Book Review: American Rule

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

 

“How did we get Trump and why is a third of the country in love with him?”

I finished this book yesterday and it attempts to look at Trump through a more ominous but objective view of American History.  

It examines the roots of white supremacy, the outsized influence of Christianity, perception manipulation, and the “Noble Lie” of American exceptionalism. 

Good book, would recommend. 

[Brisketexan 104624]

20 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

the “Noble Lie” of American exceptionalism.

As I grew into my adulthood, and my world travels stacked up, realizing that American Exceptionalism is a huge and embarrassing lie is one of the most transformative moments of my political evolution.

Most of what makes us "exceptional" is either luck/circumstance (it was nice having an ocean between us and our enemies in a war that destroyed much of the world's manufacturing capacity, it's nice having a huge swath of fertile land) or the product of some really nasty shit (all that fertile land?  We didn't exactly acquire it by the most ethical means; a lot of that infrastructure that we built up over centuries?  Yeah, slave labor was very helpful in doing so - as just a couple of examples).

We sell ourselves on the myth that we invented and perfected self-government.  We did neither.  Again, we had the luck of 1) winning a revolution we had no business winning, and 2) that resulted in a "clean slate" to create a system of government that we nonetheless based on numerous other existing ideas and systems.

Is America "great?"  At times, it has been.....but "great" is far from perfect.  In what a lot of people think of as the "great America" period....I wouldn't have been allowed in many hotels and restaurants right here in the state my family has been in for nearly 200 years.  Some of my friends wouldn't have been allowed in any such establishment throughout the American south.  They might have been lynched/murdered if they tried to register black voters.  So, forgive a metric shitton of us if we don't look back on 1950 with great nostalgia.

I love America.  America CAN be good.  America CAN do great things.  When we work together.  When we fight for the values we claim to believe in -- that is, when we don't just talk but commit to action.  Alas, in the past few decades, we have run as fast as we can from that model, from actually working to MAKE America great.  Instead, we gobble up bowls of nutritionally bankrupt revisionist history, happily lurching backwards towards an era that either never was, or never was what we imagined it to be.

Edited October 18, 2020 by Brisketexan

[Biff Tannen 45495]

Bringing the idea of american exceptionalism back to earth is a huge step in progressing. The very idea goes against progression. “We are perfect and the chosen people and nothing needs to change” is destructive to the progression of a democratic society. 

[TwiceHorn 31282]

4 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Bringing the idea of american exceptionalism back to earth is a huge step in progressing. The very idea goes against progression. “We are perfect and the chosen people and nothing needs to change” is destructive to the progression of a democratic society. 

Yeah.  Conservatism needs to revise its dedication to the status quo and more recently, to actual regression.  Applying the brakes to progression is one thing, coming to a full stop and throwing it in reverse are two other things entirely.

Also, I might note that one recent tendency in debunking American exceptionalism to to counter it with "America is exceptionally bad," and that's not true, either.

Edited October 18, 2020 by TwiceHorn

[Brisketexan 104624]

2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Bringing the idea of american exceptionalism back to earth is a huge step in progressing. The very idea goes against progression. “We are perfect and the chosen people and nothing needs to change” is destructive to the progression of a democratic society. 

We elected our awful, loathsome id as president:  Moderator Frank Luntz asked Trump whether he has ever asked God for forgiveness for his actions.  "I am not sure I have."  Or another Trump statement: "One mistake and it's no good, but we just can't make mistakes right? So we don't make mistakes."

When you believe that you are the image of perfection -- effectively, supplanting God and the very idea of God -- then even the mere suggestion of an error is heresy.  The mere suggestion that America is not, in every single respect, "the greatest country in the world," is blasphemous.  It leaves no room for discussion, compromise, and most of all -- improvement.  Why move forward when you've already ARRIVED at nirvana?

Fuck that shit.

[Brisketexan 104624]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Also, I might note that one recent tendency in debunking American exceptionalism to to counter it with "America is exceptionally bad," and that's not true, either.

To the extent that we are (or can be characterized as) "exceptionally bad," I attribute that to the same luck/circumstance, and some recency bias (after all, we're a young nation).  It's not like the Brits weren't busy shitting on indigenous people all over the globe for centuries, too, for example.  And hell, most any evil/crime you can attribute to America (native american genocide and slavery are easy ones), you can and should attribute that to the places that America and Americans were made of -- English, Dutch, German.....that's where our values were born, and made the trip over here.  And, I mean, let's be fair....Germany can point and laugh at us today (and they can, they really can), but dude.....their crimes are still alive in living memory.

We're not exceptionally bad, in general.  We are and have been bad in ways that most people/nations have been bad, at one point or another in history.  And a lot of the ways in which we have been bad -- colonialism, racism, indigenous oppression and extermination, well, enlightened Europe.....

 

[Biff Tannen 45495]

23 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

To the extent that we are (or can be characterized as) "exceptionally bad," I attribute that to the same luck/circumstance, and some recency bias (after all, we're a young nation).  It's not like the Brits weren't busy shitting on indigenous people all over the globe for centuries, too, for example.  And hell, most any evil/crime you can attribute to America (native american genocide and slavery are easy ones), you can and should attribute that to the places that America and Americans were made of -- English, Dutch, German.....that's where our values were born, and made the trip over here.  And, I mean, let's be fair....Germany can point and laugh at us today (and they can, they really can), but dude.....their crimes are still alive in living memory.

We're not exceptionally bad, in general.  We are and have been bad in ways that most people/nations have been bad, at one point or another in history.  And a lot of the ways in which we have been bad -- colonialism, racism, indigenous oppression and extermination, well, enlightened Europe.....

 

We are all just monkeys trying to figure out our world. Humans as a whole are deeply flawed and occasionally we have some really remarkable individuals and achievements, but as a whole, just dumb monkeys. 

[Brisketexan 104624]

15 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

We are all just monkeys trying to figure out our world. Humans as a whole are deeply flawed and occasionally we have some really remarkable individuals and achievements, but as a whole, just dumb monkeys. 

And we have chosen to go the "poo flinging monkey" route instead of Dr. Zira.  And we are, as expected, covered head to toe in shit.

[David Dennison 18658]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah.  Conservatism needs to revise its dedication to the status quo and more recently, to actual regression.  Applying the brakes to progression is one thing, coming to a full stop and throwing it in reverse are two other things entirely.

Also, I might note that one recent tendency in debunking American exceptionalism to to counter it with "America is exceptionally bad," and that's not true, either.

America is exceptionally bad in a disturbingly large number of areas when compared to its peers.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

The book is rather harsh on the founding fathers in that they essentially set up an aristocracy and created an illusion of democracy (or flawed by design to advantage the wealthy), another one of Plato’s “Noble lies.”

Edited October 18, 2020 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

3 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Bringing the idea of american exceptionalism back to earth is a huge step in progressing. The very idea goes against progression. “We are perfect and the chosen people and nothing needs to change” is destructive to the progression of a democratic society. 

The problem with American Exceptionalism is it is a religion and part of the Christian mythology in this country.  How dare you question god’s plan? You see where this is going... 

[formermav43 4599]

8 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The problem with American Exceptionalism is it is a religion and part of the Christian mythology in this country.  How dare you question god’s plan? You see where this is going... 

Well I see where it’s gone from a Christian perspective: idolatry.

[gmr548 16513]

I'll definitely read this. Jared Yates Srxton wrote a book called The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters onn Your Shore, documenting his experience covering the Trump campaign. Excellent book. He's a gifted political journalist.

[gmr548 16513]

America is exceptionally bad in a disturbingly large number of areas when compared to its peers.

To the point that it's unreasonable to call us peers of some of these places.

 

[TwiceHorn 31282]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

To the extent that we are (or can be characterized as) "exceptionally bad," I attribute that to the same luck/circumstance, and some recency bias (after all, we're a young nation).  It's not like the Brits weren't busy shitting on indigenous people all over the globe for centuries, too, for example.  And hell, most any evil/crime you can attribute to America (native american genocide and slavery are easy ones), you can and should attribute that to the places that America and Americans were made of -- English, Dutch, German.....that's where our values were born, and made the trip over here.  And, I mean, let's be fair....Germany can point and laugh at us today (and they can, they really can), but dude.....their crimes are still alive in living memory.

We're not exceptionally bad, in general.  We are and have been bad in ways that most people/nations have been bad, at one point or another in history.  And a lot of the ways in which we have been bad -- colonialism, racism, indigenous oppression and extermination, well, enlightened Europe.....

 

It is probably unfair to compare American to its western European "peers."  Unfair to the peers, I mean.

Just about every civilization that has ever existed that began to expand its borders engaged in genocide and slavery.  And those that didn't expand their borders did it internally.

We're just human nature writ large.

[formermav43 4599]

7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It is probably unfair to compare American to its western European "peers."  Unfair to the peers, I mean.

Just about every civilization that has ever existed that began to expand its borders engaged in genocide and slavery.  And those that didn't expand their borders did it internally.

We're just human nature writ large.

And “every civilization” includes Native Americans too. They were killing and enslaving each other long before they ever encountered a European. But the myth of the noble savage is hard to shake.

[Brisketexan 104624]

And “every civilization” includes Native Americans too. They were killing and enslaving each other long before they ever encountered a European. But the myth of the noble savage is hard to shake.

And yep, that’s the point. We aren’t special. The euros aren’t special. The native Americans aren’t special.

We are all greedy, tribal, murderous fucks.

Our species name should be Homo Homocidus.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11668]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

And yep, that’s the point. We aren’t special. The euros aren’t special. The native Americans aren’t special.

We are all greedy, tribal, murderous fucks.

Our species name should be Homo Homocidus.

maybe you, nancyboy

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

He does these lectures which are arguably better than the book b/c reading is hard but in this one he’s drawing on the connections between the confederacy to the modern Trump movement.  Worth a listen IMO. 

[Macanudo 12927]

I kind of like his message but that dude needs to invest in some PowerPoint skills and lose the white board.

[washparkhorn 9935]

He is an interesting writer. This goes beyond partisanship. Both parties were co-opted by the policies of the Powell Memo. https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

Here is a recent opinion piece by the author, with reality based edits of his ideas. He is on the edge of understanding and communicating the problem, but he needs to remove the plank from his eye to see the whole picture. Thanks for the book suggestion. 

Spoiler

How decades-old conservative 'counter intelligentsia' paved the way for Trump doctor's partisan propaganda [The Powell Memo is the playbook - and it has been used by "both sides" but the Repubs champion it out loud, while the Democratic Party uses it and blames the other party]

Last Sunday morning, the medical team supervising President Trump's care at Walter Reed Medical Center returned to the microphones to address misinformation they had divulged the previous day. The president's physician, Dr. Sean Conley, admitted he had obfuscated the fact that Trump had been administered oxygen and explained his misleading statements by saying he was "trying to reflect the upbeat attitude" of Trump and "didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction…"

This bizarre episode capped off a truly strange weekend in which the condition of the president of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world, was puzzled over as one conflicting account after another battled for precedence. It was reminiscent of the propaganda-laden crises of authoritarian states and failed nations, times in which leaders were either perfectly healthy or functionally dead and crises either under control or raging unabated.

The disturbing truth is that this seemingly inexplicable moment is the result of a decades-long war over the very nature of reality within America. [Correct - Most Americans live in a manufactured reality] I had struggled to understand this before writing "American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People" and finding that modern American history has been dominated by this conflict and the Republican Party's [Establishment's] insistence on constructing an alternate reality to aid in its consolidation of power.

It is no accident that the Republican Party has evolved into Trumpism. After decades of manipulation [by the Establishment], including the vilification of academics and experts and an all-out onslaught on science, it was sadly inevitable for the GOP [this iteration of the Republican Party] to reach the point where even the medical condition of the president is subject to relentless propaganda and subjective pseudo-science.

In the post-Vietnam era, this project was best summarized by [the Powell Memo, by Justice Powell] as later interpreted by William E. Simon, a businessman who served as Richard Nixon's secretary of the Treasury, who wrote in his influential 1978 book "A Time for Truth" that liberals had so dominated cultural conversation with their array of academics and experts that it was necessary for conservatives to create their own "powerful counterintelligentsia" [as earlier planned by the framers and adopters of the Powell Memo] This followed on the heels of the civil rights, free speech and antiwar movements that found purchase on college campuses and among academic circles in the 1960s and '70s. What followed [the Powell Memo] was a backlash against the academy itself and a desperate attempt to forge an alternate [permanent] establishment that would protect Republican Establishment power and capitalist [Internation Capital's] interests.

This would lead to the creation of an army of right-wing [and Centrist] think tanks like the [Center for American Progress, the Federalist Society,] Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, bodies that offered opinions troubling scientific and academic consensus while preparing pundits to challenge experts in the public arena. Corporate and private donations were mobilized to tempt experts into espousing anti-establishment views. Even while major corporations internally distributed their own studies of scientifically-proven threats like climate change and carcinogenic products like cigarettes, large-scale discrediting operations were undertaken to inject doubt in the public mind.

To assist this effort [and consistent with the Powell Memo], the American right [and Centrist organizations] founded a powerful media operation that began with print and moved to the airwaves with talk radio, cable news and eventually websites and social media networks dedicated to proliferating misinformation. With the death of the FCC's "fairness doctrine" in 1987 — a rule that had guaranteed equal time to opposing viewpoints in the media — the right [and centrist establishment] was free to construct a self-sustaining, impenetrable alternate reality its supporters and adherents could reside within, beyond the reach of experts, science or even a passing conflicting opinion.

There is a line to be drawn from Simon's urge to push "non-egalitarian" voices in order to protect Republican and moneyed interests to our peculiar moment. The reliance on politically favorable opinions and personally advantageous pseudo-science has given room to misinformation, disinformation and the proliferation of conspiracy theories that "feel real" to people while existing solely as weaponized narratives. 

It is this war on science and expertise that gave rise to attacks on scientists urging the wearing of masks, and to the "miracle cures" of hydroxychloroquine, UV light and household cleansers, not to mention the empty promise by a president — who had been caught on tape admitting he knew better — that a generational pandemic might simply solve itself, saying, "One day, it's like a miracle, it will simply disappear."

But with more than 214,000 deaths so far during the coronavirus pandemic and the disastrous consequences of climate change as evident as the flaming maelstroms on the West Coast — not to mention an ailing president who is either all better, improving or gravely ill, or maybe all three at once — it is time to recognize the manipulation that has occurred and the necessity to move beyond a war on objective reality. As perhaps even President Trump's partisan doctors could be made to admit, propaganda simply does not exist at the microscopic level.

The Powell memorandum is the playbook for the current political reality. President Obama admits the Washington Consensus (another term one should know) is the cause. 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by washparkhorn