Without a doubt, one of the most contentious issues in the world today is the assessment of and response to “American culture.” Some argue that a disdain for “American culture” is the motivation behind terrorism, as with the attackers on Sept. 11. Others insist it has been, historically, a vehicle for democracy and human rights. Many say it simply exists as a shell for a capitalist system of economic relations. And some accuse it of promoting a “secular progressive agenda” that seeks to force us to marry goats or something.
Given all of the violence, hatred, imperialism, inspiration, criticism and discussion stemming from supposed “American culture,” many are led, reasonably, to question whether or not the culture is a good thing. Opinions about American culture are as wide-ranging and contradictory as the culture itself. Critics on the right implicate the culture as one resembling those of Sodom and Gomorrah; critics on the left often contend that it does little more than promote exploitative and unfair free-market capitalism.
The beautiful – well, I would say beautiful, most would probably say frustrating – reality is that both statements are almost entirely true. The concept of “American culture” is simultaneously both exploitative and liberating, decadent and dogmatic, progressive and conservative, imperialist and isolationist.
We get into a great deal of trouble when we try to talk about what American culture is in an exclusive way. When “talking heads,” (are there heads that don’t talk?) proclaim that American culture has been for the past 50 years “generally” a force of evil and destruction around the world, or when others say that it was responsible for liberating millions from the oppression of totalitarian so-called communism, both are speaking largely about the same events with different perspectives. One sees the disaster of the war in Vietnam and CIA-led anti-communist coups around the world as a systemic practice of imperialism and assassination, stifling true democracy. The other views it as an unscrupulous but noble effort to deter and neutralize the threat of an even greater oppression. And then the debate will rage on for hours about which interpretation of history is correct.
It’s obvious to me, though, that we should be able to acknowledge communism, the way it was practiced at least, was often itself a force of oppression of various democracies and cultures around the world. We should be equally able to acknowledge that many of the things we did in foreign policy did in fact help put an end to this oppressive force, but did so in a way that had serious moral consequences.
The important part is to never be so invested in any given argument or worldview that one loses the ability to question and reconsider their own argument or worldview critically. If we decide that American culture is totally evil and exploitative, we ignore many of the great things that have happened as a result of it. We close off our minds to new ways of looking at the problems the culture has created, and divorce ourselves from the ability to understand the perspective of others.
The picture, at times, can look very bleak. Taking in images of McDonald’s burgers, Wal-Mart box stores and compartmentalized, prepackaged, industrially focus-grouped pop music, it is easy to get irritated with the whole of American culture, and write it off as a completely capitalist disaster for humanity. But in doing so one must ignore Asian-French fusion gourmet cuisine, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and the entire history of jazz. We create horrible problems and find beautiful solutions to them, and often, many of those solutions turn out to be themselves horrible problems also.
But failure or fear to embrace this paradox makes it very hard to talk about American history without getting locked into a denial of reality. Both the Vietnam War and the moon landing took place simultaneously; our performance in World War II both liberated Jews in Europe from the holocaust and plagued Japanese in Hiroshima for years with the after-effects of the most morally indefensible weapon ever employed in human history. It is very hard to lump such an existence into a “good” or “bad” category, and I mean this as a word of caution to anyone who might try to do so.
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American culture an awful beautiful paradox
Daily Emerald
March 31, 2008
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