The American Way of Life

February 06th 2007 Posted to General

While most Americans have no difficulty reciting the flattering components of the “American way” – the routine stuff of political speeches such as life, liberty, justice – far fewer seem willing to identify as “American” unflattering, complementary components of our national ethos.

For instance, George W. Bush claims we are a peaceful nation. He says it a lot. On military bases, to the VFW, at West Point. Of course, we are not now, nor were we ever, peaceful. Pacifists have never had an easy time with the American government, and in point, the term itself is used as pejorative. Not far behind is “passive”.

We behold the world not as a habitat suited for peaceful coexistence but as a bad neighborhood in need of control. Recent Pentagon figures (DoD Base Structure Report, FY 2006) list 2,965 military bases in all 50 states and 7 territories. In addition, it lists 766 bases in 40 foreign countries. Beyond that, we have active duty military personnel (some of it quite small) in about 150 foreign countries (DoD Personnel and Procurement Statistics, June 30, 2006). That’s not all the countries in the world. We missed some.

The DoD describes itself as one of the world’s largest “landlords”, with a physical plant consisting of more than 571,200 facilities (buildings, structures, and utilities) located on nearly 30 million acres. To give that acres figure perspective, DoD bases would fill, in entirety, the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Hawaii.

And it’s not just land. There’s the United States Space Command. Positioning themselves as “stewards” for military space they stake out a vision to exploit the advantages of the space medium featuring this bold headline: “US Space Command – dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment . Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.” (Vision for 2020 Report). The term “investment” is used without apparent embarrassment. Noticeably absent are the platitudes about life, liberty, and justice.

All this has grown out of a past that ravaged red, brown, and black skin. This past century has been a rolling of imperialism and state violence to secure resources and markets to feed our economy, while at the same time snuffing out independence movements around the world before they had a chance to set a “good example”, that is, by making it on their own. Our military has won for us great national wealth and, now, unrivalled and unchallenged power.

Our “peaceful” president has taken perhaps a million Iraqi lives and limbs (counting closely is not in the national interest), and thousands of the same for Americans, and no amount of yellow ribbons will bring back a single one of them, or make a single loss worthwhile. This, we must recognize, is part of the American way. In particular, we must first recognize it if we are ever going to change it.

What about rugged individualism? Is that a distinctive American trademark? If so, it doesn’t extend to independence of mind. We are a people steeped in orthodoxy – religious, governmental, military, educational – and orthodoxy must always be followed. We can be sold anything and we don’t know it. We can be lied to repeatedly and we don’t know it. Services can be stripped away from us and we don’t know that either because it’s in order to serve us better. Our privacy is suddenly important to large businesses in the public trust now that it is lost. Gullibility is American.

So is tolerance, seemingly without limit when it comes to our quasi-permanent political class. No amount of puffery and hypocrisy from the get-elected-and-stay-elected can completely alienate us. We submissively watch their political fortunes rise from “God bless this District”, to “God bless this State”, to “God bless this Nation” as they ascend, with God, in humble service to this republic.

Do Americans root for the underdog? Not if by “Americans” we mean national domestic and foreign policy. At a time when income inequality has reached unheard of levels in this country, bankruptcy law was “reformed” making it more difficult for individuals to file. It may be noted that poor individuals are more likely to find themselves in this position than rich individuals.

Corporations have double rights – those of corporations and those of individuals – including the rights to entice the poor into bankruptcy by questionable and deceptive lending schemes. Or eliminating 500 jobs at the bottom, instead of a single one at the top, and transferring the “savings” to the bottom line of the statement of income. Yes, the stock market is at an all-time high, thanks in part to the 500 here and the 500 there sacrificed on the alter of economic “progress”.

The President’s tax cuts, campaigned on in 2000, were widely criticized as a giveaway to the rich, but this did not seem to trouble the electorate. Protecting the minority of the opulent from the tyranny of the majority continues as long-standing tradition.

Since we can count scores of interventions into the affairs of foreign countries in this past half-century, we should be able to find some examples where we just happened to take the side of the underdogs – the peasants, the croppers, the indigenous, those most in need. But, of course, it’s not their needs that concern us when we intervene. It’s our needs, and the underclass can offer us nothing because they control nothing.

Maybe our love for the underdog is manifested in policies that guarantee their number will never decrease. Or could it be that we just find repressive dictators and autocrats impossible to resist? That’s meant to sound funny, but it’s true. We do find them impossible to resist because they’re good for business and that’s what we do with them. We do business.

The “American way of life” of popular understanding first came in our mother’s milk, and has since been drip-fed to us by those whose successes depend upon telling us what we wish to hear. We are susceptible to this propaganda because the inoculation (denying it) seems to deprive us of some of our exceptionality. Expectedly, though, the basic features of American life differ little from human life in other parts of the world, as there is no appreciable difference within the species.

All forms of governance rely on at least an implicit message to the people it means to control. Do as you are told and accept all compliments. Perhaps the President is not far off when he says we are peaceful. Considering his difficulties with language, he may have meant docile.


James Rothenberg, writer/activist - jrothenberg@taconic.net