10 May 2011 Kipling to Dylan to who's on first ?
Richard Cohen Opinion Writer Washington PostThe myth of American exceptionalism
“The term “American exceptionalism” has been invoked by Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and, of course, Sarah Palin. I would throw in Michele Bachmann, since if she has not said it yet, she soon will because she says almost anything. She is no exception to the cult of American exceptionalism.156 “The phrase has an odd history. As Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz reminds me, American exceptionalism once applied to the hostility that the American worker — virtually alone in the industrialized world — had toward socialism. Now, though, it is infused with religious meaning, which makes it impervious to analysis. Once you say God likes something, who can quibble? “Let no person think there is not a certain kind of American exceptionalism that I believe in and cherish. It is our astounding capacity for tolerance. European history is a sad, sanguinary tale — massacres, pogroms, population transfers and genocides. Most European nations have rid themselves of pesky minorities. The Germans of Hungary are gone. So, too, the Poles of Germany and, of course, the Jews of almost everywhere. The United States has not been perfect in this regard. The American Indians were virtually extirpated and African Americans suffered plenty. Yet the melting pot — aided by lots of land — turned out to be more true than false. We live among each other, often blissfully ignorant of religion or ethnicity.
It turns out, however, that some of those most inclined to exalt American exceptionalism are simply using the imaginary past to defend their cultural tics — conventional marriage or school prayer or, for some odd reason, a furious antipathy to the notion that mankind has contributed (just a bit) to global warming. Their enemy is what Gingrich calls “the secular left” — people who not only approve of gay marriage but also apparently don’t fly charter as he does.
The huge role of religion in American politics is nothing new but always a matter for concern nonetheless. In the years preceding the Civil War, both sides of the slavery issue claimed the endorsement of God. The 1856 Republican convention concluded with a song that ended like this: “We’ve truth on our side/ We’ve God for our guide.” Within five years, Americans were slaughtering one another on the battlefield.
Cassi Creek:
Hymn Before Action
1896
“The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions --
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!”
Kipling’s works are full of the belief that England sits as England did by dint of divine approval and sometime intercession. Whether Kipling believed this “most-favored status” to be true or not, it is safe to assume that, the common British subject felt it to be true. As the small city-state of Rome by skillful use of its legions, became the dominant military and political force for thousands of years; so did the small island nation of England, by achieving nearly invincible naval power, come to be the premier colonial power of the industrial age. From the defeat of the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Gravelines, 8 August 1588, to the opening shots of WWII the Royal Navy was the dominant presence in the world’s oceans. The Royal Navy and Army established a Pax Britannica in many parts of the world. They were aided by the common perception that divine power had selected England to be the model nation all others should emulate.
The Widow of Windsor
“Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,
For 'alf o' Creation she owns:
We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,
An' we've salted it down with our bones.
(Poor beggars! -- it's blue with our bones!)
Hands off o' the sons o' the Widow,
Hands off o' the goods in 'er shop,
For the Kings must come down an' the Emperors frown
When the Widow at Windsor says "Stop"!
(Poor beggars! -- we're sent to say "Stop"!)
Then 'ere's to the Lodge o' the Widow,
From the Pole to the Tropics it runs --
To the Lodge that we tile with the rank an' the file,
An' open in form with the guns.
(Poor beggars! -- it's always they guns!)”
With the defeat of Spain by the United States, Kipling obviously saw reason to afford the U.S. comparable status to that of Great Britain in world affairs. He signaled the emerging power of the United States in verse, of course:
The White Man's Burden
1899
THE UNITED STATES AND THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
“Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.”
The United States expanded internally driven by the dogma of Manifest Destiny, believing that it was the divine intent for European immigrants and their offspring to obliterate the Native American tribal populations, and to occupy the continent from east to west. American religious leaders and churches, other than, perhaps, the Quakers, found little flaw in a national policy that allowed them to attempt to control behaviors and to attempt to expand their power beyond our coasts by sending missionaries out and then demanding U.S. government intervention when those missionaries ran afoul of existing customs and laws.
Our industrial plants and our immense resources, along with foreign investment allowed us to quickly rival older nations industrial output and to attempt dominance in the Western hemisphere. Repeated gold and silver strikes, millions of acres of arable land, and various victories paved the way to belief in the divine nature of the U.S. when compared to other nations. As we entered the Cold War and became the dominant western power in opposition to the USSR, our various clergy and political demagogues found numerous ways and all too frequent opportunity to depict the U.S. as “God’s answer to the “atheistic communists.” We allowed them to modify the “Pledge of Allegiance” to make it Christian friendly. We granted tax-exempt status to anything calling itself a church if it opposed “atheistic communism.” And as the rest of the world continued to climb out from beneath the lingering power of the Christian churches and to remove them from any political power, the United States began marching backwards, allowing dogma to replace science and watching too many of our populace fall into the belief that there is a supernatural power which has nothing to do beyond overseeing athletic events, game show contests, and the random military conflict.
Kipling’s belief was more political in nature than religious. However, in the U.S. the two lines of view became badly mingled. Religion assumed far more power than it should ever have had as the less well-educated chose to trust in the supernatural they could not see rather than the scientific world they failed to understand.
The torch Kipling wrote about lit another when Bob Dylan penned, “With God On Our Side.”
With God On Our Side
“Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that the land that I live in
Has God on its side”
The concept of American exceptionalism has been carefully and skillfully distorted by politicians and theological powers to appeal to those who will most readily accept the premise. Beginning with the Nixon Southern strategy, appeals to racism, xenophobia, and belief in a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible have built a voter base responsible for the disastrous sequence Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush. The continued appeal to this base seems to be likely to deliver sufficient opposition to realistic plans to reform health care, to restore educational policy to something that can provide the great public schools we once were so proud of, and to reverse the anti-intellectual bent in our current culture.
We need to realize that we are merely one in a long line of dominant cultures that have existed since civilization began. What we make of this nation is what it will be. Prayers for football players and from political leaders will not change the course of history any more than did all the supplications offered on the 27th of April 2011 in vain attempts to effect the fluid mechanics that drive tornadic storms.
American exceptionalism? We have a lot of land and far too many people. We have a lot of unemployed and far too few jobs. We have floods in the Midwest and thousands of homeless people in the southeast. I don’t see any Deus Ex Machina drying up the flood waters so that some basketball player can throw the winning basket that reforms the Afghan views about the treatment of women. Your mileage may vary.
