We’re so wonderful!
And all those foreigners’d better get wonderful, too — or
else!
By JOSEPH AUDIE
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As a knowledgeable friend explained to me in 2008, it is extremely difficult to reach many traditional [Republican] voters, who decide on which candidate to choose on the basis of how much he sounds like the typical GOP product they've come to expect. So they listen for a speech that says, "I love America, Americans are the awesomest of the awesome, we need jobs, Obama is bad, war war war — and did I say Americans were the most awesome people ever, in the most awesome country, and the only reason anyone might not be thrilled with our government is because of our sheer awesomeness?""Ron Paul and Iowa," by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., January 5, 2012
Americans are supremely confident of their own greatness, their own enlightenment: certain that they are an example to the rest of the world, that America is a shining city on a hill. And Americans are supremely confident of the littleness, the stupidity, and the dark evil of other countries, especially countries such as Iran. America always has completely scientific, moral, legal, and cogent justifications for whatever it does. Conversely, countries such as Iran never have a good reason for anything that they do — they're just crazy.
Put simply, in a great country such as America folks do wonderful things, things that the rest of the world should be forced to emulate; while in pathetic little countries such as Iran, folks do all kinds of irrational and sinister things, things the rest of the world should be forced to avoid. Let's take an obvious example of that. It's a wonderful thing to be like America and build the first nuclear weapons, under cover of secrecy, and use them vengefully against a defeated civilian population. That much should be clear! In stark contrast, it's a terrible thing to be like Iran and have a nuclear-power program that is under voluntary scrutiny by international observers. That should be clear as well. But such an example of American rectitude and Iranian hypocrisy and evil is too complicated for this essay.
Indeed, who cares about the specific details of what ignoble, Dark Age countries such as
Iran do, anyway? Instead, let's focus on some specific examples of American nobility and
greatness. Let's talk endlessly about how great America is, so we can feel great about
ourselves. Let's list some of the obviously rational, always justifiable, morally beautiful,
divinely sanctioned, and wonderful practices that make America the greatest country in
history — practices that backward countries such as Iran should be forced to
adopt.
An obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to charge and arrest 5-year-old children for vicious crimes against helpless adult males. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to forcibly shut down dangerous business operations such as children's lemonade stands. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to forcibly shut down dangerous and subversive black-market operations such as garage sales and yard sales. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to forcibly prevent inherently irresponsible parents from sending their children to school with no doubt toxic lunches. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to forcibly prevent inherently wicked, incompetent, and selfish neighbors from babysitting each other's kids. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to forcibly prevent selfish people from growing dangerous and unsightly vegetable gardens in their front yard. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to forcibly prevent selfish and dangerous property owners from slaughtering farm animals on their property. Such a practice, commonplace throughout American history, is just too icky now. (Of course, slaughtering deer, butchering chicken and beef, and handling raw fish on your property is just fine — at least for now.) And Heaven forbid you should produce raw milk and cheese; that could result in a military-style SWAT assault on your property. Let the world glory in such obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practices, practices they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions.
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and their enforcers will not hesitate to spray chemical irritants into the eyes of peaceful protesters. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed on them by America's imperial legions. (See YouTube.)
Another obviously wonderful thing about America is that our enlightened leaders and
their enforcers will not hesitate to beat a harmless homeless man to death. And no, Virginia, it's not an isolated
incident. Let the world glory in such an obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and
progressive practice, a practice they should strenuously seek to emulate or have imposed
on them by America's imperial legions.
The preceding is but a sampling of American exceptionalism. Indeed, the list of obviously beautiful, humane, liberating, and progressive practices we enjoy here in America — practices that should be exported to cruel and evil lands such as Iran at the barrel of a gun — could be multiplied endlessly. Sex-based discrimination on driving in Saudi Arabia — obviously unjustifiable. Age-based discrimination on driving, alcohol use, smoking, and voting in America — obviously justifiable. Certain other countries are always on the wrong side of history and America is always on the right side of history — no discussion or debate required. No matter what America does, she's the greatest nation in history — it's that simple.
Let's briefly consider a few more obvious examples of American greatness — things that would be abhorred by the Founding Fathers, true, but that are enthusiastically embraced in North Korea: We are blessed with a centralized government that submits to no higher authority, a chimerical two-party system, a landscape dotted by armed checkpoints and random security-screening stations, warrantless search and seizure, asset forfeiture, militarized police, the denial of due process, indefinite detention, secret rendition, licensing requirements for everything, a sprawling gulag, the proud and open celebration of torture and assassination, undeclared wars of aggression and imperial conquest, a supine media that willfully serve power, and state schools that teach us how wonderful all of it is.
Happy to report, our public servants and their intrepid advisors have seen to it that all of it is justified by ideology, codified in law, and implemented in practice — just as in Nazi Germany, another progressive country that always focused on National Greatness. What cause for celebration; what cause for self-congratulation; what cause for emulation! Of course, America has a a much larger prison population and a far higher incarceration rate than the world's dictatorships, police states, and Islamic theocracies, including the monstrous Iran, and that's yet another grand feather in our cap. I dare anyone who doubts such obvious examples of American greatness to read articles by conservative columnist and former Reagan official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and liberal attorney Glenn Greenwald, two chroniclers of American exceptionalism from either end of the political spectrum. (See links below.) Indeed, their glowing commentary on the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act and its domestic detention provisions will warm the hearts of true, red-blooded Americans, and strengthen their reflexive celebration of America's plunge into a totalitarian abyss. And we can only anticipate the childlike enthusiasm Dr. Roberts and Mr. Greenwald will have for the Stop Online Piracy Act and the push for the federal beast to seize control of the Internet, along the lines of what we see in communist China. Such are the boundless freedoms that our enemies hate; such is the freedom that, as so-called conservatives are forever reminding us, isn't free.
Mind you, dear reader, we haven't even touched on the moral, social, and cultural greatness of America — our stratospheric divorce rate, falling birth rate, penchant for fornication, plummeting marriage rate, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, massive porn industry, and juvenile obsession with so-called reality TV. Indeed, the recent 93-7 decision by the U.S. Senate — an obviously august body of learned statesmen dedicated to the common weal — to decriminalize sex acts between man and beast in the U.S. military provides yet another striking example of our moral leadership. The success of the game show "Wipeout," which brilliantly builds on the game show "Ow, My Balls!" (premiered in the movie "Idiocracy"), further testifies to America's cultural treasures, treasures the rest of the world should be forced to adopt.
As Providence would have it, I awoke the other day to a particularly exquisite example of
American high culture — the eternal debate on the telescreen about Whoopi Goldberg's flatulence.
The list of our cultural, social, and moral achievements could be multiplied endlessly for
all to revel in, but that's best left for another essay. To summarize: Having eviscerated and
rejected the tradition of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution and Bill of Rights, and all manner of common sense, America stands as the
best country in history, a shining example of perfection for the rest of the world, especially
Iran, to envy and emulate — under threat of violent force, of course. This much we
have demonstrated.
We are a great and sainted people, a people uniquely blessed, a people who obsess over the
specks in the eyes of other countries while remaining oblivious to the planks in the eyes
of America — just as the Prince of Peace would have us do. So let's continue to focus obsessively on the poor
decorating in our neighbor's house while totally ignoring the crumbling foundations of
our own. And all the while, let's continue with our unthinking, ritualized chanting about
how America is "the greatest country in history." For to brag about how great you are is
always clear evidence of true greatness. That's the attitude — indeed, the essential
guiding ideology and civic religion — of all great countries such as America. Ω
January 12, 2012
Published in 2012 by WTM
Enterprises.
Some recent articles by Glenn Greenwald"Three myths about the detention bill"
"The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying"
"The killing of Awlaki's 16-year-old son"
Some recent articles by Paul Craig Roberts
"The Outlook for the New Year"
"The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples"
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