By Keith Noel:

When a student at the University of the West Indies, I used to tease my Barbadian friends because they behaved as if Barbados was this 'special' country. We would laugh at their apparent pomposity and their insistence on thinking ol' Bimshire was any great shakes. But bigger than this was the conflict between Trinidadians and Jamaicans.

Jamaicans generally could not understand why Trinidadians were so cocky about their little 'calypso island'. They were incensed by the idea that these 'small-island' people could feel that they were the 'best' in the Caribbean. On the other hand, Trinidadians found it hard to conceive how Jamaicans could seriously believe that their island was the 'pearl' of the Caribbean.

Later, we grew to realise that this feeling that one's country was 'special' was an almost natural part of the patriotism one internalises as a youngster. It was when we accepted this and appreciated that the antagonism we each felt was a response to our own individual desires to assert our island's 'superiority' that we dropped the silliness. Then my Jamaican friends could unreservedly enjoy calypso music and learn to 'beat pan' in the campus steel band. Then, too, I could declare to my peers that I found the emerging pop music of Jamaica (it was about that time that reggae was born) was the most powerful in the world, without being lynched by my Trini compatriots.

Superior to all

So it was easy for us to accept the idea of 'American exceptionalism' when we first heard of it. Americans, like everyone else, believed that their country was superior to everyone else's. In the case of America, though, with its vast resources, its economic and military power, its promise of the 'American Dream', it really seemed to be a bit more 'special' than everywhere else.

And this is where one of the world's great problems is rooted.

Exceptionalism became part of the American approach to the rest of the world. Not only was America 'special', but it was so because God had made it so. This was the official American position. It became the basis of its foreign policy. It was President Jackson who spoke of America's 'Manifest Destiny' to lead the rest of the world. Thomas Jefferson saw the country as "the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth". The people generally believed that God had made a covenant with the country and chosen them to lead the nations of the world, that "God was raising up America for some special purpose".

The belief in exceptionalism led to the thinking that if American leaders considered a course of action to be in its best interest, they should proceed, even if the United Nations declared them to be wrong. What is good for America must be good for the rest of the world - even if the rest of the world does not realise it!

Problematic principles

Now, for the citizens of this country, founded on Christian principles, this is problematic. The history of the country is replete with acts of barbarism and the most unchristian wickedness, carried out both by individuals and by the state itself. The levels of cruelty and injustice reached in wrestling the country from its native inhabitants were only surpassed by the horrors inflicted on the slaves who had been brought to the country to build the foundations of its wealth.

For the American, to believe that your country's leadership of the world was God-given and it was He who had made it wealthy, and to know your country's history, entails such an effort of self-deception, denial of obvious truths, and acceptance of odd 'reasoning' from political, social and religious leaders, that it has led to the kind of warped thinking that could justify anything. That could accept that it was OK to invade Iraq under a false pretext; that Pinochet's Chile deserved support but Castro's Cuba needed to be crushed; that the handling of the victims of Katrina was excusable, etc.

But now, the country's citizens stand horrified, watching their position as 'leaders of the free world' slowly slipping away. How will they respond?

Keith Noel is an educator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.

September 29, 2011

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