Stripping the United States' rosy glasses — Professor Hamid Dabashi made a strong case against the alleged niceness of the "American soul"

16 November 2018

We Americans often display lasting ability to miss the point

Consider, for instance, the popular claim that President Trump's hostile character is not representative of the Real America.

Enter Columbia University's professor, Hamid Dabashi

He recently shredded that enthusiastically self-serving perspective:

We may . . . be hard pressed to find a single moment in American history when hateful racism, sexism, militarism, and xenophobia have not been entirely definitive to this "American soul".

Could this "American soul" perhaps be something entirely diabolical, perturbed, vicious, vindictive, monstrously greedy from the get-go?

Campaigning against Donald Trump during the midterm elections, [former President] Obama went out and loudly declared:

"We helped spread a commitment to certain values and principles like the rule of law and human rights and democracy and the notion of the inherent dignity and worth of every individual."

Really? Is that what the US has done around the globe?

Who exactly is this "We"?

Would that "We" include the US president who gave billions of dollars to Israel to slaughter Palestinians with ease and to the Saudis to commit war crimes in Yemen;

and would it include the president before him who left Iraq and Afghanistan in ruins?

We seriously need to examine this American soul business and wonder what makes it so murderously detrimental to world peace . . . .

Trump and Trumpism are as American as mom and apple pie -

an entire racist and xenophobic history of the US is there to verify it.

And if the structurally corrupt Democratic Party under the leadership of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer are supposed to be the alternative to that truth,

then the Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, and Yemenis

brutalised identically under both Republicans and Democrats

may have something to say about the matter.

For eight years Barack Obama was the face of the duplicitous politics of shedding public tears for schoolchildren being shot in the US,

before retiring to a back room at the White House to send more arms to Israel and Saudi Arabia to slaughter Palestinian and Yemeni children.

The moral? — In so long as we allow the militarized Plutocracy to manipulate our minds . . .

. . . we are doing evil, too.

That's Dabashi's point.

After all, if the United States has a national soul, it manifests in what we (as a public) do — or tolerate being done in our name.

The current irony, from my realistically cynical perspective, is that President Trump — in all his personal and professional despicability — has been less murderous, overall, than his two predecessors.

Odd, no?

Essentially, we have Republicans and Democrats trying to outdo each other in semi-quantifiable awfulness — of one kind or another — here and abroad.

That says something indicative about the fundamental nature of American culture.

As a matter of psychic good taste, I would prefer admitting that we're a bunch of pillaging killers. And leave it at that.

The victimized would die, suffer or starve — contentedly knowing that we recognize who we are.

We could legitimately brag about being honest. Rather than nauseatingly hypocritical.

USA, USA, USA. There will always be something for us to happily chant about.

Be sure to lock Jesus in the closet and God in the attic.

We ("fer shure") don't want to hear either of Them chiding us. What's the point to religion and spirit, if we can't ignore both?

Hmmm?

PeteFree.com

Stripping the United States' rosy glasses — Professor Hamid Dabashi made a strong case against the alleged niceness of the "American soul"