-lived empire. As an American historian, I have sometimes questioned my choice to teach and do research in the subject of American history. After all, many of the so-called "founders" of the nation thought they had failed at conception. And, the America that properly emerged victorious and confident after World War II did not last for more than a brief moment. Cold War insecurity led to dominance over mainly second and third-world nations (e.g., Vietnam) who in turn became surrogate client states that prove the adage: "the tail that wags the dog." Now the great nation -- and it was a great nation -- slips away with little effort to preserve itself as a nation, let alone as a nation with pretensions to lead the world in public morality and goodness.

Three elements have converged to guarantee the rack-and-ruin of the U. S.A. They have combined to form a "perfect storm" from which Americans and, alas, perhaps the rest of us, cannot easily escape. Only one of these elements can claim any pretense to virtue.

1. Libertarianism -- The American ideal of "liberty," born in the colonial period and brought forward in the American Revolution was truly revolutionary for its age. Without going through a discourse on the history of liberty in the last two hundred odd years, let's just say that it was a grand idea. But at least in the last thirty years that idea has suffered from distention. It has become a coarse and grotesque corruption of itself. Liberty has now become libertarianism. "Leave me alone, I want to be completely free!" In other words, I have no obligations other than to myself. Government is not just a necessary evil (as many in the 18th century would admit) but a complete evil. Regulations of any sort (other than traffic regulations) are anathema to being American, or so these ill-educated, myopic ethnocentrists contend.

2. The Public Interest -- No one in the U.S.A. dares any longer to argue that there is a "public interest" to be considered and protected. The U.S. Supreme Court proved recently in the Citizens United case that even "THEY" no longer identify a "public interest." No appeals to the needs of society or the needs of the nation, let alone the needs of the world and humanity, have any cache with Americans. There is "my" interest and nothing else.

3. Ethnocentrism -- Americans are a self-referential people. They look in the mirror and gage the rest of the world by what they see. Many of them may be"tourists" but most of them are not travelers. A small and significant number of Americans understand the "outer world" or what most Americans call the "overseas" world (even "overseas" when they are talking about Canada and Mexico). But that minority does not count at all in terms of developing a national consciousness. Instead, most Americans are ignorant of the rest of the world or fearful of the rest of the world. All but the traveling minority are scornful of the rest of the world. But it is worse than that. Most observers and commentators on the American nation (well, most since Alexis de Toqueville) assume there is a spirit of national unity in the U.S. There was, but it has largely disappeared. Americans see themselves as Virginians or Californians more than they see themselves as Americans. Few yet see themselves as "citizens of the world," as Thomas Paine declared himself to be. (Paine made a big mistake in that. Although he was an American citizen, and obviously did much to further the success of the American revolution, George Washington -- yeh, the big guy himself -- refused to retrieve Paine from a French prison during the French Revolution because, in Washington's opinion, Paine had relinquished his American citizenship by going to France and becoming a representative in their National Convention. Washington's refusal to save Paine was a harbinger of all things to come in American ethnocentrism). Narrow-minded, parochial, ignorant of and fearful of the rest of the world, Americans have imprisoned themselves in their own country.

So, what does this have to do with a perfect storm? Well, it helps to explain a lot about the tepid, almost ho-hum, attitude of Americans to the Katrina disaster and now to the Gulf of Mexico oil surge disaster. If we all want to just be ourselves, and if we have never heard of the idea of a public interest, and if everyone who lives outside our region is considered an outlander, then how can there be any response? Katrina and the oil disaster (which will probably be far, far worse than even the most negative experts claim) are just chapters in many "perfect storms" to come. The Americans have no means at their disposal to deal with any of them. Libertarianism is their individual refusal of responsibility. A lack of a sense of a public interest means that no agencies, government or otherwise, can intervene in disaster unless they do so completely on their own, without public support. Ethnocentrism leads to a sense that disaster can never touch "my" region or my home; no hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes will deprive me of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There are reformists impulses in American society, and many Americans would like to change many things. But the prospects for this happening in the foreseeable future are dim.