[mbs] Maybe I'm another backslider, but I wouldn't put it that way. I take imperialism to be arrangements promulgated by elites through the device of the state and its coercive powers. A country is much more than its state or elites; a country can't be imperialist. Obviously people can support imperialism, and they can construct culture that glorifies it. But the U.S. is more diverse than that, IMO.
Also in the backsliding category, I don't see individualism, self-help, or autonomy as necessarily bad. Depends on the context. If you mean that these things are falsely credited with the growth of the nation or its prosperity, or that they are afforded an unjustifiable merit a priori, I would agree w/both of those propositions.
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time territorial, now of course money and capital, cultural, political,
military. The US justifies its imperialist policies by bedrock beliefs that
Americans hold (or are supposed to hold) about themselves as "Americans."
The US projects its ideologies on to the world, then projects its power to
enforce what it regards as natural law. There's no compromise with this
set-up. You're in or you're out. Like the mob. Normally sensible people get
starry-eyes about "America" beating up some poor unfortunate abroad in the
name of life, liberty and the pursuit of Noreaga.
I have no idea how to break this down, or what might or will break it down. Problem is of course that the american ideology is the only thing keeping the country together.
I don't think unions are "nationalistic" unless and until they mobilize
such patriotic sentiments in the name of the American worker. Lots of what
some call nationalism is just good trade unionism.
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mbs: this last I wish more would take to heart.
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Note how seemingly impossible it is to break the hold of US nationalist
imperialist ideology. Mere facts won't do it. Even the US can't project
power around the globe any time it wishes, but military and foreign policy
failures never seem to make much difference for the ways Americans think
about themselves. For me, the most dangerous fact about America is that its
people never went throught a period of shame for slavery, Native American
geonocide, Vietnam, and half a dozen other things. Thus the country will
support just about any crackpot policy and action, overseas, even the most
bizzare and cruel, sadistic, policy in Iraq today.
Yours,
Jim O'C
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I think 'nationalist imperialist ideology' today in the U.S. is extremely fragile without a credible communist bogeyman. We could see it begin to unravel around Kuwait. In this sense, I think Buchanan was a bellwether of a substantial part of public opinion.
The more predominant feeling is one of indifference and apathy, in my view. We've got a volunteer army and most people don't care what atrocities they perpetrate to non-whites in far away lands.
I don't think a left critique of U.S. foreign policy has been a strong motivator of working class politics since the first world war. As you know, Vietnam was mostly a student thing, & then a 'middle class' thing. Never much of a worker thing. Hence my interest in class/bread-and-butter issues. Foreign policy is for elites and would-be elites. Same goes for the environment, by and large. I'm 50, I've been around, and I may be too old to change.
One of these days I want to go back to your book on the public sector and, applying my data-monkey skills, see how it holds up.
cheers, mbs