The United States has had, as a society, a sense of being ‘special’ ever since people began coming to these shores looking for a place to practice their religion without oppression. The sense of America being a ‘promised land’ has created a way of thinking about this nation that extends far beyond religious definitions.
Since World War I and especially since World War II, this sense of specialness has focused on American democracy as the highest form of democracy, something we are taught to believe it is our duty and our purpose to teach to other nations. We also view our way of life as the highest form of society and culture yet developed, characterized by individual freedom and affluence, and it is also something we believe is to be shared with the rest of the world.
My fellow Americans, it’s time we got over ourselves. We aren’t God’s gift to the world.
The longer we walk around, both as individual citizens and as a nation, pretending that our government’s worst actions are justified because of our ‘specialness,’ the more horrifying and destructive those actions become. The more we convince ourselves that our way of life, with affluence and freedom side-by-side with alienation, ill health and the spiritual emptiness of consumerism, is superior to the way people in other countries live, the more devastating our continued consumption becomes to the world and also to ourselves.
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America is special. We are special in our apparent willingness to allow our government to start wars, repudiate treaties, ignore international justice and torture prisoners in the name of protecting us and our special way of life.
But we’re also special in truly believing in the principles of democracy and freedom, and wanting a better world. We’ve been a nation of hope and possibility since the beginning. Our ancestors fought tirelessly for full rights and dignity for all of us, for the vote, for the protections of the Constitution. We have individual freedom because of those struggles, and we sincerely want to extend that freedom to others around the world.
We’re also special in being, as Robert Jensen has said, ‘citizens of the empire.’ Our nation is building empire around the world with a horrendous level of death and destruction, and doing it in the name of protecting us from terrorism. Our corporate-devised culture is exporting consumerism and a materialist approach to happiness around the world, destroying indigenous cultures and the ecological life support system of the planet in the process. One of the main messages justifying both these efforts is ‘America is special.’
My fellow Americans, we are special – we’re special in that the whole thing hinges on our willingness to let it happen. That means we have in our hands the lever by which to put a stop to it, and reset the course of our nation’s relations with the world and our relations with the people of the world.
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This is what gets me. That half this country doesn’t seem to understand that world opinion has now swung completely against the United States of America. They don’t seem to get that we are now looked on as the empire-building, abusive, arrogant society that Bush has delivered. Is that what those people really want others to believe about this country? Are they so insecure, so frightened, so much the manipulated, angry little white males that have been preened for years into believing they are so superior to everyone else that they really don’t see where the path we are on leads?
Sorry, guys, but the rest of us, the 50% that have known all along where this was going to go aren’t going to let you build that America.
We want our America back.