If you'll pardon a comment from one of the other 7.9 billion people on the planet, I'm not sure how many of us would agree with any concept of the USA as "the lesser of all evils".
You'd have probably got pretty good numbers on that one around mid-1945, perhaps again in the 1960s, but I'd guess that's broadly been on the decline ever since and (with some notable exceptions such as Israel) most countries worldwide now simply have a plain unfavourable view of the US, let alone see any kind of utopian project or aspirational leadership in the stars and stripes. From the outside, the modern US looks more like a rampaging pirate gang which also has access to the most destructive weaponry on the planet.
Still, we do get some pretty good movies, so not all bad, eh?
I'd argue that it's foolish and self-destructive to deploy blinding filters towards _anything_ when there are so many more useful tools in human cognitive space, so to speak. Motivated absurd sadness perhaps. The US hasn't been doin' a very good job lately avoiding hatred for sure, sad to say.
Hating oneself and one’s country is a formula for misery and risks self-destruction. One need not don blinding filters to maintain personal self-esteem and national pride.
We are fortunate to live in the greatest nation in the history of the world; it is our duty to strive to preserve and perfect it, and ourselves,!rather than engage in suicidal self-loathing.
Jingoists always want to conflate hate of self and country. It’s a lie. You are not your country, and you need not be an agent of it. A human being is shaped in the divine image; a country, like a corporation or a political movement, is a flawed, crooked invention of man.
A man without a country is like a man without a soul, to be pitied.
We live in a world of nation-states. If you don't like the one you're in, find another or work to change yours. That's why we have a multi-party democracy.
We have both good and bad in us, because we are One Nation Under God. But the false Revolutionaries claim they can change human nature. Only God can change human nature.
The haters of the United States suffer from a terrible form of self-loathing.
This entire debate fails to mention that America's unipolarity and function as an economic hegemon has come at the destruction of the American working class and the willing destruction of it's own productive base.
But anyway a country which has bullied Japan into destroying its own currency in the 1980s, has consistently financed violent religious extremists in the middle east, and most recently bullied France to raise the cost of medecine....can not be good for the world (nor for Americans themselves)
Professor Adubato, I have to admit, I almost scrolled past your opinion article because I usually steer clear of political debates online, but something about your perspective made me think. I found myself silently nodding, mainly when you talked about how much easier it is to critique than to actually do the work of building something better—guilty as charged, honestly.
I also really appreciated that you didn’t just write Hamid off or treat his arguments as a straw man. There’s a kind of humility in actually considering another viewpoint that’s pretty rare these days (sometimes I wish I saw more of it).
I think the bit that stuck with me most was your honesty about wanting purpose and meaning, but still feeling skeptical of any big, sweeping narrative. I’m right there with you—it’s so tempting to slip into cynicism or “everything’s doomed” mode, instead of actually getting people’s hands dirty trying to fix things.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this and for being so candid about your own doubts. We need more conversations like this, where it’s fine not to have it all figured out.
Nations are like warships cruising the world's oceans. They sometimes do good, sometimes not, but if they are well-steered, they will do whatever is in the best interest of the ship. Whatever helps the ship survive and prosper. Sometimes that will mean they act like pirates, sometimes like ambassadors, sometimes like merchantmen. They are self-interested, not moral judges. And they are fallible because they are steered by humans.
As a citizen, you are a member of the crew. Sometimes you are required to repel boarders. Sometimes you are required to maintain the ship. If you are capable, you should be productive, because a ship full of slackers is doomed. Ships crew need to be able to rely on each other in times of crisis.
If you will not support your ship, don't be surprised if the rest of the crew shuns you. If you deliberately undermine your fellow crew and cause them harm, don't be surprised if they throw you in the brig. Cause enough damage, it is only a matter of time until they throw you overboard.
"Neither a street nor a road nor a highway, a stroad is a worst-of-all-worlds combo that features multiple lanes lined with chain stores and restaurants, parking lots, and devoid of sidewalks. Stroads are emblematic of everything that is wrong with this country: a land that cultivates disenchantment, deracination, atomization, and that promises ever-greater freedom while weakening agency and thus our capacity to live fulfilled lives."
Aptly put. And I'm very happy to learn such a useful a new word and American metonymy.
Even setting aside America's many unaddressed historical sins, if its system cannot fix the environmental and climate crisis it was absolutely key in bringing to the world or even participate in trying to fix it, it fails not only morally, but in every long-term logistical sense.
The West is not the only "civilization", if I have to use that word, that has committed atrocities in history. But since it has dominated the globe for the last 500 years or so, it has been unique in scale and effect. I think the problem is power. It's only partly that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," though that's true. The problem is also the case that those with power think they have it because they deserve it. They have power because they are so much better. Therefore, committing atrocities is legitimate in order to preserve your power.
The solution is no "civilization" or even country should have so much power over any other, but that's beside the point of this discussion.
The problem I see with Hamid's logic first, it's black and white thinking. Either you are love everything about you country, or you hate everything. And this two extremes realistically describe exactly no one (except for maybe Hamid, though tbh I haven't read the book).
The second problem is Manichean thinking: my people are the forces of goodness and light, and the others are forces of evil and darkness. The US is saturated in this kind of thinking, probably more than any society.
At any rate, I won't read something with such a facile argument as Hamid's. I simply have no use for such "my country, right or wrong," thinking. To me it's one of the most destructive beliefs of all, and yes, one of the sources of our current decline. From this review I see no real reason for it as it produces no good except some screwed up idealism; it seems to be just something that sounds good on Hamid's tongue.
Besides, the decline of the West is someting to measure empirically, not something begging for emotional pleas.
Yes, classifying entire countries as good or bad is a juvenile approach to international relations, with disastrous consequences. The real problem is the balance of power, as is the case in other collective human endeavors.
Iceland seems like a nice country; so does Uruguay. But how nice would they be if they had real power in the international arena?
What a generously thought and well written review! Here in the comments section I will correct all your views, and those of Hamid, and we will lay this question to rest. Seriously, well done.
I love America for more reasons than I can count, but one of them is because our Founding Fathers were honest about human nature. We are One Nation Under God, with citizens who have both good and bad in us all. We cannot transform ourselves (only God can do this), but neither can we just sit back and do nothing to improve ourselves. We have to fight our own demons every day, and our Constitution gives us the freedom to do so.
In contrast, the Cuban Revolution said, “Humans can create a New Man. Put your faith in us, the morally superior Revolutionaries in charge.”
The Cuban Revolution failed spectaculary because of a false view of human nature.
Back in 2016 I wrote a lengthy review of Hamid's "Islamic Exceptionalism". This is how I ended that review:
"I have to admit that my enjoyment of Hamid's book rests primarily on his careful presentation of an argument that convincingly undermines the assumed universality of liberalism implicit in almost every word spoken or written by westerners when discussing governance and politics anywhere outside the tightly drawn limits of "the west". Like him, I hold firmly to my faith in the tenets of liberal democracy and cannot imagine ever letting go.
But I no longer believe that my faith is a universal one.
It's just mine.
But neither do I accept the claim that Islam is exceptional in its resistance to liberalism. I think it is more the case that the "post-reformation west" is exceptional in its affinity for liberalism.
China is not and has never been a liberal state. Japanese "liberal democracy" has many features that are neither liberal nor democratic. India's oft-celebrated "world's biggest democracy" would likely not come even close to satisfying the expectations of the children of European or North American liberal democracies no matter how often and how many elections are held. Any suggestion that liberal democracy is about to take hold in any nation in Southeast Asia is a pipe-dream.
That is not to say that many governments around the world are not motivated to put up a facade that satisfies the demand of giant markets like the EU and even more gargantuan militaries like the US for an appearance of liberal democracy before access to the riches of the west will be granted.
It is, however, to suggest that this condition is being eroded in the present time. And if liberal democracies do not begin to tend to their own institutions and procedures, not only will the rest of the world stop pretending to struggle to achieve liberal democracy in order to access their markets, there won't be any liberal democracies left for them to simulate."
Since that time I have abandoned my faith in liberal democracy altogether and not just its universality.
Hamid, on the other hand, has obviously come to embrace what he once held at a critical distance. It's a shame that intellectual and ethical integrity are so friable in the face of the reality of how liberalism manifests in the contemporary USA.
If you'll pardon a comment from one of the other 7.9 billion people on the planet, I'm not sure how many of us would agree with any concept of the USA as "the lesser of all evils".
You'd have probably got pretty good numbers on that one around mid-1945, perhaps again in the 1960s, but I'd guess that's broadly been on the decline ever since and (with some notable exceptions such as Israel) most countries worldwide now simply have a plain unfavourable view of the US, let alone see any kind of utopian project or aspirational leadership in the stars and stripes. From the outside, the modern US looks more like a rampaging pirate gang which also has access to the most destructive weaponry on the planet.
Still, we do get some pretty good movies, so not all bad, eh?
It is foolish and self-destructive to hate yourself and your country. Hopefully, this book has helped you realize that.
I'd argue that it's foolish and self-destructive to deploy blinding filters towards _anything_ when there are so many more useful tools in human cognitive space, so to speak. Motivated absurd sadness perhaps. The US hasn't been doin' a very good job lately avoiding hatred for sure, sad to say.
Hating oneself and one’s country is a formula for misery and risks self-destruction. One need not don blinding filters to maintain personal self-esteem and national pride.
We are fortunate to live in the greatest nation in the history of the world; it is our duty to strive to preserve and perfect it, and ourselves,!rather than engage in suicidal self-loathing.
Jingoists always want to conflate hate of self and country. It’s a lie. You are not your country, and you need not be an agent of it. A human being is shaped in the divine image; a country, like a corporation or a political movement, is a flawed, crooked invention of man.
A man without a country is like a man without a soul, to be pitied.
We live in a world of nation-states. If you don't like the one you're in, find another or work to change yours. That's why we have a multi-party democracy.
However you feel, be a patriot.
Are you an anarchist?
Ha, interesting — personally, I pity anyone who confuses their country with their soul. That’s grim!
That's the difference between a patriot (me$ and a traitor (you).
"Is America Good?"
No. Next question.
We have both good and bad in us, because we are One Nation Under God. But the false Revolutionaries claim they can change human nature. Only God can change human nature.
The haters of the United States suffer from a terrible form of self-loathing.
🥱
Summary: this article is gentle maga propaganda
This entire debate fails to mention that America's unipolarity and function as an economic hegemon has come at the destruction of the American working class and the willing destruction of it's own productive base.
But anyway a country which has bullied Japan into destroying its own currency in the 1980s, has consistently financed violent religious extremists in the middle east, and most recently bullied France to raise the cost of medecine....can not be good for the world (nor for Americans themselves)
"it is only inevitable that one nation will end up in the position of having the most power"
Is it? It seems equally likely historically that two or more have similar amounts of power. One can't be a singular global hegemon forever.
Professor Adubato, I have to admit, I almost scrolled past your opinion article because I usually steer clear of political debates online, but something about your perspective made me think. I found myself silently nodding, mainly when you talked about how much easier it is to critique than to actually do the work of building something better—guilty as charged, honestly.
I also really appreciated that you didn’t just write Hamid off or treat his arguments as a straw man. There’s a kind of humility in actually considering another viewpoint that’s pretty rare these days (sometimes I wish I saw more of it).
I think the bit that stuck with me most was your honesty about wanting purpose and meaning, but still feeling skeptical of any big, sweeping narrative. I’m right there with you—it’s so tempting to slip into cynicism or “everything’s doomed” mode, instead of actually getting people’s hands dirty trying to fix things.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this and for being so candid about your own doubts. We need more conversations like this, where it’s fine not to have it all figured out.
Nations are like warships cruising the world's oceans. They sometimes do good, sometimes not, but if they are well-steered, they will do whatever is in the best interest of the ship. Whatever helps the ship survive and prosper. Sometimes that will mean they act like pirates, sometimes like ambassadors, sometimes like merchantmen. They are self-interested, not moral judges. And they are fallible because they are steered by humans.
As a citizen, you are a member of the crew. Sometimes you are required to repel boarders. Sometimes you are required to maintain the ship. If you are capable, you should be productive, because a ship full of slackers is doomed. Ships crew need to be able to rely on each other in times of crisis.
If you will not support your ship, don't be surprised if the rest of the crew shuns you. If you deliberately undermine your fellow crew and cause them harm, don't be surprised if they throw you in the brig. Cause enough damage, it is only a matter of time until they throw you overboard.
Ask that question of the other 194 countries in the world.
There are only like 4-5 real countries tbh. USA, China, EU, Russia(debateable), and India
In the event of nuclear war, where is the safest place to be, which countries will still be standing?
Yep, Australia and NZ. 😊
As an Australian, good to know. 🤦♀️😂
Btw - Europe is comprised of 44 separate countries.
And yes, this is everything that's wrong with the USA.
Im no oikophobe! What up wit dat????? I love belting out Springsteens Born. in the USA man! And I love the Big Lebowski, OK!
We should turn this into a slur. Fucking ng Oikos.
Thanks for a nuanced and honest review. I’m looking forward to reading this book!
America is bad just read any good American writer 😎
If only it were so simple
"Neither a street nor a road nor a highway, a stroad is a worst-of-all-worlds combo that features multiple lanes lined with chain stores and restaurants, parking lots, and devoid of sidewalks. Stroads are emblematic of everything that is wrong with this country: a land that cultivates disenchantment, deracination, atomization, and that promises ever-greater freedom while weakening agency and thus our capacity to live fulfilled lives."
Aptly put. And I'm very happy to learn such a useful a new word and American metonymy.
Even setting aside America's many unaddressed historical sins, if its system cannot fix the environmental and climate crisis it was absolutely key in bringing to the world or even participate in trying to fix it, it fails not only morally, but in every long-term logistical sense.
The West is not the only "civilization", if I have to use that word, that has committed atrocities in history. But since it has dominated the globe for the last 500 years or so, it has been unique in scale and effect. I think the problem is power. It's only partly that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," though that's true. The problem is also the case that those with power think they have it because they deserve it. They have power because they are so much better. Therefore, committing atrocities is legitimate in order to preserve your power.
The solution is no "civilization" or even country should have so much power over any other, but that's beside the point of this discussion.
The problem I see with Hamid's logic first, it's black and white thinking. Either you are love everything about you country, or you hate everything. And this two extremes realistically describe exactly no one (except for maybe Hamid, though tbh I haven't read the book).
The second problem is Manichean thinking: my people are the forces of goodness and light, and the others are forces of evil and darkness. The US is saturated in this kind of thinking, probably more than any society.
At any rate, I won't read something with such a facile argument as Hamid's. I simply have no use for such "my country, right or wrong," thinking. To me it's one of the most destructive beliefs of all, and yes, one of the sources of our current decline. From this review I see no real reason for it as it produces no good except some screwed up idealism; it seems to be just something that sounds good on Hamid's tongue.
Besides, the decline of the West is someting to measure empirically, not something begging for emotional pleas.
Yes, classifying entire countries as good or bad is a juvenile approach to international relations, with disastrous consequences. The real problem is the balance of power, as is the case in other collective human endeavors.
Iceland seems like a nice country; so does Uruguay. But how nice would they be if they had real power in the international arena?
What a generously thought and well written review! Here in the comments section I will correct all your views, and those of Hamid, and we will lay this question to rest. Seriously, well done.
I love America for more reasons than I can count, but one of them is because our Founding Fathers were honest about human nature. We are One Nation Under God, with citizens who have both good and bad in us all. We cannot transform ourselves (only God can do this), but neither can we just sit back and do nothing to improve ourselves. We have to fight our own demons every day, and our Constitution gives us the freedom to do so.
In contrast, the Cuban Revolution said, “Humans can create a New Man. Put your faith in us, the morally superior Revolutionaries in charge.”
The Cuban Revolution failed spectaculary because of a false view of human nature.
America has not 🇺🇸
Back in 2016 I wrote a lengthy review of Hamid's "Islamic Exceptionalism". This is how I ended that review:
"I have to admit that my enjoyment of Hamid's book rests primarily on his careful presentation of an argument that convincingly undermines the assumed universality of liberalism implicit in almost every word spoken or written by westerners when discussing governance and politics anywhere outside the tightly drawn limits of "the west". Like him, I hold firmly to my faith in the tenets of liberal democracy and cannot imagine ever letting go.
But I no longer believe that my faith is a universal one.
It's just mine.
But neither do I accept the claim that Islam is exceptional in its resistance to liberalism. I think it is more the case that the "post-reformation west" is exceptional in its affinity for liberalism.
China is not and has never been a liberal state. Japanese "liberal democracy" has many features that are neither liberal nor democratic. India's oft-celebrated "world's biggest democracy" would likely not come even close to satisfying the expectations of the children of European or North American liberal democracies no matter how often and how many elections are held. Any suggestion that liberal democracy is about to take hold in any nation in Southeast Asia is a pipe-dream.
That is not to say that many governments around the world are not motivated to put up a facade that satisfies the demand of giant markets like the EU and even more gargantuan militaries like the US for an appearance of liberal democracy before access to the riches of the west will be granted.
It is, however, to suggest that this condition is being eroded in the present time. And if liberal democracies do not begin to tend to their own institutions and procedures, not only will the rest of the world stop pretending to struggle to achieve liberal democracy in order to access their markets, there won't be any liberal democracies left for them to simulate."
Since that time I have abandoned my faith in liberal democracy altogether and not just its universality.
Hamid, on the other hand, has obviously come to embrace what he once held at a critical distance. It's a shame that intellectual and ethical integrity are so friable in the face of the reality of how liberalism manifests in the contemporary USA.