Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Bacevich, and Spinoza, on the Error of Exceptionalism via Mondoweiss by Philip Weiss on 10/27/08
Last night I watched Andrew Bacevich on C-Span's About Books program. (Some of it anyway; I surf.) The most interesting point he made is that the U.S. has to give up its sense of its own exceptionalism. We should be like other countries, and understand we're no better. The way I heard it is: We truly were better than other countries not long ago; right now we're actually not. So apart from the irritating arrogance that burns other people up, of saying you're exceptional, it's not the reality. So it's a delusion interfering with statecraft. What's your real role in the world? Two years ago at Yivo I heard a great panel on Spinoza's excommunication by the Amsterdam rabbis in 1656. One point the scholars on the panel made was that Spinoza was urging the Jews to stop thinking of themselves as the chosen people. Yes, you were once chosen: but this was not a divine chosenness, you had the best laws in all civilization, and this led your society to prosper. But in liberal Europe, or the liberal Europe that Spinoza helped to imagine, that religious chosenness wasn't helpful. The rabbis didn't like that. It occured to me last night, listening to Bacevich, that I as an assimilating Jew am deeply involved with issues of Jewish exceptionalism. I grew up with Jewish exceptionalism out the wazoo. We are smarter, we are better! We were right about Vietnam! And then the meritocracy valorized these feelings of exceptionalism when in essence we crowded the turrets of the Establishment. Helped run the country. 30 percent of all Supreme Court clerks are Jews, hot damn. Why even Charles Murray says we're the geniuses. And Slezkine says it's the Jewish century; it's our time. While David Mamet says it's our peculiar association with highfunctioning Asperger's syndrome that was genetically centered near Prague--or some such theory of racial superiority. While Jewish law itself, which survived Spinoza, says that Jewish life is more precious than other life, per Israel Shahak. Well to paraphrase Bacevich and Spinoza, it ain't happenin' baby. We gave the U.S. the Iraq war. We are doing a lousy job with the Palestinians both in Israeli society and the West Bank; and we have set up a system of apartheid and called it righteous, and the world is watching us do it. The Jewish elite is just as hidebound in its way as the WASP elite before it. Of course Obama is offering a new idea of American exceptionalism. Post-racial, post-identity politics. Get thee behind me, exceptionalism! Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Mondoweiss using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
