Some People

Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow. (Alexei Druzhinin / AP Photo)

Some people are so invested in their own beliefs that nothing can dissuade them from their idiocy. Andrew J. Bacevich's article on The Nation has the best explanation for why the White House is beating the war drum these days. I don't agree with everything in that article, but this bit is pretty good.

But let me suggest that our present-day antipathy toward Russia derives from something deeper than an unwillingness to let go of old grudges. The real issue has less to do with them than with us. More specifically, it centers on a desperate need to refurbish the concept of American exceptionalism. Nowhere is that need felt more powerfully than among members of the foreign policy establishment.

American exceptionalism is the conviction that in some mystical way God or Providence or History has charged America with the task of guiding humankind to its intended destiny. Embedded in the phrase is the essence of our collective identity.

We Americans—not the Russians and certainly not the Chinese—are the Chosen People. We—and only we—are called upon to bring about the triumph of liberty, democracy, and humane values (as we define them), while not so incidentally laying claim to more than our fair share of earthly privileges and prerogatives.

American exceptionalism assumes a Manichean world in which good is pitted against evil, with our side assumed to embody good. Packaged with highfalutin sentiments of the sort to which recent US presidents (except one) routinely—and perhaps even sincerely—pay tribute, American exceptionalism justifies American global primacy.

New word for the day: Manichaean, pertains to Manichaeism, an old religion that taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Actually, I've run across it before, and looked it up before, but so far it hasn't stuck. That's the problem with smart people. They find new words and then they inflict them on the proles. Annoying is what it is.

Note about the photo. John Kerry was Secretary of State under Obama. Oldest version of this photo I found is from 2016. Who knows why The Nation decided to use it. ZeroHedge used a photo Biden. I like Putin better than Biden, probably because all my information comes from the fringes and not from the center.

Via ZeroHedge