The United States Government has a fetish for large political communities. Its actions in the world demonstrate a belief that big is beautiful; we cajole our friends and enemies alike to align in ever larger groupings, federations, unions, blocs.
This is perhaps a consequence of our attachment to the highly profitable status quo. Large and established groupings almost necessarily abandon radicalism, they are less costly to negotiate with or deter, and the U.S. still believes that it can maintain economic and military primacy in a world of great powers.
These explanations do not go far enough to explain our obsession however. The real reason has to do with the core functions of the state, functions that are at odds with the political philosophy that shapes American thought on so many issues.
We can talk abstractly about the state as a guarantor of rights, a purveyor of public goods, a benevolent and civilizing force in the world, but these noble goals ignore the reality that the primary tool of the state is violence or the threat thereof. The cognitive dissonance that results from these facts – particularly under an American government founded on the idea of natural rights and which selectively and consistently ignores them – can only be calmed by a “great cause,” a purpose more important than the hopelessly violent rat race of human existence.
Call this mythical purpose God, call it Manifest Destiny, call it Democracy or the American Way, it is psychologically necessary if the nation is to persist. The large state and its great cause reinforce one another, they are complementary and inseparable.
And yet, stripped of its regional coloring and ideological twists, the nationalist lie is essentially the belief that “we” are different from “them.” That is to say, it is right and just and good that certain freedoms are exercised by patriots but denied to non-believers.
A political community is a responsible (justice must be left aside for this discussion) user of coercive power only to the extent that respect for natural human rights is central to decision-making and that its institutions provide for transparency and accountability when abuse invariably takes place.
Large political communities like the United States become dangerous on all three accounts when they begin to believe their own propaganda. The grand lie is used to justify widespread use of force and coercion. The fiction of the homogeneous and unified nation is used to silence dissent. The distance between the people and their agents obscures responsibility.
Individual citizens of the United States are carefully insulated from the violence committed on their behalf. Our television anchor men drone on about the trials and tribulations of war, but the networks are practically forbidden from showing glimpses of its true horror. We see cannons firing into the air, we see bombs explode from a distance, we see tanks rolling through the street. All very impressive, all calculated induce the catatonia of trust and security.
What we do not see however is where the shells land, the scene after the smoke clears, the human faces crushed beneath the tracks of the M-1. We do not see the smoking piles of human meat, we do not smell blood spray in the air, we do not watch the howling families tearing at mangled corpses.
When we hear of “bad guys” being tortured, we are not permitted to watch as the masked and ghoulish men that WE EMPLOY attach car batteries to their screaming victims.
We cannot see, we do not kill, our hands our clean . . . or so our government tells us.
The truth is at your fingertips if you can bear to look.
