M. Bruckner argues that Europeans or, more accurately, members of the Western European elite have come to the morbid conclusion that their region, their countries are the fountainhead of all that is evil in the world. A collateral, necessary conclusion is that the underdeveloped areas of the world, not only the former colonial possessions of European states but all the other pseudo-states regardless of how feudal, corrupt, religiously hag ridden they might be are the sole repositories of virtue.
The vast congeries of (to be ever-so-delicate about it) lesser developed countries are referred to collectively by Bruckner as the "South." His usage parallels the common view which has developed without regard to facts either economic or geographic holding the world is somehow divided at the Equator with the "rich" and "developed" places in the north and all the others, the "exploited," the "oppressed," being down south.
An unspoken companion sub-text is that the north is the home of those exploiters, those oppressors, those inventors of capitalism, of fascism, of all other sorts of crimes against humanity--the white guys. The south is, of course, the provenance of "people of color." The sub-text, no less than the open one, is predicated upon a rejection of geographic, demographic, and other realities.
The (as Bruckner sees it) guilt ridden Europeans have been engaging in a never ending exercise in self-flagellation over their presumed historical culpability for such unpleasant manifestations of economic, political, and social trajectories as imperialism, fascism, wars of conquest to say nothing of the machines of killing developed in their own (primarily) internecine conflicts culminating in the butchery and devastation of World War II. At the same time the blinders of guilt have prevented the Europeans from seeing any, let alone all the discoveries, inventions, intellectual revolutions which have provided so much of the good extant in the world today--and provided the motivation and capacity of the Europeans to engage in the self-criticism which has typified recent decades.
The tipping point, it may be inferred from M. Bruckner's assessment, which shoved the European elite over the edge came in the past decade with the challenge to Europe presented by the Islamist jihadists and their apologists. There is much in contemporary history to support that analysis.
High on the list is the sea change in view regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict(s). Not much more than ten years ago Israel was still the preferred party; now it is the most goatish of goats. Or, consider the reaction of the Spanish, not simply the hoi oligoi but the folks in the street to the Madrid subway bombings. The flying finger of guilt was pointed not at the jihadist bombers but at the government. Even those who died in the blasted and twisted metal were seen as having been at least somewhat responsible for their own murders.
More recently European elite opinion has been outraged by expressions of national and cultural identity and pride on the part of the hoi polloi. Accurate, fact-predicated opposition to creeping "Islamization," or what is perceived as cringing submission to the dictates and demands of Muslims have been shrilly denounced by the European elite.
And, as M. Bruckner notes, while anti-Americanism has always been a favored activity on the part of Western Europeans, particularly the French, this old standby has been elevated far beyond mere cult status in the wake of the American response to 9/11. This trajectory strongly supports Bruckner's contention that increasingly Europeans have been seeking to displace their own sense of guilt onto the US as the ultimate inheritor of everything European.
So far, so good. Applause and kudos to M. Bruckner all around. But, the man finally goes astray. Perhaps desperately astray.
M. Bruckner congratulates the US for its self-confidence, courage, resolve, and lack of guilt. As a historian specializing in the US, the Geek can only conclude that this is a exercise in creative non-fiction on the part of M. Bruckner. Or, in a kinder alternative, M. Bruckner is not well acquainted with the "blame America first crowd which has long littered the campuses of our universities and which has extended its long reach well into the media and political structures of this country.
Being French it is possible that M. Bruckner has not noticed that the US political landscape now includes a president who has denied the existence of any sort of genuine "American exceptionalism." That, indeed, President Obama publicly trivialized the notion by equating this long-standing belief with the natural patriotic feelings which afflict the citizens of all countries.
Similarly, M. Bruckner appears in his praise of the US to have missed the rise, one is tempted to write, "the triumph" of cultural relativism within the American elites. He has not seen just how unwilling if not unable so many members of the self-appointed intellectual, political, and opinion molding upper strata are to make value judgments on matters originating in countries outside the US.
He has not seen the decaying political confidence and social cohesiveness which has resulted in an extreme reluctance on the part of the US to assert itself in international affairs, preferring instead to engage in bootless efforts at "outreach," or apologies for alleged wrongs of the past. Apparently, he has not seen the companion degeneration contained in the nation's inability and unwillingness to even secure its own borders.
He has not observed the hand-wringing apologetics offered by the American elites for words and symbols which might be found by someone, somewhere, somehow to be violative of alleged "sensitivities." Nor has the rise of the politics of victimization and the scar it has left on both the American domestic political landscape and its conduct of foreign policy appeared on his radar scope.
In short, M. Bruckner has not shown himself to be aware of a very bitter reality rampant in the rarefied air at the peaks of American intellectual, journalistic, and political life. It is, most tragically, the same air as that breathed in Western Europe. And, it has the same brain damaging effects.
Undeserved feelings of national, collective guilt are abroad in the American hoi oligoi. Like their European counterparts these Americans are willing and ready to declare that their country is one of the foci of global illnesses of all kinds while the South is a source of all that is pure and right in human life.
There are almost as many Americans as Europeans eager to don sackcloth and ashes (or perhaps a burqa) and proclaim our guilt before the sinless of the South. We may not have gone as far down this ill-favored path as the Europeans, but we are headed (at least at the top) in the same direction.
The direction and the consequences are what make M. Bruckner's effort well worth the time of reading. It is a powerful red flag.
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