Back in the 1890s those who believed conquering a continent was killing enough (without taking over Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.) included Speaker of the House Thomas Reed. He clipped an article out of a newspaper about a lynching in South Carolina. He clipped a headline about “Another Outrage in Cuba.” He pasted the two together (fake news!) and gave them to a Congressman from South Carolina who was pushing for a war on Cuba. The Congressman eagerly read the article, then stopped, looked puzzled, and remarked: “Why, this isn’t Cuba.”
I recommend trying this trick. Clip an article about Israelis murdering Palestinians, or some outrage in a U.S. prison or a Saudi square or under the rain of humanitarian bombs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, or elsewhere; paste it below a headline about Iran, North Korea, Bashar al Assad, or Vladimir Putin. Show it to the person closest to your Congress member or senators with whom you are able to get into the same room or reach by email. Or just show it to someone who has the misfortune to own a television.
Outrages should be outrages because of what they are, not because of who commits them. Good luck finding that to be the case in the United States today!
Here’s an excerpt from my new book, Curing Exceptionalism:
In exceptionalist nationalism, as perhaps in all nationalism, “we” are to adopt a first-person plural identity alive for centuries, so that “we fought the…