I'm Outta Here

The American political scene is pretty depressing right now. Obama seems to have lost his touch, and his many enemies seem to have gotten the upper hand. But Obama's current situation is more of a symptom than the cause of my disillusionment . There is a sizable chunk of the American populace who believe, contrary to all evidence, that Americans are somehow special, and that the normal rules don't apply to them. We can torture people; we can hold people indefinitely without trial; we can invade countries for the flimsiest of reasons; we can squander the world's resources; we can deny healthcare to millions of our own citizens, and we can enrich the top .01% of the population at the expense of the rest of us.

It doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks; we're always right. The Founding Fathers had infinite wisdom, and produced the most perfect of all documents (right up there with the King James version of the Bible), the Constitution. That perfect constitution that made those "bound to service," i.e., slaves, equivalent to 3/5 of a free person. The perfect constitution that, it could be argued, was the cause of the Civil War. The perfect constitution that sanctioned apartheid for almost 100 years in the South. The same constitution that has allowed corporate interests to run amok at the expense of most of the citizens.

And God is on our side. America is the Shining City on the Hill, the beacon of hope to the rest of the world. Manifest Destiny proclaimed that it was God's will that the US dominate the continent from sea to shining sea, with big chunks of Mexico and Canada thrown in for good measure. I've often wondered what the difference is between the doctrines of 19th century Manifest Destiny and Hitler's Lebensraum. Both doctrines say that it is not only the right, but the divine destiny, to confiscate land from savages and to exterminate or enslave them for the benefit of superior beings.

This belief in American exceptionalism is like a religious belief to a significant chunk of the American population. It is like a divine revelation, and therefore no reasoned argument can made against it. It's my country - right or wrong. It's America - love it or leave it. And if some politician dares to stray even a tiny bit (and Obama has strayed only the tiniest bit) from the line, he is a socialist, a communist, a Kenyan-born Moslem, a grandma-killer who deserves whatever justice the god-fearing, gun-toting, true Americans serve up.

In my relatively small circle of friends and acquaintances, there are several intelligent and well-educated people who actually believe this crap. As much as I love talking politics and religion and history, the circle of people with whom I can engage in a reasonable discussion about my favorite topics is distressingly small, and with Obama's election that circle has become even smaller.

So I'm outta here for a while. I hope that two and a half weeks in Greece, away from the constant media BS, will improve my disposition.