For those who suspect that something is terribly wrong with contemporary America

Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire
Morris Berman
W.W. Norton, 2006

The guy behind you in the theatre bellows into his cell phone for the first fifteen minutes of the film, and then threatens to kick your butt when you ask him to be quiet. Someone in a Hummer sideswipes your car on the interstate off-ramp and then explains to the police that she shouldn't be ticketed because she couldn't see your car from "up there." The U.S. invades and occupies a sovereign nation based on ever-changing rationales and in violation of international law, kidnaps and tortures that nation's citizens, and then wonders why the world responds with contempt and violence. Meanwhile, those American citizens who protest the actions of their government, including things as beyond the pale as the legalization of torture, are called traitors.

What do all of these seemingly disparate phenomena have in common? According to Morris Berman, they are all indicative of a nation that is rotten to the core, an empire on the verge of collapse, and they are all the consequences of the laissez-faire, dog-eat-dog, me-first-and-devil-take-the-hindmost ethos that has permeated American culture since it's inception.

Ironically, this ethos is the "shadow side" as it were of those ideals that once made the United States great in the eyes of the world: its traditions of challenging monarchic authority and of guaranteeing individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Berman argues that this shadow side undermined any sense of community or commons and paved the way for a contemporary society in which financial success is the sole standard of achievement. Without any higher goals or deeper virtues than winning at any cost, American success has been surprisingly and shockingly empty. As well, because this ethos of empty consumerism has been predicated upon the maintenance of global inequities through militarism, much of the world (especially the so-called Third World) has grown to see the US as a belligerent Goliath bent on global domination, instead of as the self-righteous David of our national fantasies. The sense of false egalitarianism that pervades our culture (but that is opposed to any redistribution of wealth) means that being smart is shameful, that ignorance is endemic, and that we gleefully re-elect a moron as President because he doesn't threaten our own collective intellectual shortcomings. Our fascination with technology as a panacea has also contributed to the breakdown in civil society at home (e.g., the cell phone anecdote above) and to our lack of concern for those abroad (e.g., seeing smart bombs as somehow "benevolent" weapons). Finally Berman also discusses in some detail specific cases of US intervention in Iran, Iraq, and in the affairs of the Palestinians and their unintended but inevitable consequences in the blowback of 9/11 and the subsequent "War on Terror."

The picture he paints is not a pretty one and is one that most Americans will reject out of hand, precisely because, I think, it is so accurate. Like Dorian Gray, we are going to want to keep our true picture hidden from ourselves as long as we can, but unlike that famous literary monster, our false image (in this case, of global benefactor) no longer convinces those in the rest of the world. Contrary to what many of the reviewers here would have you believe, he also does not romanticize the other modes of social and economic organization that the 20th and 21st centuries have seen, including tribal fundamentalism, suffocating collectivism, or state communism, seeing in them situations that are as pernicious, if not more so, than the televoid consumerism the US seeks to export to every swath of land on the globe.

Most of the one- and two-star reviews of this book are indicative of the very trends that Berman addresses. They reduce his nuanced musings to the tired right-wing tropes of a "liberal elite" that "blames America," insist that the global US military presence is protecting the world from "someone else's" imperial schemes instead of being prima facie evidence of our own global domination, and even fall back on our military supremacy as some kind of litmus test for how civilized we are. As Berman notes throughout the book, we Americans have little patience for nuance and alternative perspectives, and have an uncanny ability to see the world in precisely upside-down terms.

Which is not to say that the book's critics are entirely mistaken; _Dark Ages America_ is far from flawless. His arguments at times draw on his own gut reactions to things, rather than on solid evidence (not necessarily a bad thing, but something that contradicts his thesis that we need to privilege reason over faith). As well, his prose is often long-winded, and the evidence he musters is sometimes self-contradictory (why, for example, does the laissez-faire, me-first ethos manifest in terms of a Christianist hive mind?). Finally, he overlooks the other converging catastrophes that we seem to be facing in the next century---global warming, peak oil, the total collapse of seafood stocks---and how these relate to the end of American empire. The value of the book far outweighs these relatively minor criticisms, though.

And, alas, Berman does not provide simple solutions, like "rocking the vote" or "electing Democrats," which would be the approach of traditional liberals who think that, with some tinkering, the system can be saved. He leaves the reader left scratching her head, wondering what, if anything, she can do to halt this juggernaut, and this has left him open to charges of being a pessimist. Instead I feel that he is guardedly optimistic about humanity's overall ability to survive and adapt. As he says in conclusion (p. 327),

"My own belief is that there is no warding off the Dark Age; all the evidence points in that direction. But you can certainly do your best to keep it out of your head, which is a contribution of a sort. What is thus called for is long-term study and thought, in an effort to come up with a serious alternative to global bourgeois democracy---blueprints for a better time, perhaps, and for another place."

In other words, those who already suspect that something is profoundly wrong need to be regularly reminded that their resistance to the "colonization of the imagination" is worthwhile and sane. For that reason alone, this book is profoundly important and should be read by anyone, left, right, or center, who considers themselves a radical (in the original sense of returning to the "root" of the problem in order to work out solutions).

(This review was originally written on November 28, 2006.)

Witty, bitchy, and impassioned, Vidal is on target critiquing unchecked state power

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated
Gore Vidal
Nation Books, 2002

Gore Vidal is not my favorite writer, political or otherwise, because his tendencies to name drop and to remind the reader of his patrician heritage grate on my nerves. That said, this slender volume of collected essays is required reading for anyone, liberal or conservative, who thinks that the train of the United States has jumped its Constitutional tracks and is headed for catastrophe, both domestically and internationally. It is also nice to hear someone so eloquently remind Americans that our Constitutional heritage is primarily one of mistrust of government, our own first and foremost, and to challenge the received opinion that this mistrust is now tantamount to treason.

Not only is this sense of distrust our obligation as American citizens, but it is also healthy, Vidal argues. He supports this argument by discussing the violent and murderous contempt our government has had for those in the world, both abroad and at home, who would challenge its claims to ideological and actual dominance. The first essay in this collection endeavors to explain why those abroad hate the American government by making reference to the hundreds of military ventures our nation has engaged in (with almost absolute impunity it must be noted) over the last half-century. Democratically elect a leader whose policies don't completely gibe with American national (read "commercial") interests? Then Uncle Sam will help depose him. Since the end of WWII, the US has intervened in so many other nations' internal affairs, often with disastrous consequences for the everyday people in those nations, that the mind reels. The question becomes not "why do they hate us" but "why have they waited so long to show it?"

The essays which follow the introduction deal with issues of domestic un-tranquility and, in particular, the violent response of one Timothy McVeigh to a federal government that rages unchecked. If that last phrase seems extreme, imagine seeing your wife get shot through the head (as she clutched an infant) hours after watching your 14-year old son shot in the back by the same "law officers," all because you were entrapped into committing the "crime" of sawing off two shotguns. That's what happened to Randy Weaver at his Ruby Ridge, ID, home. He, and not the murdering authorities, was the one accused of crimes in that situation, and the media, complicit with the federal authorities, did its best to cover-up the true criminals. Later, a group of non-traditional religious folks were murdered, with their 27 children, by the same lawless authorities, and again, the media and government manipulated the story so that it was the citizen, and not the government, who was to blame. These incidents, argues Vidal, are indicative of a rogue American government, one that blames its victims and exonerates itself at every opportunity. Vidal also inveighs against the puritanical, prudish prurience of those Americans who so desperately want to see their neighbors controlled that they'll excuse their government of any crimes committed to that end, no matter how heinous. As he notes when discussing Timothy McVeigh's murder of innocents in the Murrah building in OKC, "every pancake has two sides." Ignoring the larger side of that pancake, an unchecked government run rampant against the freedoms of "we the people" and our fellow human beings in other nations, is to our detriment.

One minor drawback to this book is that Vidal rarely provides a citation to back him up in his diatribe, but this is easily rectified by seeking out denser corroborative works on the various subjects Vidal discusses (the writings of Noam Chomsky come to mind, for example). Please don't let that complaint keep you from reading this book; its witty, bitchy, and impassioned defense of the US Constitution and of the Republic it supports is much needed in these dark days of omnipresent surveillance and endless wars on inchoate terror.

(This review was originally written on November 6, 2006.)