It's the Real News.
I'm Ben Norton.
Today I'm joined by the journalist and activist David Swanson to discuss his new book, "Curing
Exceptionalism."
It's a very detailed book looking at U.S. exceptionalism, American exceptionalism, the
idea that the United States is the best country in the world, and unique.
It's perhaps the best country in human history, with no parallel.
And David Swanson is very very well-prepared to discuss this issue.
He's a journalist, activist, organizer, and educator.
He's also the director of the peace group World Beyond War.
And he's the host of Talk Nation Radio.
This is his latest book.
He has several books out, most recently including "War Is Never Just: the Military-Industrial
Complex at 50," and "War Is a Lie."
Thanks for joining us, David.
Great to be here, Ben.
Thank you.
So let's go ahead and just get, you know, jump right in here.
The book is called "Curing Exceptionalism."
And you begin the book saying, quote, "U.S. exceptionalism, the idea that the United States
of America is superior to other nations, is no more fact-based and no less harmful than
racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.
The purpose of this book is to persuade you of that statement."
Can you persuade us?
I can try.
I can push some people's viewpoints somewhat in that direction, to be sure.
The first part of the book is, is a lot of statistics, is really an effort to find any
empirically measurable way in which the United States actually is the greatest nation on
earth.
And I end up finding a great many ways in which it's really pretty poor compared to
most wealthy countries but better than a lot of poor countries, and a number of ways in
which it really is near the bottom among all countries on the planet.
But, but very few ways in which it actually is at the top.
And so even looking at freedom and democracy and such things that are closely tied with
these claims of greatness, and even looking at U.S. studies, and U.S. government, and
CIA-funded studies, and right-wing groups that treat capitalism as a sort of economic
freedom, nobody ranks the United States at the top for freedom.
Nobody ranks the United States at the top for democracy or human rights.
And you look at life expectancy and health and happiness and other important measures
of a society, and it's just not at the top.
And when you look at things like incarceration, and militarism, and destruction of the natural
environment, you know, it's way down there at the bottom.
So you know, it's hard to find evidence for a claim that the United States is the greatest
nation, other than in your subjective, baseless opinion.
Exactly.
And what's interesting about Part 1 is it's very detailed.
As you mentioned, you go through all of these statistics, and you cited a few things that
might surprise people.
So for instance, you mentioned that according to the OECD, of all of the 37 countries in
the OECD, the U.S. ranks 35th, almost at the bottom, out of the entire OECD in terms of
poverty and inequality.
And then you also mention a report that did not get as much attention, it should have,
last year from the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty in which United
Nations experts went to particularly the South of this country, but not just the South, throughout
the U.S., and looked at the extreme levels of poverty, some of which approached formerly
colonized nations.
I mean, this is, you know, the largest imperial country in the world, the U.S., but we have
poverty in parts of this country that resemble the kind of underdeveloped, overexploited
parts of the Global South that were colonized.
And then also what's interesting is you cite Reporters Without Borders, and as a journalist
this is something I'm very aware of.
And Reporters Without Borders ranks the U.S. as 43rd in terms of press freedom.
That is 43rd, nowhere even close to the top.
So can you speak about maybe some more statistics that might surprise Americans who, even if
they're critical of the government, they may not realize that on the international stage
the U.S. is nowhere near the top?
Yeah, I mean, we've sort of grown used to these contradictions of all these wars for
freedoms, where we noticeably lose freedoms in the process.
But it's worthwhile, I think, obviously since I've done this in the first of the four sections
of the book, to, to compare the United States with other countries and find that if you're
going to yell and scream about how free your freedom is, you really shouldn't be in the
United States.
You should be in another country.
This is, you know, as well as with, with education, and with infrastructure, and with environmental
sustainability, and all these other measures.
There are many where the United States does well in comparison with a lot of very poor
countries, but does miserably in comparison with wealthier countries.
And I think in the age of de Tocqueville and, you know, in centuries gone by there were
ways in which the United States was doing better than other countries in economic equality,
and in education, and in the percentage of the population allowed to vote, and so forth.
But these are bygone eras that have no resemblance to the current state of affairs.
And yet exceptionalist thinking is reluctant to drop claims of superiority just because
they haven't existed for, for decades or centuries.
Yeah, and this is actually a good segue.
In Part 2 of the book you discuss exceptionalist thinking, and you discussed the ideology behind
American exceptionalism, after spending the entire first part empirically showing why
this is ultimately based on false pretenses, that the U.S. is not exceptional except in,
as you mention, incarceration, where the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the global population
but more than 25 percent of the world's prisoners.
And of course militarism.
So can you talk about what you think is the basis for exceptionalist thinking?
Yeah.
I mean, I think that the United States, like anywhere else, is unique, and has many good
features and many bad features, and most people have a strong preference for their home, as
I certainly do.
But the United States far outstrips most of the rest of the world in numerous measures
of believing it's the greatest, believing it's superior, believing it has the right
to impose its will on others.
The measures of patriotism and nationalism and belief that your country is right.
Belief that your country has the right to go to war on other countries, and to do so
without the United Nations.
I mean, the number of flags per capita, the celebrations of patriotism, the use of things
like the Pledge of Allegiance that are extremely rare in the world.
The, the use of the national anthem at, you know, every little event, not just international
and major national ceremonies.
This doesn't seem to correspond to what we saw in the first part of the book.
I mean, you would think that if the, if the United States really were the greatest at
everything then it ought to have the the greatest patriotism and sense of superiority.
And yet it does have the greatest sense of patriotism and superiority, and really a religious
belief in it that that doesn't rely on facts in any way, and is almost its own religion
with a, with a missionary sense of needing to export it to others, to bomb other countries
to spread democracy, to impose its will on other countries, and to refuse to to look
to other countries for what they might have to offer.
So the, the thinking part is is completely separated from the, from the reality.
And then, of course, this has a political utility.
There's a reason that this kind of hypernationalist exceptionalism view is so popular among not
just the Republicans, but the Democratic Party as well.
And that is that this is how you can unify the body politic behind all of these unpopular
wars, behind many of these unpopular policies, is the idea that well, we may be on the wrong
track at the moment.
Ultimately we're still the good guys.
We still are exceptional, and we're still benevolent at heart.
So can you talk about how this is not just an ideology that propagates from the bottom
up, it's actually the exact opposite?
It's explicitly an ideology that comes from the top down.
Can you talk about how this is encouraged politically so the government can justify
many of these unpopular actions?
Yeah.
This is, this is not a harmless, victimless ideology where it's just people loving their
country and thinking it's better than other countries, and leave them alone with their
delusion, who cares.
This is a very, this is, to get to the third part of the book, this is an ideology that
does a great deal of damage.
Including, as you've mentioned, mobilizing people in support of wars against enemies,
and thereby distracting people from domestic issues of injustice.
It does a great deal of damage to the United States in terms of turning away what other
countries have to offer.
I mean, there's a great deal to be gained, not lost, by identifying with and sympathizing
with and learning from the rest of the world.
The United States turns away emergency aid when it has a hurricane, and other countries
offer aid.
I mean, that national pride is more important than saving people's lives to the U.S. government.
And the United States teaches people, and by example demonstrates to people, that the
rest of the world is to be devalued.
So you have right now this conversation over whether you should bomb Syria with a presidential
decision, or bomb Syria after Congress authorizes it, and that would make it legal.
I mean, imagine if any other country on earth were having a debate over whether to bomb
Washington, D.C.
Would our big concern be rather, whether they were going to run it through their executive
or their legislature?
Who would care?
It would be criminal.
It would be immoral.
It would be disastrous.
We wouldn't appreciate the bombs falling on our heads.
Regardless.
And yet, because the United States thinks of itself as so unique and independent and
free of having to bother with the rest of the world and its laws, this is the conversation,
this is the extent of the debate.
The United States, by the way, is outside of more of the main human rights treaties
of international law than almost any other country, than any major country on earth,
and yet depicts itself as somehow a law enforcer when it runs around the world as a rogue nation,
bombing other countries.
So it's this double standard that creates so much disastrous outcome of, of exceptionalism.
Well, on that note we're going to have to end Part 1 of our discussion here.
I'm with David Swanson, and we're talking about his new book, "Curing Exceptionalism."
It is out now, you can buy it online and in stores, and in paperback.
And in the next part we'll be discussing Parts 3 and 4 of his book, in which he diagnoses
the damages that American exceptionalism causes.
You know, you mentioned, David, to even people within this country.
I would say it's of course poor and working class people.
The elites are the ones who benefit.
But we'll discuss that.
And then David will also talk about what he thinks some cures are for American exceptionalism.
So thanks for joining us, David.
Thank you.
Reporting for the Real News, I'm Ben Norton.