The "Improbable" Artificial State Has One More Anniversary

The United States is unique--exceptional, if you will--in a number of ways.  Among these arguably the most important is the fundamental reality that it is a totally artificial state.  A second unique feature, arguably almost on a par with the first, is that the US is that rare bird, a state which has created a nation.

As a nation and as a polity, We the People, each and every one of us, is part of a purely artificial state.  We are defined not by borders per se nor by language.  We are not defined by religious confession, pace the large number of Christians who would wish it otherwise.

What defines us as a state and thus as a nation is a set of ideas.  That basement truth is what makes us both artificial and exceptional.  We are the product of that most ineffable and powerful entity--the intellect.  Founded on ideas, the ideas became our foundation.  Over time the memes by which Americans see and understand themselves have both remained fixed and highly mutable, evolving with changes in our size, our complexity, the shifting sands of science and technology, the alterations of our demographics, the creative destruction of our economy while staying unaltered in all the essentials, the cornerstones of thinking so often expressed in simple, almost buzzword terms: democracy, transparency, rule of law, separation of church and state, equality of opportunity, free enterprise, and so on.

The fact that we are citizens of a set of ideas made manifest in human structures and institutions usually flies below our personal and political radar.  Having been born and raised in this crowd sourced set of ideas, we are as unaware of its central and crucial nature as is the fish of the water in which it swims.  It takes the perspective of either the immigrant or of having returned to the US after a long absence abroad to awaken the consciousness, to become aware of just how faint and fragile the foundations of our collective enterprise actually are--and how powerful a force they effect upon us.

The existence, let alone the flourishing of the US has been termed "improbable" as far back as the end of the Nineteenth Century as the US emerged on the global stage for the first time.  Foreign observers, men of rank, power and learning saw the reality of the American experience with a clarity which eluded most Americans.  They saw the artificial nature of the US as both a great strength and an awesome source of potential weakness.

The strengths were self-evident.  The artificial nature of the US, its foundations being ideas, provided a haven for all, a safe harbor for all those ideas and individuals seen as too dangerous to be tolerated in the states of Europe founded on language, customs, borders, the verdicts of ancient wars.  The US was by its nature imbued with a degree of flexibility, a willingness to experiment, to take a chance far beyond any European country.  As the US and its people were defined by ideas and not by the accidents of precedent or ancestry there were more rewards for trying something new, for striking out in a new direction, for doing things differently.  At the same time the citizens of this artificial state and nation held onto the basics, the foundational principles with a rigor and a zeal almost beyond European comprehension.

The weaknesses were not so apparent, but were equally real.  One very important weakness which arose directly from our foundation as an intellectual artifact was uncertainty as to what it took to be a "real" American.

The US was caught in a never ending crisis of identity.  Being founded on ideas and having a population representing virtually every nation on Earth, We the People always wondered "who are we?"  At the core, what did it mean to be an American?  The endemic identity crisis peaked in epidemic outbreaks from time to time over the course of our history.  Recurrent waves of anti-immigrant sentiment represented a manifestation of this.  So also did the episodic outbreaks of religious frenzy.  Hyper-patriotism thrived periodically as we sought to reassure ourselves regarding our identity.

Another, closely related weakness was our uncertainty as to how and when we should have relations with other countries.  It had always been a given that the US would seek cordial commercial relations with all other states.  In this orientation we Americans showed ourselves to be the citizens of a maritime power, a state which sought the broadest possible networks of trade.  Beyond that one element there has never been a long lasting consensus on the role of the US in the world.  Isolationist or interventionist represent just two poles in the America foreign policy dilemma.  Idealism or realism are the verbal flags marking two other extremes in the foreign relations conundrum which grows from the artificial nature of the US.

The never ending swings between idealism and realism in our foreign policy as well as the equally drastic swings between withdrawal and engagement with the world both come from the unique, artificial nature of the US.  In a real sense our history shows that the US lacks permanent friends and enemies.  In this way we are not exceptional.  But, our history also shows that the US does not have many permanent interests.  Indeed, beyond free trade there is no present day national interest which can be traced back much beyond the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

Lasting interests are the necessary products of states which do not have identity crises.  Lasting interests are defined as are the states which have them--by experience, usually that of ancient wars.  A sharp reminder of this dynamic and its difference from the forces at work in the US can be seen in the opposing ways in which many Mexicans and the majority of Americans see the war between their two countries.  To the Americans the affray of more than a century and a half ago is a null referent.  To the Mexicans it was a defining experience, a national humiliation the stain of which lingers on to the present moment.  The demand by so many Mexican apologists for a more "liberal" immigration policy on the part of the US is really an attempt to rewrite the verdict of a war most Americans are unaware of having taken place.

Because we are a state and a nation defined by ideas, ideas which are both unchanging and ever mutating we Americans fail to see just how long and complex the task of "nation-building" actually is.  We can blithely assume that since our defining ideas and the institutions which grow from them are and have been so successful, other people in other countries will want to adopt them wholesale just as soon as they are informed.  It was this simple assumption that propelled George W. Bush and his fellow neocons into the misguided and wrongheaded effort to transform Afghanistan and remake Iraq, not some perverse and evil impulse.  It might be noted that most of We the People thought the same until enough time and American corpses showed the error of the underlying assumption.

When the interventionary impulse leads to failure as it so often has, the reaction is withdrawal.  The American isolationist sentiment is predicated just as is our interventionary equivalent upon the defining ideas of the US.  Both are expressions of moral sentiments which reside deeply in our collective understanding of both our past and our present nature.  Moral sentiments ranging from being the shining city on the hill to its opposite, the cavalry riding to the rescue of the innocents threatened by external, violent evil are part, a central part, of our self-understanding, our collective self-definition.  We are doomed to continue to repeat the cycle of engage and disengage as we are that of being "realistic" only to turn "idealistic."

But our greatest weakness as an artifact of the minds of men is the potential to lose faith in our collective self, our shared institutions and structures, our capacity to shape our future.  The American identity is subject to seismic shocks.  Should one or a combination of those shocks result in a loss of faith in ourselves and our collective capacities, the result would be fatal to the American experiment.

The blame-America-first crowd along with those who celebrate cultural relativism threaten the American faith.  The constant refrain chanted by the tireless throats of these two groups which has pervaded so much of our collective consciousness for the past three decades is like water dripping on rock, slowly eroding, gradually corroding the solid and indestructible boulder to a handful of sand and mud.  Taken in the present context of war weariness, frustration with an implacable enemy addicted to terror, and the fear provoked by economic catastrophe looming, the soul sapping effects of the naysayers in our midst represent a very real challenge to the nature of the US and We the People.

We often give credit to ideas, particularly the ideas on which we are founded; we call them "powerful" and "eternal."  And so they can be.  It is also true that there is nothing more fragile and quick to flee than an idea.  Or a state and a nation founded simply and solely on ideas.

A Manic-Depressive Polity

In the individual the states of mania and depression can cycle in a matter of weeks or days, even hours.  The collection of individuals known as a society, or as a political actor, a polity, being larger takes longer.  Still the result is the same, a cycling from the peaks of mania to the depths of depressive despair.  Ten years represents the cycle length for We the People.

Ten years ago the majority of We the People were exploring the delightful high country of collective mania.  The dot com bust having been weathered with surprisingly little broad gauge effects, a sense of hyper confidence in both today and tomorrow had taken hold.  It may not have been the unlimited sort of let-the-good-times-roll mood which typified the highest point of the Sixties, but it ran a close second.  The economy was not just sound, it was rip-roaringly good.  The impact of outsourcing had not yet spread through the ranks of potentially unemployed.  The housing bubble was inflating rapidly driven by a mix of ill-advised governmental actions and the nice, old fashioned greed of financial institutions.  Jobs, money, liquidity, the notion of one's home as an ATM with two bathrooms were all abroad in the land.

The US was at peace.  Or so we thought, being tone deaf regarding the hostile religious music tooting through sections of the Mideast.  Islam was simply one more religion, not the source of terror and war it would become.  The president, George W. Bush, promised a foreign policy based upon both American leadership and strength and a concomitant "humility."  Strong but meek constituted a view of our role in global affairs which rang well and true with most of We the People.

American preeminence, American leadership, and American restraint were seen as both appropriate and laudable by the majority of us.  There was no question regarding the truth of "American exceptionalism."  We were on a roll both globally and at home.  There were no problems we could not solve.  No challenges we could not meet almost without effort.

Flash forward a decade.  Actually it is necessary to move the calender only eight years.  The euphoria of mania was gone.  Instead of the high of confidence, certainty, the sense of being divinely protected, divinely motivated, We the People now wallowed in the slough of despair.  We were beaten, defeated, and broke.

The bubble of economic confidence had shattered into even more pieces than had the housing bubble.  Net worth plummeted for many.  An unconscionable number were unemployed, many having become so discouraged by prospects that they had surrendered the task of seeking employment, leaving the jobless job market completely.  Two long wars had come to nothing.  There was no sense of victory as there had been no reality of success in either Iraq or Afghanistan.  At the same time, the institutional reaction to the very real threats of Islamic terrorism had created a permanent empire of fear.

A trip to the airport had become for many a visit to hell's anteroom.  Security warnings, the loudly announced arrests of yet another wannabe Muslim martyr, the periodic successes of those who shout "Allahu akbar" as they pulled the trigger or pushed the clicker, the pervasive awareness of terror's dark shadow blocked the sunny nature of American society to a significant extent.

Then there was our domestic elite.  You know the legions of our self-appointed best and brightest, the shining lights of politics, the media, academia.  The constant refrain from all these fine folks--including the president of the United States, a academic and political elitist of the first water--was that We the People and our country were in decline, a deserved decline.  We were told by both word and deed that if there was such a thing as "American exceptionalism" it was only negative.

Our "betters" of the hoi olligoi assured us that other cultures were every bit as good and meritorious as our own.  We were told that Islam--a religion where there was authority for the stoning of women, the murder of homosexuals, the existence of a permanent state of war with all infidels, the use of lies to mislead those who were not Muslim--was every bit as moral as all other belief systems.  Against the evidence of the senses and logic, our "betters" hectored us to the effect that those Muslims who bombed, who stoned, who flew jet airliners into buildings, who used eight year olds as bomb mules, were not really, really Islamic but rather "misunderstanders" or 'hijackers" of the faith.

The economy was in the tank.  The combination of outsourcing, of moving manufacturing offshore to, primus inter pares, China, very poorly conceived and executed government programs and policies, and, not least, the inability or unwillingness of many within We the People to answer creatively a single question, "how much is enough?" put the domestic economy down for the count.

Years of practicing the very politics of self-destruction, governments of both parties had competed in bribing the polity with federal give aways subsidies, and tax cuts.  The combination was, as had been predicted by not only practitioners of the dismal science--economics--but all those of relatively clear vision, fatal to the federal budget and provided the killing deficit.  Financial collapse bred economic collapse which in turn made the deficit crunch lurch to the very verge of terminal collapse.

And still the wars lingered on.  By the end of the decade which started on 9/11/01 the US was by and large out of Iraq--although this June has been the most deadly for our forces in over two years.  We know that the sacrifices of irreplaceable lives and hundreds of billions of (hopefully) recoverable dollars has bought nothing worth the price.  Iraq is caught in ever increasing sectarian violence with Shiites killing Sunnis in wholesale lots in Anbar province.  Bombs and snipers compete for attention in Baghdad.  The government is caught in stasis, a stasis of sectarianism and personal rivalry.  The only point where the majority agree is that Americans are bad and Iranians are good.

In Afghanistan the strategic morass had resolved itself sufficiently to show that the combination of nocturnal raids and constant pressure was working on the military level to progressively reduce the will and ability of Taliban and the Haqqani network to wage war.  At the same time all of the nation-building efforts have proven a failure.  The government and its security forces remain inept, corrupt, and monuments to inefficiency and illegitimacy.  What Taliban and the rest are losing on the battlefield, they are recouping with interest on the governmental level.

The totality of the Afghanistan GDP less three percent is provided by American and other foreign origin military and economic aid.  The vast tsunami of money coupled with a lack of financial oversight has given the endemic culture of corruption a massive boost.  This, in turn, has reduced the appeal of both the central government and its foreign sponsors to the average Afghan--particularly if he has not been able to grasp a handful of the goodies as they flowed by.

Last week President Obama delivered the most sickening speech ever heard or read by the Geek.  His we-have-been-bested in Afghanistan remarks were a potpourri of lies and half truths which beggar description and surpass imagination.  Even though he has committed the US to withdrawing its forces prematurely, this was not enough for others within his elite company.  Nancy Pelosi, a not inconsiderable presence even after last November's election, has demanded an even faster schedule of pull out.  In this she has been joined by a number of deficit hawk Republicans.

There is no doubt that the majority of We the People want out of Afghanistan ASAP!  The absence of success, even the absence of a plausible reason for our continued presence could have no other effect.  The Obama administration like its predecessor has never articulated a plausible, rational, understandable set of reasons for our continued efforts in Afghanistan.  Often proclaimed the "good war" or the "necessary war," the US and its allies have never stated a clear goal for our operations, instead producing loads of fine sounding but vapid mood music about democracy, good government, stability, and human rights.

The mood music about Afghanistan as was the case with the identical sounds regarding Iraq have never been believable to or believed by many, even most, of We the People.  Without saying so in a direct, blunt way, it is clear that We  the People have not and do not trust the so-called elite to be honest with us concerning intentions and results in these wars.  The distrust felt by so many of us came forth regarding a military commitment in Libya.  We may have been quite sympathetic with the rebels and their goal of ridding their country of the noxious Gaddafi family, but there was no way we would put our people in harm's way on the behalf of the rebels.

Had Obama or his predecessor been true leaders, they would have put forth believable reasons for our efforts in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Libya.  The failure of each to undertake this basic presidential task successfully joined with the shocks of economic collapse and the reality of the never ending threat of terror to erode the manic mood of decade's beginning.

There is one more reason for the awesome mood shift of the past ten years.  The result of the years of indoctrination in the American educational system from pre-school to grad school.  The blame-America-first generation which emerged from the Sixties has controlled the public educational system for two decades and more now.  The repeated message, built into curricula and handbooks of instructions is and has been profoundly anti-American in its orientation.  The end result is a large and growing segment of We the People is predisposed to think the worst about their country, their government, and the actions of both, past and present alike.

Millions of minds have been conditioned by twelve and more years of education to believe the US had much to apologize for.  The same minds believe the US is not capable of doing good for itself or others in the world.  At the same time they have been oriented to reject the notions of national or cultural exceptionalism--or even superiority.  The US is simply one country among many, no better than any--and worse, much worse than most.  In a real and basic sense there are millions in our midst who have been raised to believe that we deserve nothing but failure and defeat as redress for our earlier sins, our previous arrogance, our long standing exploitation of others.

The synergy between elite and the common folk is perfect.  The elite, a product of the same blame-America-first orientation as their slightly younger non-elite fellow citizens has preached and lectured, exhorted and hectored on the subject of American wrong doing, American unexceptionalism, American exploitation, the beauties of the multicultural and multilateral, the evils of going it alone, of acting to protect and advance national interest.  The success achieved over the past years is attributable not to the persuasiveness or inherent truth of the message but rather to the propensity of the auditors, the children of the past thirty or forty years to believe what they hear and read.

The US and We the People have faced threats and challenges equaling or surpassing those today.  In the past we have not surrendered to either.  We have not succumbed to depression before.  It is different today simply because the "kids" of the Sixties particularly those who were activists of one sort or another became successful beyond their wildest dreams when they took over the educational system of the US over the course of twenty years.  Because of this success, the victory of the blame-America-first ideology, We the People now have lost confidence not only in our institutions and actions but in our very selves.  We no longer trust ourselves and our ability to handle life's challenges and threats.

When looking at the palpable decline of the US, at the national nadir of depression, the old saying of Pogo is more true than ever before--"We have met the enemy and he is us."