Somebody must be up to something!
~

How about this?

Or on a bed of sushi rice.

To quote the late ODB: “Oh, baby, I like it raw…”

There is a joke I could make… oh, but I won’t. No, I’m back to being June Cleaver.

Looks like a meal Atrios would post.
~

And I think Snag misspelled fish schtick.

Next you’re gonna tell us you never ran around carrying scissors when you were little.
~

I’m worried that it could go from ha ha to heh heh to ow ow to f*ck you!!!! real fast.

“Brando likes Rush- that’s the joke- ROASTED!”

So good.

Do any of us, alone?

We’re all breathing the same water together, fish.

None of us on our own can compel the people dumping toxic waste into our fishbowl to stop.
~

It is the visual ideal of the age old classic trollery: “Madam, thou hast a spider-infested cootery!”

And excuse me, but whose ‘derwear are those?? Does fish have cobwebs in his derwear?? Perhaps codwebs.

* Where’s the outrage when you need it?

* A place to have on speed dial when visiting Snag.

* Lunch with a Randian.

* An honest capitalist sign.

* Something to respond to Jennifer’s threats with.

Here is how I would start: “in comments, fish vs. shorebird RE: moral authority of USA has jumped the fireline, and I must bring in to the attention of our reader”

Something like that. I also am convinced dday is a wily otter.

Um, where was I?

Yes, there are many on the left who fall into exceptionalist thinking in annoying ways, but, in certain contexts, there is also the issue of distinguishing exceptionalism from pragmatism. “[R]estor[ing] our moral authority around the world” need mean nothing more than removing the effects of Bush on the country’s reputation, a meaningful endeavor unless you want to argue that Bush did not degrade that reputation. Whether or not the form that reputation took before Bush was necessarily deserved is another question, but it made some kinds of things easier — both good and ill. Do you have an argument that the kinds of actions the US will take without that reputation will hurt the world less than ones taken with it?

In addition, the US is seen as a bellwether. Dictatorial regimes (and, ironically, democracies too) around the world have used the Bush administration’s overt championing of torture, secrecy, surveillance and pre-emptive war as an indication that democratic values are decaying as an ideal and becoming obsolete and thus despotic measures are internationally acceptable. (Mugabe pretty much made this argument explicitly.)

Whatever parts of the US reputation are earned, whatever parts are the sheerest delusion — both on our part and on others’ — the shadow we cast is long enough that that reputation has large scale effects that have little to do with that reputation’s truth or falsity. (It is, I hope, obvious that this is not the same thing as “everyone really trusts us and looks to us for guidance”.)

This country has barely even begun to deal with it’s own internal atrocities, such as lynching, which we can see the legacy of around us (if we’re looking), let alone the effects we’ve had on people half a world away with little shared culture. And, of course, the exceptionalism contributes greatly to this. (And our “winning is the only thing” habits of thought don’t help either.)

What constitutes “justice” with respect to large scale historic crimes is certainly a subject of much debate, but thus far we, as a country, seem largely motivated by the desire to simply avoid the conversation.

Where does one begin unraveling the mutually reinforcing strands of exceptionalism, denial, myopia? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? How do we create a bridge between the human scale effects of our pursuit of abstracted “national interests” and the human need for a self-conception and ideals that allow us to live our lives? Events like Katrina and the financial meltdown shake certain things loose, many of which will be quickly papered over, but which can, if pushed, be made to leave some residue of sociohistorical awareness. (Which our right wing and corporations will set about dismantling the moment progressives’ attention wanders — which it always does, because we have relatively little meaningful dedicated infrastructure for keeping our concerns in the public eye.)

It should not take disasters and misery to change perceptions, however. And really it doesn’t, as the successes of say, anti-global warming and anti-estate tax propaganda make clear.

As far as I can tell, painting the kind of unremitting negative portrait you often do, as if a litany of facts by itself is what changes people’s minds, simply doesn’t work. As if “the truth will set you free” does not easily transmute from metaphor to a kind of vitalism. And it doesn’t work because it is based on an untenable understanding of how human reason functions. This case has been made through historico-philosophical arguments (by John Ralston Saul, or say, Foucault), and recently it has become possible to make the case more directly through the cognitive and neurological sciences, as Lakoff tries to do for the context of concrete politics, and Damásio treats of more abstractly (cf. Looking for Spinoza).

I can never tell how much sense I’m making when I make arguments like this. It’s hard to know which of my premises will appear to come out of left field, and which lines of reasoning are compressed to the point of opaqueness or end up sounding insulting.

With regard to some of your specific points:

1) I think you may somewhat overstate how much agreement there is on how to evaluate the US outside our borders, especially when the distinction is made between the US as a nation and people and the US government as a foreign policy actor. Though this overstatement is, of course, nowhere near as bad as that of the exceptionalists who can’t imagine everyone doesn’t love us.

We not only have the guns and historians, but the imagineers. However much BS was involved in its creation, our reputation as a “beacon of democracy” or what have you, did exist, and functioned as a source of hope in a number of corners of the world — at least as an ideal. That Bush mutilated that ideal has real consequences, however illusory it may have been.

In the context of what dday said, “moral authority” seems a somewhat inflated name for “our allies need to believe we’re not torturing our prisoners and flagrantly disobeying the Geneva conventions in situations where they wouldn’t”. I don’t think our allies are thinking about the School of the Americas in this context, and well, we won’t mention it if they won’t. It’s also not entirely clear what leg the EU has to stand on if they can’t (or won’t) do anything about Britain’s legislated(!) detention and surveillance policies (cf. the report I linked in my Philip Pullman post).

2) With respect to genocide, I was responding specifically to the wording of your statement: “the most effective genocide in history”. As genocides go, it’s hard to be more effective than what happened in Tasmania. Plus, given your link, I assumed you meant the Trail of Tears of specifically, not Native Americans generally. Perhaps not the best of readings, but another reason why I didn’t think scale was central to your point.

It’s hard to tell whether it makes more sense to describe what happened to Native Americans as one genocide or hundreds. From the Europeans’ point of view, it was sort of a unified thing, but no doubt each tribe experienced it in its own way.

3) “Self-interest” like “reason” is hard to square with universalized definitions when brain science is taken into account. And history seems to show that such universalized models tend to do more to produce Bismarcks and Kissengers and Wolfowitzes than prevent them.

I’m not saying that something like what you are calling “brutal self-interest” is not a key point, rather that “self-interest” is not as transparent a term as your rhetorical use of it implies.

4) dday is a he. He’s David Dayen at Calitics.

I have trouble believing that you really think of the issue of moral authority in as limited a way as seems implied by your post

Plover, your points are good, and you are correct in the sentence above. My reaction was specifically to DDay’s assertion that we could “restore our moral authority around the world” re: torture. Perhaps unfairly, I projected onto him/her an attitude of American exceptionalism that is common even amongst a great deal of the self-identifying left. Essentially the idea that we are a generally well-meaning country that occasionally slips up, but everyone really trusts us and looks to us for guidance. The idea that we had something nobel that could be restored is incredibly annoying to me, particularly in regards to America having moral standing on the issue of torture. Most of the examples I gave directly involved torture and/or genocide as key ingredients in our actions. I believe as a country, we have no moral standing in the world on these issues. Outside of the US borders, I doubt I would get a lot of disagreement on this. As I said, we only have bigger guns and better historians.
While I hadn’t considered the Taino which was genocide on a massive scale, a campaign that killed over 10 million people, over a century of relentless expulsion and relocation, and a final population less that 1% of its original size and in possession of only 0.1% of its original lands, may not be “the” but certainly is “one of the” most effective genocides in history.
Europeans are certainly good at it too…

I will take a look at Lakoff, but I have a hard time imagining an interpretation of US actions throughout history that can be seen as anything but brutal self-interest.

Maybe Gone Guppy.

fish:

A Palawa (Tasmania) or Taíno (Hispaniola) or Venetus (? — of the Veneti of Northern Gaul) or Carthaginian — and many more, I’m sure — might object to your choice for “the most effective genocide in history” — the “the” part at least.

Also, moral authority isn’t necessarily something one has or doesn’t have in any absolute sense. Moral authority on what issue? And compared to whom?

Woodrow Wilson could go to Paris in the aftermath of WWI and attempt to bring about the League of Nations as an instrument with the goal of moving the world toward more democratic government and simultaneously ignore those who were working toward racial equality in the US — to the point of having the State Department refuse passports to African-American activists like William Monroe Trotter who sought participation in the peace talks with the goal that racial equality be included in the goals of the League. (Trotter did make it to Paris, and caused a stir in the French press about the treatment of blacks in the US, but did not succeed in getting his ideas heard in the negotiations.)

At the same time as the British were sweeping the Tasmanians off the stage as if tidying up a closet, they were also abolishing slavery and policing the slave trade.

German soldiers during WWII were far more likely to surrender to US troops than to Soviets for good reason.

Would you say that FDR had no moral authority on account of the Japanese internment despite all the other things he did?

Trying to identify arenas in which the US might exert some kind of moral authority does not have to be about denying our manifest atrocities (though many might use it as such). Further, the moral authority of the US (or any similarly democratic nation) derives from more than just the actions of its government. E.g. things like the League of Nations, the International Criminal Court, etc. proposed by US statesmen which our legislature refused to endorse, and things like Trotter’s League of Nations committed to racial equality which never even saw fruition. As a population, our reaction to the tsunami, and conversely our acquiescence to Bush’s torture policies.

I have trouble believing that you really think of the issue of moral authority in as limited a way as seems implied by your post (not that I think I’ve done the topic justice here).

“The idea that the US was ever a moral authority in the world is pure delusion. We are self-interested actors in a world of self-interested actors.”

“Self-interested actors”. I don’t think you’re going to dismantle Kissenger’s house with Kissenger’s tools. I’ll again refer you to Lakoff and Damásio — the latter implicitly, the former explicitly: there’s a chapter of The Political Mind on problems with the idea of “self-interest”. (I recommend John Ralston Saul too.)

Otherwise the movie is over!!

And if fish stops blogging, where will I go for exaggerated semantic disagreements? (Such as the difference between the US earning moral authority and functionally having it. We had it by fiat (or at least hucksterism), just like so much else — at least among all the right people…)

Clif:Ace

Twisty:Vox Day

Oh I forgot:

Mandos:Mark Steyn