October 29, 2007

• Bias and Arrogance

  Lets see, we take a quick look around the
  Internet and we can find all kinds of people complaining about the
  biased right wing media outlets such as talk radio, fox news, and the
  likes. Turn the corner and look around and you’ll find equally vehement
  persons complaining about the liberal media bias that  they claim
  permeates network television, NPR, and the likes. Both could be true,
  but neither side thinks that both are true. Rather each believes that
  the other doesn’t have a leg to stand on.  So who is right?

  The
  problem is the bias liberals are referring to is not the same kind of
  thing as the bias conservatives are claiming. They are looking at two
  different things and to no surprise finding exactly what they are
  looking for in the thing that they are looking at.

  When
  conservatives talk about “biased” media they are referring to inherent
  inbred biases that influence the way in which the media entities go
  about reporting the news whether they want it to or not. That is, they
  are saying that liberalism is institutionalized into every aspect of
  our media system. Reporters, anchors, writers, cameramen, executives,
  editors, all are trained in the same institutions the claim goes, and
  trained to think in a certain way. A way that is inherently not open to
  religious and conservative positions. The problem isn’t that they are
  trying to convince everyone that liberal ideas are correct, it’s that
  even when they try their best to be as nonpartisan as possible they
  can’t help but bring their own inherent biases to the table and that
  influences how they go about approaching the issues of the day. Other
  positions get shut out and many conservatives feel that as a
  consequence they are disenfranchised, left without a voice in the
  public debates of the day.

  The liberal complaint about
  right-wing outlets is the exact opposite. They are claiming that these
  right-wing outlets aren’t even trying to approach the data available in
  a non-biased manner. Rather, they are in fact looking for information
  that supports already predetermined notions and principles and
  reporting and talking about that data primarily. Their goal is quite
  intentionally to make the conservative positions they hold more
  palatable to the people by bringing it to the forefront. They are
  pretty directly trying to convince people to believe certain positions,
  rather than accidentally or unintentionally ending up convincing people
  to hold certain positions.

  So the liberal media in its self
  assuredness sometimes forgets that there could even possibly be other
  positions that are equally viable to the ones they hold and so they
  forget to cover or give credence to the alternative perspectives. And
  the conservative media in its zeal sometimes covers material that is
  neither newsworthy nor true simply because it appears to support their
  ideals.

  Now you might think that maybe possibly both sides could
  come to understand one another’s positions and try to change themselves
  to be more balanced. But no, this is America. That’s not how it works!
  Instead the discussions quickly breakdown to this:

  “You arrogant blowhard!”

  “You stuck-up prick!”

  And
  that pretty much sums up the conservative/liberal divide in this
  country. It’s High School politics really. Jocks vs nerds. Nobody grows
  up.

  But here’s an interesting thought. If you look at both
  criticism, there is a component of them that is remarkably similar.
  Both sides are claiming that the other is too sure of itself, too
  convinced of its own rightness, too certain that it has the moral high
  ground, too closed to alternative positions. In short both sides are
  claiming that the other is too arrogant. We are all calling each other
  out for our excessive pride and hubris. Isn’t that fascinating? Maybe
  we’re all right. Maybe we are all just waaaay too arrogant for our own
  good.

  I am reminded of a quote from my new favorite book: A Man Without A Country, by Kurt Vonnegut. In it he writes:

  “Foreigners
  love us for our jazz. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty
  and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.”

  And
  that’s just it isn’t it? America is a nation founded on arrogance, born
  and bred and raised in our supreme pride. We are so sure of ourselves,
  so certain that we are not only right right now but that we are always
  the best ones to figure out what is and will be right and best. 

  And
  nobody likes that about us. It’s totally true. International politics
  are high school politics too and nobody likes the kid sitting in the
  corner keeping to himself who thinks he knows more than everybody else
  in the class any more than they like the preppy kid who acts like he’s
  god’s gift to the world. We sometimes come off as both. But everyone else wants to be taken seriously, to be
  considered as an equal to everyone else. Nobody wants to be talked down
  to. Nobody wants to be told “don’t worry, just follow our lead. We know what’s best for you.”

  And
  yet that’s what the US does all the time! To take the relevant issue of
  the day, the Iraq war as the obvious example. Look at the two
  perspectives. One side says something like: “What’s obviously best for
  America and for the Iraqis is for us to get the hell out of there and
  save our troops and our money and let them stand on their own.”  The
  other side says: “What is obviously best for the Iraqis is for us to
  stay until their country is stable since that will help stabilize the
  region and keep the terrorists from coming back here. It’s worth the
  cost to us in money and lives.” 

  See the problem? Both sides
  are, without exception, completely and totally sure that they *know*
  what is best for Iraq, what is best for the region, and what is best
  for the world.  Why are we so sure? Because we’re Americans! We always
  know what’s best! Nobody would even conceive of asking for advice,
  ideas, or opinions from the United Nations, from other major powers,
  from other powers in the region, or even from the Iraqi people
  themselves.  And certainly no one would ever imagine actually
  acquiescing to their wishes even if they should happen to be opposed to what we want. That’s crazy!. How could any of them possibly know better than we know?

  And
  hence we are seen as arrogant. And it’s that way for every issue, from
  environmentalism to nuclear proliferation to genocide. If you listen to
  the current crop of presidential candidates speak many of them talk
  about “leadership” on the global stage. How we have to take our
  predetermined position as the leader of the world in all these areas
  and more. Nobody ever asks what gives us the right to be the leader.
  Nobody ever says well what about all those other countries, couldn’t
  they take the lead too? Might they not have their own good ideas that
  maybe we should be following suit with? No. Of course not. We’re the
  superpower! America leads. Others follow. That’s the right and just
  order of the world. That’s how we think.

  You might wonder where
  this arrogance comes from? And you might point to the way in which the
  last few generations of Americans have been raised being told
  repeatedly that they are great and wonderful and capable of doing and
  achieving anything and everything we put our minds to. Maybe that’s
  why?  Or you might point to our recent history of extraordinary
  successes, say in World War II, in the Marshall Plan, in the Civil
  Rights Movement, in the Cold War, and so on. Maybe that’s the reason?
  Not to mention our rise to economic preeminence due, of course, to hard
  work and diligence (it couldn’t possible have had anything to do with
  our lucky access to such easily obtainable oil or any of the other
  resources we capitalized on in the North American continent, or on the
  severely weakened state of most other nations after WWII, or on any of
  the policies we enacted to exploit these advantages, of course not.
  It’s all hard work and dedication and nothing else!)

  But no, a
  look back at history shows that this is not the case at all. I’m sure
  there were many a English citizen who was thinking back during WWII
  something along the lines of this:  “Yeah I know we desperately need
  the Americans to help us out here. But man after this those Americans
  are just going to be insufferable.”  And coming from the British, not the most humble of peoples themselves, this is saying something.

  You
  see, history suggests we already had a reputation for being way to sure
  of ourselves long before we helped smash Hitler’s armies. We blasted
  and smashed our way to the west of our continent on the grounds that we
  were divinely destined to rule the continent from coast to coast? Why?
  Who said? We said! And you look at the history of every single war that
  has been fought in American history you see much the same pattern. We
  dismiss the opinions and even the humanity of the entities we are
  fighting and we take on the position that we were always meant to rule
  them and lead them and bring them to the wondrous light of American
  civilization.  Native Americans, Africans, they’re just uncivilized
  brutes, who cares what happens to them. And those other European
  nations are just old and weak compared to us. They don’t believe in
  freedom and equality like we do. They didn’t fight for their
  independence in blood and glory like we did (let’s completely disregard
  the French revolution and other similar conflicts). And that’s just the
  way it goes.  Even the Civil War, arguably the most Just war we ever
  fought was really not fought for any good reason but because the South
  was too stubborn and arrogant to admit that it might be time for it to
  change and the North got ticked off that anyone would dare oppose them.

  Even
  the way we tell our stories after the fact reflects this culture of
  self certainty. WWII is an altogether heroic affair, the fire bombing
  of Tokyo and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki totally
  justified.  Vietnam is the heroic triumph of the anti-war movement
  keeping our nation on the right moral track. The Civil Rights Movement
  is likewise our victory over bias and hatred through our just
  determination. (We ignore the fact that had people actually been
  abiding by our laws no movement would have been necessary) It doesn’t
  matter what the conflict. We win. In all the stories somehow,
  magically, we always win, even when we were in the wrong.  The only
  exception being perhaps the annihilation of the native American peoples
  which I guess can’t possibly be cast in a positive light, so we just
  say “Oh that happened so long ago” and promptly try as hard as we can
  to forget it.

  Am I too cynical you think? Maybe. I’m in a
  cynical mood today.  But let me make a wager with you, any of you who
  had the stamina to read for this long.  I’ll bet anything you want that
  no matter what happens in Iraq the story we’ll hear, the story that
  will end up being told to our children and our grandchildren will be
  that we, the Americans, won.

  If we stay and the country ends
  up becoming stable, the story will be a WWII-story. We came in as
  liberators, saved them from their cruel dictator, rebuilt their country
  and ousted the terrorists, creating a beacon for democracy and freedom
  around which the rest of the Middle East can rally. And if we withdraw
  instead the story will be a Vietnam story, how the Americans heroically
  fought against tyranny at home and abroad, bringing our troops home
  from a foolish endeavor, and letting Iraq grow on its own.

  And
  what you’ll see is, that every where else in the world you’ll hear a
  very different account than either of these. The story will be, that
  Americans used trumped up charges to engage in an illegal war to oust a
  dictator in Iraq in order to secure access to Iraqi oil for the global
  markets and create an ally in the Middle Eastern region that would help
  us to have greater influence over the region. They will say that  the
  primary reason this war was able to occur is because the American
  people were angry and afraid over 9/11 and not thinking clearly and
  were directly manipulated by their leadership and faulty intelligence.

  Further,
  in other nations, they will tell the story of how regardless of the
  reasons we went to war, whether we were justified or not, we screwed it
  up royally. Our presence and our incompetence created a near anarchic
  situation filled with with violence and death and refugees and illegal
  torture. They will tell the story of how we, through our actions and
  our folly helped destabilize Iraq and helped Al Qaeda to use the
  country as a recruiting ground and a rallying cry against American
  interests. They will tell of how our troops ended up stuck in a
  quagmire uncertain of what to do to rectify our mistakes and dealing
  with an increasingly disillusioned populace at home.  And then… What?
  Will they tell of how we somehow managed to stabilize the country
  anyway or will they tell of how we retreated and tell of whatever
  happened in Iraq afterwards, which no one can effectively predict right
  now? Who knows. Either way, the story won’t be kind to us. We won’t
  look like heroes. At best we will be the guys who successfully managed
  to finally clean up after our own mistakes or let others clean up after
  us.

  Which will it be? Who knows. But here in the US it will be
  neither. Here we will be the heroes, the victors, the winners! We
  always are.

  • 10:47 am
  • 3 Comments