A writer-friend whose work I admire recently asked about my politics and I thought, what a potent question at this point in time. We live in an era of extraordinary crises, which function less as the “great leveler” and more the great revealer – that is, they have opened wide the Western body politic to expose how the organs actually function, how the systems actually connect. It isn’t a pretty sight.
Hard times for bedtime stories and bromides, certainly; a lot of scales are falling from a lot of eyes.1 The best answer I could offer my friend, joking but not joking, was “America is the Great Satan and Canada is Satan’s Little Helper”. ATGS-CSLH-ism, perhaps? Doesn’t make for a good pin or bannerhead.
In any case, the conversation had been simmering on the stove at the back of my mind when, as occasionally happens abroad, I crossed paths with an American here in Cairo. Before long, they (woke, liberal) lectured me in a rather insulting way and, in the days that followed, the two incidents – the question, the lecture – began to connect and consolidate in my thoughts. Sometimes creativity is simply an act of exorcism.
How fitting, I felt. One way or another, when the American is in the room, you’re going to get a lecture: about how taking control of your resources via Marxist revolution or social-democratic reform is a no-no, for example, because “capitalism is good” or “states are bad”; about how, if you prioritize collective social relations over maximum individual accumulation and expression, your people are unfree; about how it is wrong to resist violence with violence (that’s for Americans), or wrong to eat meat, drive cars, or use plastic (that’s for Americans, too).
It is completely consistent, within the logic of the American mind, to challenge the status quo on race, gender or capitalism, and yet, when the subject shifts one degree of latitude beyond the border, you might as well be talking to someone from the CIA or the NED. America bombs Tehran, for example, turning the sky black with toxic clouds of oil, and the American (feminist, activist) declares, “I support the people of Iran, not their government!” – a distinction US bombs and sanctions do not make, have never made.2
Meanwhile, in composing the essay or posting the comment, the American misses not the elephant in the room, but the fact that they are the elephant. The British once boasted that the sun never set on their domain; the US operates 750 military bases, but nobody can connect the dots. Unlike the devil, whose “finest trick”, according to Baudelaire, is to “persuade you that he does not exist”, the American trick is to persuade themselves that they are not the problem.
For the American is, of course, innocent. They voted for the losing team, led by the other (Black, female) imperialist. Or, they voted for the winning team, but have been betrayed by their leader (orange, rapist). Or, it doesn’t matter anyhow, because a cabal-like sect of wealthy white people has waylaid the country, unused to war and violence, into making war and being violent. At least Narcissus had a mirror.
What can we expect from them, then, other than slogans and sleight of hand? Variations on vote for the other person, shop for the other thing? In place of sophistication, we get the substance of Hollywood blockbusters: from the left, One Battle after Another; from liberals, [insert any Aaron Sorkin film]; from the right, American Sniper. Always parochial, usually proud, and – deliberately or not – braced by a sturdy belief in the shining city on a hill and the power of the almighty dollar.
Sure, they admit, America occasionally goes astray (centuries of chattel slavery, “blunders” abroad that last decades and leave hundreds of thousands dead) – but, they insist, the arc is long and it bends towards justice; the Republic’s intentions are noble, its potential pure, its foundations sound. Each new day brings morning again in America, where the slate is clean and the past is a solid object.
For my part, I’ve come to regard American political opinion as a kind of curiosity, the way you might consider the manuscript of a legal dispute from Byzantium. Relatively interesting, rather insular, mostly irrelevant.
To dismount from my high horse for a moment, two criticisms of the above come readily to mind. For one, harsh words – to which I respond, yes, it’s hyperbole. More testament than argument.
But consider this: Every other day, for over one thousand days, a shipment of weapons has left the United States bound for Israel, and from there, for a tent in Gaza, or an apartment building in Beirut, or an elementary school in Minab. Consider this, too: Not long after the campaign of annihilation began, Israeli officials expressed surprise that then-President Biden had no leash; they’d expected, perhaps, only a few weeks of slaughter as in previous years. There aren’t words harsh enough.
The second, more substantial critique: I’m Canadian, and it is a national pastime to point a finger south to lay blame on or make fun of our neighbours. Indeed, a popular television show had a long-running segment called “Talking to Americans”, in which a comedian compiled funny video clips by simply – talking to Americans. We do this, in my view, to avoid looking at our own reflection.
Point taken. On the global scale, however, it doesn’t particularly matter what Canadians do or say – that would require sovereignty. Though in our bedtime stories we play the righteous middle power, our elbows ever up, Canada’s actual role is more like the “northernmost gas station of Western imperialism”, as a friend put it online. The recent past provides the proof: Amidst economic warfare and threats of annexation, the best the Canadian political imagination can do is buy French’s ketchup or Hawkins cheezies in place of American brands.3
To be clear, I agree: To write about any Western country is to deal in differences of degree, not kind. But degree matters. Not because of feelings white, Western or otherwise; it matters to what is happening, and what is to be done.
- It’s also become very clear who is and who is not “morally stupid”, as explained in a must-read essay from Abdaljawad Omar. ↩︎
- On colonialism, they might as be Andrew Jackson. Their country accelerates the enclosure and exploitation of indigenous land, and the American (anarchist, YouTuber) proclaims that Land Back is neither consistent nor inherently good, and each iteration must be evaluated on its own merits. (This example and the one above I encountered within thirty minutes online, without looking.) ↩︎
- On that note, I recommend this essay from Q. Anthony Ali: “Get It through Your Heads: America is a Terrible Trading Partner.” ↩︎