( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Most Americans are proud. Very. Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. The world’s oldest democracy. The greatest country in the history of the world. Equality and Liberty. Truth, Justice and the American Way.
The American Way. What is that exactly, besides Superman’s motto?
An influential 1955 book, Protestant, Catholic, Jew by Will Herberg, identified the American Way of Life, politically “compounded almost equally of democracy and free enterprise”, as the “common religion” of American society:
The American Way of life is individualistic, dynamic, pragmatic. It affirms the supreme value and dignity of the individual; it stresses incessant activity on his part, for he is never to rest but is always to be striving to “get ahead”; it defines an ethic of self-reliance, merit, and character, and judges by achievement: “deeds, not creeds” are what count. The “American Way of Life” is humanitarian, “forward-looking”, optimistic. Americans are easily the most generous and philanthropic people in the world, in terms of their ready and unstinting response to suffering anywhere on the globe. The American believes in progress, in self-improvement, and quite fanatically in education. But above all, the American is idealistic. Americans cannot go on making money or achieving worldly success simply on its own merits; such “materialistic” things must, in the American mind, be justified in “higher” terms, in terms of “service” or “stewardship” or “general welfare”… And because they are so idealistic, Americans tend to be moralistic; they are inclined to see all issues as plain and simple, black and white, issues of morality.
What a difference half a century makes. And I believe most Americans reading this today would say, “Yup, that sounds right. That’s America all right.”
The reason many Americans would say that today is because many Americans are idiots.
Let’s take the intro where America’s common religion is an equal dose of democracy and free enterprise. Our democracy today consists of two branches of a single political party whose sole purpose is not to represent the people, or promote democracy, but to prosecute the agenda of the military-industrial-complex and the financial elite. And free enterprise? The idea of open, fair and honest competition between companies to serve their customers and make a fair and honest profit for the services rendered? Today we have predatory, disaster, monopoly capitalism where the goal is to cheat, gouge and belittle the customer and to maximize profit to the detriment of society and for the benefit of a managerial elite whose only loyalty is to themselves.
Does our American Way really affirm the supreme value and dignity of the individual? Don’t we instead have a conformist, politically correct society where dissent is discouraged and individuality is stifled and folks are coerced to go along to get along? A society whereby the elite follows the law of the ends justify the means while yesterday’s common man and today’s wage slave is mandated to play by the rules which dictate the means justify the ends? (The rich play by the rule ‘winning isn’t everything but the only thing’ while the rest of are taught ‘it doesn’t matter if you win or lose but how you play the game’?) Don’t the rich get to play by a completely different and unaccountable set of rules? Money not only buys material things but also things like truth and justice.
Martin Luther King may have advised us to judge each other not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character, but today people are judged buy the content of their bank account and their zip code.
The American Way of Life is ‘humanitarian, forward looking and optimistic’? We have a society divided into armed camps of liberals who strive toward the aforementioned and conservatives whose motto is “just say no,” who demonize their fellow human beings on the basis of color, ethnicity, religion and political persuasion and look forward to and pray for the apocalypse.
Americans are easily the most generous and philanthropic people in the world, in terms of their ready and unstinting response to suffering anywhere on the globe.? Other than conservative, capitalist billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet the American People’s Philanthropy is a charity which begins at home. And why not, most Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and barely have two tin nickels to rub together. And sure, when tsunamis and earthquakes and other natural disasters of a biblical proportion happen, Americans love to support telethons and rock concerts, but considering Americans, through their over-worked, sleep-deprived, soma addicted stupor, actually contribute to most of the suffering in the world, through war and economic conquest, it can hardly be said we make the world a better place.
The American believes in progress, in self-improvement, and quite fanatically in education. Uh, well sure who doesn’t believe in progress? Obama bamboozled a generation or two with hope for progress, but, I don’t think progress toward financial ruin, endless war and general decay is what folks had in mind. And self-improvement? You mean diet, exercise and The Secret? And education? We believe quite fanatically in education? This from a population who has been systematically dumbed-down to the point where critical thinking is treason and most folks don’t believe a college education is ‘worth it’ anymore? Where folks are as likely to burn books as read them? Where Celebrity Rehab, Reality TV and Dancing with the Stars is the height of American culture?
Americans cannot go on making money or achieving worldly success simply on its own merits; such “materialistic” things must, in the American mind, be justified in “higher” terms, in terms of “service” or “stewardship” or “general welfare”… How quaint. Most Americans today work their asses off to satisfy such materialistic things as food on the table, electricity, gas, health care, insurance, and taxes. And the elite? Where is their ‘higher’ ideal in terms of service to the ‘general welfare’? Come on, greed is good, every man for himself and you can’t be too rich or too thin. Trickle down, baby, trickle down, which has bankrupted the country, led to the greatest economic disparity in the industrialized world and created a two class society of the rich and poor.
And because they are so idealistic, Americans tend to be moralistic; they are inclined to see all issues as plain and simple, black and white, issues of morality. Well, okay some things don’t change. And this is why we are so easily lied to, manipulated and propagandized. This is why Mexicans, Iranians and Liberals are the problem but Banksters, Media Moguls, War Criminals and Fascists get a free ride. This is why everyone believes our political system is a corrupt shambles but it’s still best system in the world. This is why The People stumble along toward Armageddon with a song in their heart. This is why jingoist soundbites about terrorism, capitalism (the real terrorist) and equality (everyone can grow up to be President) creates a somnambulist, parasitic, zombie public of order takers and sleep walkers.
The American Way is a myth. A sham. The Gilded Age of Robber Barons is the reality today same as it was more than a hundred years ago. Americans hate war and have been lied into every war for the last hundred years because war is a money making racket and the business of America is the business of war, privilege and inhumanity against man. America is a racist society as illustrated by the xenophobic fear of “Mexicans” and how many battlefields in America’s global war for economic hegemony are filled with people of color. How many ‘white folks’ is America at war with? Except, of course, in the war against its own citizenry via surveillance, propaganda and violent repression in a ‘Taser first, ask questions later’ culture of authoritarian repression?
Many Americans are proud of their national heritage and their place in the world. So are many Englishmen and Germans. Colonialism is progress. It is the forced expansion of markets. It is Free Enterprise at its best. Rape and pillage are not crimes but business as usual.
And how many Americans are okay with that?
Most of us. The American Way is one of self-interest, self-indulgence and self-destruction.
The American Way of life is individualistic, dynamic, pragmatic. It affirms the supreme value and dignity of the individual; it stresses incessant activity on his part, for he is never to rest but is always to be striving to “get ahead”; it defines an ethic of self-reliance, merit, and character, and judges by achievement: “deeds, not creeds” are what count.
And self-delusion.
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Not only can it serve as a form of mass hypnosis, that hypnosis can overcome even direct and repeated encounters with harsh reality, and people still go back to buying into the myth. Smart, well-educated, people.
They’ll be calling you a radical
a liberal, oh fanatical, criminal.
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable,
respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!
I will take the 25 cent hit here and say KABUKI writ large.
As individuals, real introspection is rare… but as a society? We have this entire myth that is unquestionable. I got invited to emigrate in the nicest of fashions yesterday – You know, “You liberals hate America so much, why don’t you get the fuck out? Canada is close – GO THERE!”
They talk about free speech, but demonize anyone who uses it for any type of actual self-inspection that does not uphold the myth, create the false fabric they want to see.’
Wow. I’m talking about Americans as “they” now. I guess I’ve already left the rez in my heart. Everything we have been taught about ourselves is a lie – and not even a lie to paint something with a moral in the end. We are MORAL-LESS, the antithesis of morality the embodiment of immorality.
Nice deconstruction done here. Every word is exactly true.
True enough, were it to air on Faux, they would be hanging you in effigy in the streets. Rock on!
America has sold it’s soul for the illusion of beauty and exceptualism…to view the truth of our ugliness, the veil must be lifted. Beneath that veil, protected by the gatekeepers, exists the rotting, dieing corpse of a promise not fulfilled, the American Dream.
From Wikipedia
In the end, Dorian, in a fit if rage over the ever increasing ugliness of his picture, plunges a knife into it, his servants hear a cry from inside the locked room and rush in, where they find Dorian dead, old and withered, with a knife plunged into his heart, and the painting restored to its original beauty.
And I’m afraid the ending will be the same. Thanks for lifting the veil, g.
Unfortunately, most Americans have long identified with a “myth,” period. I think most Americans are satisfied in deluding themselves because to think of themselves as Americans, they want to think of themselves as “good.”
We have NEVER been a nice country.
More here and here!
What you have so-well “illustrated” here in your diary simply means to me that we have reached the pinnacle of what we’ve always been and are “maxing” it out to ultimate destruction.
And, if enough people continue to delude themselves, this will be the “final hours” of a so-called democracy, albeit, a failed one. Either that or global warming will get to us first!
Thank you, gottlieb!
…I so agree with Diane G:
Gotter, you have really dismantled and analyzed the delusional myths and propaganda under which most Americans still languish.
… and cultural chaos. It’s hard to see how it will all come down. I think the reaction on the right, for example, is a natural human reaction to over-rapid cultural change.
The American Dream is now very vague but is based, strictly, on material prosperity since no one knows what is good or right anymore. What we do have is a culture so steeped in lies and deceptions and parallel con games that it is hard to make out any patterns at all. Basically we are a Republic that has moved towards an Empire with a return to a feudal social structure based on wealth, influence, family. I think the American Dream you cited still resonates but only dimly. Other myths much further removed from reality are taking its place. The main one is the emphasis on fantasy and illusion. I see we live in a time when fantasy and illusion are seen as optimum. This to me is the single most destructive change in our national mythology. This desire to live in a web of illusions and fantasies has led to fantasy role-playing and life itself becoming hopelessly confused.
Who deserves what. Who sacrifices for whom. The great American conversation.