Progressive Delusions

Nearly a year has passed since I last mentioned George F. Kennan on Ghulf Genes, so it is time again. We have no scientific evidence for this, but as Wikipedia informs me, “Native Americans in the United States have historically had extreme difficulty with the use of alcohol.” Similarly I have no scientific evidence for asserting that “The late Western Civilization has had an extreme tendency to succumb to progressive delusions.” Both may be true. The late but long-lived George Kennan (1904-2005) had discovered an inoculant to prevent the onset of that disease: realism. Hence I hope that he will be remembered.

This came to mind as we settled down to read The American Conservative yesterday. We always read it together, meaning that Brigitte reads, I listen, and then we both talk. The article in question was a review by Leon Hadar of a book by Charles A. Kupchan of Oxford University titled: “No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn” (October 2012 issue). We were delighted. The spirit of rationalism, realism remains alive.

The other day I offered the opinion that technology progresses but humanity cycles. The progressive delusions syndrome (PDS) is the mistaken belief that humanity also progresses and that, in the West, the two-beat events of the American and of the French Revolutions inaugurated the new age with a ta-Dah! The theme, of course, had been sounded earlier in the 1215 Magna Carta and smaller echoes of the same. But it took the eighteenth century to offer us the quartet of Enlightenment, Secularism, Democracy, and Capitalism. The syndrome consists in believing that these Four Horsemen will inevitably conquer the world.

Outbreaks of PDS marked our invasion of Iraq. At last, we thought, we would establish a beachhead of democracy where all of the oil is. The impossible conquest of Afghanistan (has been done before but never successfully) arose from pure faith, an ardent desire to bring light to mountainous darkness—although, of course, the ghost of a great pipeline glimmers in that darkness as well.

The most recent outbreak accompanied the Arab Spring. I hastened to register a cautious disagreement then. Somehow I do not believe that Twitter will conquer the world or that “the Spirit of Progress moved upon the Facebook of the waters” then. That drama is still “under construction,” as it were, but the forms emerging, most recently in Egypt and in Libya, are not easily recognized as marketable offspring of Progress.

So let us by all means reread George Kennan and, fortified, prepare to battle the horsemen we’ve created. Nor should we fantasize that China, which looks back to 2100 BC to see its first dynasty, the Xia, will gladly embrace what we produced circa 1800 AD. In that spirit I note that it might be time to do some raking—as soon as the rain stops to fall.

My Body, My Butler

We were sitting around talking. The subject was a news account I’d heard on BBC radio courtesy of our Public Radio very late at night, driving home. In that account a BBC reporter had said, talking about one of the Muslim countries, I no longer remember which: “They’re all on the Internet now, but, you see, it’s Facebook. Facebook for them is the Internet.” We were trying to make sense of this, Brigitte and I. The thought occurred that many of these countries have developed late. Large elements of the ordinary population are accustomed to getting their information from others with whom they interact daily—rather than from media. And a leap into the Information Age suddenly provides them with an electronic form of their natural source of information—gossip. And Facebook is the channel. Could that be the reason?

By steps and meanders, we were soon noting our very different kind of upbringing in war-torn Europe. For us the international, the global news always and ever trumped the local. “I was quite ashamed of myself,” Brigitte said. “Monique asked me the other day if I’d listened to the State-of-the-State speech, and I had to confess that I hadn’t. It’s too close to home in a way.” — “Yes,” I said, “and with newspapers too. All we’re interested in is the international coverage.” Then a memory intruded. “I bet,” I said, “I bet we’d feel the same way if we were Danes. You know, I remember my first trip to—what’s the capital of Denmark again?” — “Copenhagen.” — “Yes, right. I remember when I first went to Copenhagen. By that time I’d been a world traveler and kind of accustomed to sizing up a city quickly, you know, just a bus-ride from the airport. And I remember thinking, there, gosh, this is just a small city. But then I thought, can’t be! This is Copenhagen. But then my body, my butler, he said, ‘With all due respect, sir. It’s just a small city.’” I noticed that Brigitte was scribbling something on a sheet of paper. “What are you writing there?” I asked. She was laughing. She looked up. “My body, my butler,” she said. “You do say the oddest things. But that’s a good one.”

Yes. Food for thought. My body, my butler. He keeps the half-dreaming, half-fantastic young nobleman inside this old body firmly grounded in mundane reality…

Where Realism Trumps Idealism

I’ve mentioned George F. Kennan (1904-2005!) once before here. I learned to respect the man, and his approach to international relations, while I was in college. He was a realist and disdained any kind of initiatives in foreign affairs motivated by convictions of national superiority. He would have put thumbs down to nation building or regime change. In an interview in 1999, with the New York Review of Books, he said:

This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable. I would like to see our government gradually withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights. I submit that governments should deal with other governments as such, and should avoid unnecessary involvement, particularly personal involvement, with their leaders.

“Free markets” might be added to that list. The problem is that treating huge human collectives as if they were inferior or moved by evil motives, while appealing to our own public, also suggest that we are somehow superior in every conceivable way. Realism in international relations seems very rough, but it hides within itself the virtue of humility. Yes. We must look out for our own interest and defend ourselves when we’re attacked. Beyond that? Full stop. Beyond that nothing.

Our policies are productive not of spreading enlightenment but of Quislings. The next step is to accuse our Quislings of corruption, which will inevitably happen if the charade goes on too long. Eventually we’ll see the Quislings toppled by local forces that stuck to the hardest but only rule people can obey when attacked from the outside. Never serve the enemy. Better to starve. This comes to mind, needless to say, as I read today that Sunni forces bought with our money in Iraq are now changing coats again, and in Afghanistan we’re watching the Taliban engaged in reclaiming power by infiltration.

Kennan was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952 and to Yugoslavia in the period 1961-1963. He came from Milwaukee, WI, and his long life provided him a very long view of history.

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I found the quote above as part of Wikipedia’s article of Kennan here.