Covid-19 and the problems of American exceptionalism - Dr Jeanne Morefield
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- Опубликовано: 25 июл 2024
- Dr Jeanne Morefield (POLSIS, University of Birmingham) offers some insight into how America's history of exceptionalism is impacting on the response to the coronavirus pandemic on a global scale.
Dr you gave ine of the best descriptions of our problems I ever heard and in a short amount of time.
Preach and thank you.
You nailed it professor.
As a non-American, though a neighbor and not a foe, I do not find this difficult to swallow. Failures of American statecraft on the world stage have been all too evident during the past 20 years. For me the point of disillusionment came in 2004, by which time the folly of the Second Gulf War had become all too obvious. Further research convinced me that the ethics of the CIA and former Soviet KGB had been roughly on the same level. Other para-state institutions like NASA had also involved the American public in grand deception.
However US hegemony was never unacceptable to me as Soviet hegemony would have been, or as Chinese hegemony will be, if it successfully takes root on a comparable scale. I have no doubt that a parallel 'Chinese exceptionalism' motivates the Xi regime, which retains only nominal and tenuous links with 'communist' ideology.
Why this reservation in condemning the US? Because it still displays a commitment to freedom of individual conscience, which is lacking in so many illiberal societies. A liberal economic order is not necessarily incompatible with authoritarian or even totalitarian rule, which helps explain the two-faced nature of US interventionism. Yet at home Americans enjoy a freedom of public expression which is unthinkable in many places, it might be perceived as a bit permissive by today's global standards.
As a Christian I would note that the USA does not persecute any branch of the Church; on the contrary, weird and heretical cults are allowed to proliferate. This I take as a sign of cultural permissiveness, not secular indifference per se. On the other hand many illiberal regimes either persecute Christianity or attempt to regulate its expression through State interference and legal restrictions. North Korea imprisons or kills Christians who are found out.
No matter how 'advanced' a country, no matter how technically proficient its leadership (and the Kim dynasty DID allow millions of their citizens to starve despite aid from various international sources), there is no justification for such policy. Questions of First, Second, or third World status do not enter in.
Unfortunately there are some 'American exceptionalists' who would conflate civil religion with Christianity. Perhaps the best rebuke is to remind them that NOT A VERSE in the Bible speaks explicitly of America.
For those who would trumpet the 'exceptional' virtues of ANY nation, it says:
(Romans 3:23) 'For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.'
The first time I visiting America in 2014 I flew home to Australia stunned at the third world country I had just visited.
The U.S.A. is larger, more powerful, more industrialised and far more diverse than Australia. Did you visit every state in the U.S.A.? Alaska? Hawaii? The U.S.A. is 27% larger in size than Australia. The population of Australia is ~23.2 million people. 303.4 million more people live in the U.S.A. than Australia.
Blackwattle
It depends, I suppose, on which America you are viewing. But I sense considerable decline since the 1980s, when I studied there for several years. I refer to widening economic disparity and above all coarsening of the tone of public discourse. Yet these are not uniquely American phenomena. I'm sure that some will oppose what I say, citing legal gains for this and that group.
During the late '70s I had been on exchange visits to two East European satellite countries, and I wasn't favorably impressed by living conditions-----not that it mattered much to me as a traveling student. A sense of emotional repression among the people bothered me more. This I attributed to a Soviet-imposed political system, for Americans were NOT the only imperialist threat in those days.
When a black American friend invited me to his family home for Thanksgiving, that home seemed like an oasis in an urban desert. The neighborhood looked dilapidated and empty. My friend refused to let me walk alone. In Prague or Budapest there had been no such risk. But we know about the Second Amendment, the 'right' of US citizens to 'bear arms.'
As a Christian I cannot reconcile current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment with the non-violent teaching of Jesus. They say, 'in God we trust', but widespread civilian gun ownership is a strange way to show it.
@Marc Phelan
What a worthless comment.