Suggested reading

[solarbird]

Here, you'll want to read this article in The American Conservative¹: The Fall of Modernity: Has the American narrative authored its own undoing? (Andrew Sullivan linked to it earlier today.) Despite the paleoconservative slant, in my first reading I think it's one of the better statements of how the Endless War works to wreck both American culture and actively works against its supposed - or, at least, stated - goals. I agree strongly with some of the author's conclusions (legitimisation, elevation, narrative) and disagree strongly on others (can narrative be changed, is there a meaningful policy path that could be effective in the longer term, several others to smaller degrees)². A few key areas, I think, are left inadequately considered - he does not call out torture explicitly, and I think arguably fails in ignoring the question of control over oil... but the former rolls up into the rest of the point, and the latter could easily be a sound goal he considers to have been subverted.

Anyway, I have some relevant thoughts of my own in relation to this article about the role of energy, population - in particular, control over reproduction - and the spread of rational thought which this margin is too small to contain, but which I will attempt to describe after my biology midterm.

Here's the first paragraph of the article; I recommend clicking through for the rest.

The Fall of Modernity
Has the American narrative authored its own undoing?
February 26, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
by Michael Vlahos

http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_02_12/feature.html

We are losing our wars in the Muslim world because our vision of history is at odds with reality. This is a well-established condition of successful societies, a condition that inevitably grows more worrisome with time and continuing success. In fact, what empires have most in common is how their sacred narratives come to rule their strategic behavior—and rule it badly. In America’s case, our war narrative works against us to promote our deepest fear: the end of modernity.

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1: No, I'm not a fan of the magazine, and particularly I'm not a fan of its demifascist asshat co-founder, Pat Buchanan. You know it's gotten pretty bad when I'm linking to his former magazine.
2: If you think about the paleoconservative blind spots, you should be able to extrapolate most of these out - as well as some of the things I don't have time for right now.

Comments

[avram]

Buchanan was a co-founder? Damn. I've occasionally run into interesting stuff in American Conservative. Like the article that first drew the magazine to my attention, an interview with Robert Pape about the motivations of suicide terrorists. ("The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.")

[solarbird]

He split with them after 2004, I think over the staff's refusal to endorse George Bush's re-election.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

The paleo-cons, as much as I disagree with them, have my respect. They have a principled position and consistent worldview, and they attempt to apply those principles to the real world with integrity. I'll take them over the power-mongering, corrupt, and despicable neo-cons every time.

It's a good article, by the way, and I agree with most of it. I do think one of its blind-spots is in identifying the American empire with modernism. That's how America thinks of itself, but even a complete failure of the American imperial project would have modernism surviving elsewhere. Also, there was no American golden age prior to WWII that was ended by Pearl Harbor. We've never been an innocent nation (as if such a thing is even possible.) I would also say that many of the nation's current problems have nothing to do with American imperial ideology, which is universal and bipartisan, but instead is the fault of the neocons. That's ironic, because those who so champion the rhetoric of modernism for their foolish war are themselves attacking many of the modernist foundations at home, through the alliance with the religious right, and abroad through (as you hint) torture and other violations of basic human rights. It's their anti-modernist ideas that are undermining the modernist imperial project. It's true they've screwed it up that the competent imperialists will have a hard time reasserting American influence any time soon, if ever. Changing the guard back can help, but some things will remain broken.

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

llachglin says, "I do think one of [the article's] blind-spots is in identifying the American empire with modernism." That blind spot seems to be Michael Vlahos's main point. He equates modernity to globalism, globalism to the American global empire, and the American global empire to an American dream of empire. His point is that the empire is crumbling at its feet of clay, so the dream will shatter and modernity will fall. Vlahos weaves words and says they are today's American dream. No, his words were never my dream nor the dream of anyone I know.

Consider this paragraph where Vlahos twists definitions:

The bell toll for modernity is victorious resistance through New War. Our enforcers have other ways of describing it: irregular war, asymmetrical war, unconventional war, guerilla war, fourth-generation war, anti-terrorism, counter-insurgency. But what do these filtered images tell us about ourselves? This is underhanded war, dirty war, war with those beneath us.

To me the phrase "asymmetrical war" does not mean we are fighting people who are beneath us. My meaning is that we are a big guy fighting a little guy. My American values say that we as the big guy have an advantage and can afford to take care to avoid hurting the innocent, even if the little guy is not fighting fair. Some warhawk Americans do claim we are fighting underhanded people, but that is not because the war is irregular or counter-insurgencic. They said it long before the war, because they confuse every Middle Eastern enemy with the idiots who destroyed the World Trade Center.

Vlahos does reveal some engaging facts on the crumbling of historic empires and America's feet of clay, but they are buried in the rhetoric. David Brin in his Contrary Brin (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/) blog writes regularly on a much better definition of modernity and on the actions of the Bush administration that undermine America. I recommend people look there instead.

Erin Schram

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

Thank you; I never would have stumbled upon this on my own. We underestimate the power of narrative. Dara, I agree with you that one of the points in the essay that doesn't make sense is that we can change the narrative. I wonder if that wasn't thrown in for a sense of hope rather than a serious projection.

Cathy