We are still in San Miguel de
Allende. It is February, and we have moved from a house in centro to a gringo condo on the outskirts of the city. The two
residences are not more than two kilometers apart, but worlds apart in culture
and life style. In our centro house,
the noises of everyday living intruded all of the time. Just outside our door,
people talked and shouted, children played and laughed and screamed. Evenings
were filled with human street sounds until eleven or twelve every night. Over
the Christmas and New Year's holidays, festivities, piñatas, songs, even out of
doors religious services occupied the time of our immediate neighbours
On the outskirts of town, I did not
see or talk to any neighbours in the condo complex until ten days into our
stay, and then the people we spoke with made our conversations as short as they
possibly could. It is not only a gated "community," it is a private
community. It reflects the psychological norm for North America. Many of us not
only want to live enclosed behind gates, sharing our community space only with
those who share our values and status, we want to be left alone by those inside
the gates as well. Inside our enormous houses, we often strive to avoid our
immediate families as well, hiving ourselves off from those supposedly closest
to us. The effects have been devastating. We no longer know how to speak with
one another, let alone converse politely, or debate ideas openly. We are fixed
in our own opinions and ideas -- challenges to those ideas are seen as both
alien and dangerous. Discourse is dead.
I have been especially struck by
this because of the events of the past three weeks. The most outrageous of the
current American president's actions has brought people "out of
doors" in great numbers, talking together about women's rights and
immigration. It can be said, of course, that the Tea Party movement began the
practice, albeit on a generally smaller scale, helping to cause the devastating
earthquake of the presidential election. Still, whether left or right, it is
good to see "the people out of doors," rather than simply putting up
with the decisions made by the totalitarian corporate world order, indoors, out
of sight, in private, secretly. Maybe "the people out of doors" will
lead to conversations and, eventually, even discussions, that can lead to push
back against the anti-democratic forces that slowly and quietly have made us
into "one dimensional" people employed only in the furtherance of
inhumane and inhuman ideology.
Having said this, I am troubled by
how the new political protests in the United States are being contextualized,
both in regard to the far right and the moderate centre (the only two
categories left in American politics). We are all too familiar with the
far-right contextualization: they
embrace Donald Trump's desire to "Make America Great Again." That
context is, of course, nothing less than a call to empire, and all of the ugly
things that go with empire. The call to greatness is fascistic and jingoistic.
Combined with the "America First" thrust of the Trump campaign, it
suggests arrogant, bullying ethnocentrism at its worst. American ethnocentrism
declares bluntly, that they are the world; they lead it, they protect it, they
govern it, and they see the cultures of Europe, Asia, or Latin America, and
Africa as too inferior to offer any guidance in how societies in general might
improve.
The moderate centre
contextualization is not much different. Last week, I read a column by David
Brooks in the NYTimes in which he baldly said that President Trump should not
be embracing a culture of negativity but should, like all former presidents,
appeal to American exceptionalism, and understand that the rest of the world
needed a sane America because the U. S. was the leader of the free world.
A few days before this, I attended a
lecture by the renowned American journalist, Hedrick Smith, whose current book
is entitled "Who Stole the American Dream." I estimate that 300
people attended that lecture (I got the very last ticket). Smith surprised us
by saying little about recent presidential politics in the U. S. He admitted
that it was an "earthquake" but, claiming inherent optimism, said he
was willing to wait-and-see regarding the progress of the new administration.
He made his pitch to revive the "American Dream" through renewed
democracy (ending gerrymandering, for example), through reducing stockholder
shares in profits and enhancing re-investment and worker wages, and through a
renewed partnership among governments and the private sector economy, as is
done in Germany. It was a tour de force
presentation, one in which he cited statistics, remembered history, and
referenced previous scholars and leaders with ease.
Nevertheless, sitting there as a
Canadian and as an American historian, I was uncomfortable as Smith's intoned
an argument about re-capturing the "American Dream," a mythic constant
in American culture, to which the nation could return. Mircea Eliade's concept
of ancient societies as ones seeking an "eternal return" to some
early, unique, and elemental origin came to mind as he spoke. The implication
seemed to be that Americans need not seek new understandings about themselves
and the greater world around them. Instead, it is argued or implied, they need
to employ methods to get back to who they should be, basking in the warmth of
the "American Dream," re-establishing American "exceptionalism,"
and making the U. S. the "city upon the hill" for all to see once
again. The absence of any mention of the new, big factor that "changes
everything" (to quote Naomi Klein) -- the effects of man-assisted climate
change -- made this "eternal return" motif even more striking to me.
The "American Dream,"
American "exceptionalism," and the belief in the U. S. as a beacon
for the rest of the world are all ahistorical constructs, just as Eliade's
"eternal return" societies were pre-historic constructs. Indeed, they
were constructs intended to deny history and the quotidian deficiencies of the
present. All societies, American society not excluded, need to recognize how
their real historical pasts have led them to where they are now. All need to
respond in ways that are possible and practical. Many of Smith's proposals were
just that, practical and do-able, but they were offered in the spirit of
returning to a special condition. An "American Dream" might have been
an inspirational concept in earlier eras of the American past, but in a mass,
urban, post-agricultural, post-industrial society it is hard to give it a
proper function. Americans can congratulate themselves for establishing
freedoms in the 18th century, in creating democratic governments, and in giving
a broad range of its citizens the opportunity to succeed economically, but
freedom, democracy and opportunity are goals equally promoted by other nations
today, making American "exceptionalism" an idea that may be
appropriate to the past alone, if at all. A persistent quest for the
"American Dream" and American "exceptionalism" today and in
the future, will simply leave the U. S. isolated and remote, always feeling as
though it is going-it-alone, resentful of others or insisting that others comprehend
the world and history as Americans do.
