The Strange Battle of Ego and Humility—American Exceptionalism

Finland is a little European country with 5.3 million people we don’t hear much about. It was recently named the world’s most prosperous country. But what caught my eye was a little blurb in Newsweek: “What they’re guaranteeing in Finland.” Finland, which has the 16th highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world, announced plans on October 14th to install a 1-megabit-per-second broadband connection (that’s pretty fast) so that every citizen has Internet access. Further, they will replace that connection with a 100-megabit-per-second connection by 2015.

Finland is the first country in the world to provide broadband access as a legal right. With such fast access to the Internet, Finnish citizens in total have the potential to be the best-educated, most-informed citizenry in the world. We have to remember that currently, with a world population of about 6.8 billion people, Google answers three billion questions every 24 hours. While I am typing this one sentence 300 million e-mails are being sent and received. Having a broadband connection in every home may be the best educational program ever introduced in any society. Fifty years ago Finland was known for wood pulp and poor farms. Today it has the best educated citizenry and the most egalitarian society in the world because it is a well-run “welfare” state. Nokia, which started as a Finnish forest products company in 1865, is the world’s largest maker of cellphones with over 30 percent of the market. It currently has over 25,000 employees in Finland with 35,000 more around the world in 25 countries. Nokia is just one example of Finland’s high-tech industry. Ten years ago American cellphone users were a small minority. By 1998 Finnish cellphone users outnumbered land-line subscribers.

Will Americans ever decide that health care is a right and not a privilege of the rich?

 

Every once in a while we hear a judge, politician, or historian mention the term “American Exceptionalism.” Some Americans believe that citizens of the United States are different, that we occupy a special “pedestal” among nations because of our unique political, religious, and historical origins. Exceptionalism is often mentioned by conservatives, neo-conservatives, and Republicans. It is a strange mixture of rampant testosterone, locker-room bravado, and grandiose dreams of empire. These are the people who brag we have the “best health care in the world”—when we don’t, by overwhelming evidence. We rank 31st in life expectancy, 37th in infant mortality, 34th in maternal mortality, and an American woman is 11 times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman in Ireland. They brag that we have the finest military organizations in the world because we spend more money on “offense” and “defense” than the rest of the world combined—when we have basically a political stalemate in Iraq. We may lose in Iraq because of a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites after we leave. What does it mean to “win” in Iraq? Oh, and that other little war in Afghanistan where we are losing to AK-47s, Improvised Explosive Devices, and political treachery from dozens of tribes and Taliban fundamentalists. Remember the Taliban leader who told an Army captain: “Yes, you have the wristwatches–-but we have the time.”

 

Many countries have espoused exceptionalism in their history when they have gotten the “big head “ and misjudged their power. A few countries may fall under the spell twice. China thought it was exceptional a thousand years ago–-and one can see the signs in modern China. They may be succumbing again to their egos. Ancient Rome two thousand years ago thought it was exceptional–-and it was for a while. Great Britain thought it was exceptional in the 18th and 19th centuries when it was politically and militarily controlling much of the world’s land space–-for a while. The Aryan nation of Nazi Germany thought it would become a thousand-year Reich but survived in its arrogance for only a decade. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics found out in the short span of about forty years that it couldn’t bury everybody.

 

What do we have to be exceptional about?

 

We have more TVs, phones, obese people, millionaires, billionaires, automobiles, and more public and private debt than any country in the world. We now have more real estate foreclosures and medical bankruptcies than any country in the world regardless of population. We have even lost the title of the country with the tallest skyscrapers. Wall Street investment banks and bankers are exceptional in their greed, thinking that money is the only way to score in the big game of life. It is quite evident that Europeans have learned that money is not the only game in town.

The Hastings Center is an organization that studies the relationship between biology and ethics. Director Daniel Callahan indicates the difference between Europeans and Americans is that Europeans actually believe in the common good. Europeans have this attitude according to Callahan: “It may be me or it may be my neighbor. Let’s act together.” Americans have the attitude that “ It may be my neighbor. Tough luck. I’ve got mine, Jack.” That’s why our city centers are “tainted” by thousands of homeless war veterans from WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, wandering the streets and dumpster-digging.

We can see this attitude in our efforts to pass universal health care. Every European country has some form of universal health care without a major revolution. But as soon as an attempt is made to modify our Rube Goldberg health care system, all hell breaks loose. Doyle McManus of the LA Times has a rather colorful description of the reaction: “ It sets off angst, vexation, writhing, screaming, hysteria, mental flatulence, and churls with cudgels.” I particularly like the term “mental flatulence.” Senator Joe Lieberman searching for a TV camera quickly comes to mind. A doctor who favors universal coverage has come up with a terrific line: “People talk about waiting lines in Canada. I say, well, at least they have a line to wait in.”

 

We are also exceptional in the number of murders per capita

 

Historians and sociologists are really just beginning to work on the puzzle of why the United States has the highest murder rate of any industrialized, affluent democracy. Why do we have a murder rate four times that of England and France and six times that of Germany, a country that spawned Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, the Bitch of Buchenwald and the ovens of Auschwitz? According to Ohio State Professor Randolph Roth, if our murder rates remain the same, one out of every 200 children born in the U.S. today will be murdered. President Barack Obama averages 30 death threats per day. Europeans have been researching the murder and violence records in their countries for decades. The European murder rate has been declining for 500 years. In the 1200’s the murder rate was 35 per 100,000. By 1500 the rate had fallen to 20 because men fought duels in daylight instead of crushing their opponent’s skulls in the dark. By the 1700’s the rate dropped to five.

Today the rate is under two in Europe. A number of European experts have tried to catalogue the reasons for the decline in violence. We should pay attention. In general they claim that there is a phenomenon called the “civilizing process” because Europeans have been forced to live in more restricted surroundings. Certainly Europe has had more than its share of wars over the last ten centuries. It’s not necessary to go into them. But over that time many citizens have learned restraint and physical self-control, even to learning to eat with a fork rather than stabbing at meat with a big knife. Governments have exercised more power over the individual, disarming him when he gets violent and enforcing laws passed by the majority. Governments have also gained tremendously in firepower over the centuries. Automatic rifles have replaced muskets, water cannons have replaced truncheons, helicopters have replaced horses, and technology in the form of tear gases and loud sounds confuse and divide protesters and “anarchists.” But the murder rate in the United States was as high as 11 in the 1990’s and is still above five in 2009. Why are we so immature in our emotions and actions as compared to European societies? Our sociologists are beginning to study the question. Europeans say we still have not gone through the “civilizing process.” They could be right.

 

Are we gun-happy, impulsive, crude? Do we support honor killings? Europeans think so.

Last year two-thirds of our 16,000 murders involved firearms. Most sociologists will say that our lax gun laws compared to the rest of the “civilized” world result in many homicides. Europeans think we have not gone through the same “civilizing process” they went through for centuries. We had democracy before the state had the monopoly on force. In the Revolutionary War period it was the musket of the landowner against the musket of the government. Neither had the advantage. So from that period on, citizens have fought for the right to bear arms so we don’t have to yield to a strong central government. In short metaphoric terms, we have had a lot of freedom before we were even potty-trained. Alas, the Europeans may be right.

 

Why does the country with “the best health care in the world” and “the great benefits of Leave No Child Behind” have the least fit candidates for military service?

Here we are in the middle of two wars thousands of miles away and over 75 percent of our military-age population between the 17 and 24 doesn’t qualify for the Armed Forces because they have an inadequate education and too many physical problems. Frankly, I was shocked to see those figures supplied by the military recruiting system. A member of “Mission: Readiness”, former Undersecretary of the Army Joe Reeder, made this remarkable statement in a report to Congress: “Imagine ten people walking into a recruiter’s office and seven of them getting turned away.” One in four military-eligibles does not have a high school diploma. Many of them with a diploma still cannot pass the Armed Forces Qualification Test. Over 30 percent of all recruits are obese. Reeder added: “Kids are not able to do push-ups and can’t do pull-ups. And they can’t run.” With all of the other factors such as drug use, criminal records , and mental problems affecting quality, the Pentagon is saying that we are going to have a major problem defending ourselves if we can’t find fit, educated service members.

 

The right-wing wackos will say: “If you don’t like this country, why don’t you leave?”

 

The “love it or leave it” crowd will send me irate e-mails and letters saying, “If you don’t like this country, why don’t you leave?” I guess they believe the country is “perfect in every way,” like the “perfectly humble’ song said. Well, I’m going to stick around biting butts until the rest of my teeth fall out because I think this country needs a lot of improvement before it is livable for everybody. President Barack Obama, who is pretty exceptional in color, tone, and intelligence in his own right, talked about the term American exceptionalism in a press conference: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.” He said it for me, too.

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