Admitting America's Imperfections
And
The Myth of Liberal Grovelling
Vs.
Conservative Americamania

This has to be short today, though the subject eventually deserves something longer. But it seems to me that many people recognize the points I'm about to make. They're no secret.

I began my political life rather more sympathetic to conservatives than to liberals. In part that was because it seemed to me that conservatives took the threat of communist totalitarianism more seriously than did liberals. But my political sympathies soon shifted. They were still driven primarily by foreign policy rather than domestic, but as soon as I began to actually understand the world a bit, I came to believe that conservatives generally just made things worse. For all their flag-waving and ostentatiously weepy Americaphilia, they were only too happy to abandon even our deepest principles if there was even the slightest chance of buying ourselves a bit more security. (That is: they identified America with its prudential interests, not with its moral foundations.) And, in fact, it needn't even be security that was purchased at the price of our principles--it was sometimes just some lesser prudential advantage...and sometimes the putative advantages only accrued to certain wealthy special interests. Dole, for example, or the oil companies.

If the choice between our principles and our security were a real one, I can understand how the decision might be difficult. And I understand that it's easy for someone like me to plump for principle from the security of my study. But it soon became clear to me, even as a teenager, that the choice was rarely real. Conservatives rarely bought us greater security at the price of our principles; rather, they generally and fairly clearly made us less safe in the long run. It was pure loss all around--the only winners were the GOP, politically speaking, and, perhaps, the military-industrial complex.

This was shocking to me. I was raised a rather level-headed centrist by largely apolitical parents. I naturally (or seemingly naturally) grew up recognizing the stupidity of bigotry, seeing the moral equality of males and females, admiring the military, recognizing the evil of the USSR (though my mother was careful to emphasize to me that their history made a certain paranoia on their part excusable), and being skeptical of most people who used phrases like "the military-industrial complex." (Learning only later in life where the phrase originated...)

I mention all of this again now because, as soon as Obama has begun to speak the truth about our history and our policies-noting, for example, that we are largely responsible for illegally overthrowing Mossadegh and installing the brutal Shah in Iran--conservatives have begun to pule and whine that we are prostrating ourselves before our enemies. This is the kind of idiocy that makes it impossible for rational people to sympathize with them. We acted wrongly, and as a result, we plunged Iran into a brutal autocracy. Compared to our actions, their act of taking hostages during the Carter administration is so inconsequential as to not warrant mentioning. And that's just a fact, which should be clear to anyone capable of even the smallest measure of objectivity.

But the dominant conservative approach to foreign policy involves putting even minor American interests above even the most important interests of almost everyone else (except, apparently, and for reasons I'll never understand, Israel). This approach seems largely to be an outgrowth of a certain intellectual failing--a truly astonishing inability to view the world and history at all objectively, but, rather, always through red, white and blue glasses. For all their defense of objectivity in the abstract (as in the debate about Sotomayor), they seem utterly incapable of actually being objective. (And by 'they' I do not, of course, mean all conservatives; but you know who I'm talking about.) That is, they are incapable of seeing disagreements from a roughly neutral perspective, rather than from the perspective of lawyer defending the U.S. from any criticism.

If Republican America were a person, he would be approximately the biggest assh*le you'd ever met. According to him, he is the greatest person who has ever lived; he is perfect in every way; he has never made a mistake; every conflict into which he has ever entered has been 100% the fault of evil on the part of others; he is entitled to stride through the world as he pleases, and all others must step aside or face his wrath. Sadly, it is not hard to understand why people can be disgusted by and even hate the Republican version of America. I'm deeply pro-American, and it disgusts me.

The conservative defense of these indefensible attitudes and actions involves the assertion that any admission of imperfection constitutes grovelling before our enemies; any criticism, no matter how modest, warranted and slow to develop constitutes "blaming America first." America, you see, can only be criticized for being too liberal; any other criticism is illegitimate, probably insane, and reveals a visceral hatred of the nation in particular and freedom in general. Criticizing Bill Clinton and military action in Yugoslavia is fine; criticizing George Bush and military action in Iraq is "objectively pro-terrorist."

Obama's approach to these matters has, thus far, been exactly right in my book. But, then, there has been nothing particularly difficult about them. Admitting what is clear to every even minimally well-informed and objective person should not be an astonishing act of moral and intellectual rectitude. It is, perhaps, inspiring only when viewed against the backdrop of the narcissistic, megalomaniacal attitudes about America that grip conservatives. Unfortunately, they are so firmly in the grip of their delusions on this score that being even minimally reasonable seems like insanity to them. Why they are gripped by the delusion I do not know; but that they are can hardly be controversial.

So, once again, Obama looks like a genius, but largely only by comparison to his conservative opponents. In the world in which I live, saying obviously true things is not remarkable; you don't get any credit for it, it's expected of you. It's astonishing and rather frightening that it is so remarkable in the world of American politics and foreign policy, and that Obama deserves so much credit for doing what ought to be a matter of course.