Fragile Identity

There's much to do about "American Exceptionalism," something about which I've written about on several occasions during and in the wake of the Trump presidency. It's the idea that America is "the best country in the history of the world," and that it therefore deserves to impose its will and culture on other countries. Because who would object to becoming just like the best country in the history of the world?

I could just as easily have titled this post "Imperial Exceptionalism," because the American variant of this phenomenon isn't unique; there's also British Exceptionalism where English people are still stuck in the notion that "Britannia rules the waves," or Dutch Exceptionalism where The Netherlands proudly speaks of the times when they ruled over colonies in South America and the far east; I'm from one of those colonies, Suriname, that only became independent in 1975. The only thing that makes America special is that it's the current and biggest imperium. It's the biggest empire, one on which the sun truly never sets, because it's the one ruling over a globalized world economy.

I also hesitated over titling this post "Social Agoraphobia," because the far right reactionary forces we see rising all over the civilized western world is a reaction to globalization. You see, we humans need to feel that we're in control, to a certain extent, of our own fate. Democracy can only function when we feel that we, that our vote can make a real difference. So when the centers of control are removed further and further away from our own town, city and country, it's only natural and to be expected that many of us will feel the urge to retreat behind our own national borders, our own city-limits and eventually inside the safety of our own personal sphere delimited by our own house, convictions, morals and ideologies. And it would be wise not to be fooled by the global nature of the internet; the mechanism of retreating behind our own set of morals and ideas is still the same, accentuated even.

Having some form of national pride isn't strange or exceptional in itself, even though it's a fabricated pride to a large degree. In order to expand the sense of belonging to a group larger than one's own family or town, rulers have invented flags, national anthems and sports teams. We've for centuries lived in these national tribes, long enough to make that national pride part of our personal identities. With the advent of technologies that turned our world into a global village, and an economy depending on eternal growth moving production facilities and workers to the places where profits are maximized, and the formation of international and undemocratic institutions to facilitate the growth-economy, we, citizens of the world, are losing control of our own fate.

Seeing that America is the heart of the biggest empire in the history of the world, can we really blame Americans for their somewhat extreme form of exceptionalism? And seeing that we're all humans who need to feel in control of our own fate, can we really blame the millions of Americans who fiercely retreat behind the walls of their own culture, in some cases even including the color of their skin? I'm only asking. It's easy for me, as I've done on many occasions, to rail against the racism and xenophobia that we see rising not only in America but all over the world. And I've tried in this post explaining, sort of, why America would be the place where the retreat is most apparently visible. We all suffer from cognitive dissonance, we all rationalize our behavior when it's conflicting with what we deep down know is true... It's a difficult topic to wrap my head around, so I'm only asking questions today.

Linked below is an edition of an English radio broadcast in which is discussed the racist reactions in Great Britain in the wake of the interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle by Oprah Winfrey. The point I'm discussing here van be found at the 1:51:00 mark, where a listener calls in and raises the point of the fragility of the British identity. He asserts that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle damage the idea, the picture in people's heads when thinking about the identity of England and English royalty. The entire program also touches on the necessity of reckoning with the unpleasant parts of British history, something that's also a hot topic in America and The Netherlands. Is this true? Is it the case that racists and white nationalists feel threatened by the forces of globalization that accelerate the mixing of races and cultures? Is it all going way too fast for those who see their traditions and cultures fade away in the global empire? I think yes, but I don't have a solution...

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