Where Hysteria Rules
- 04.10.2008 - 11:34 AMYesterday, Andrew Sullivan took me to task for my delusional “complacency” about America’s image in the eyes of the world. (Earlier in the day, I had written of Camille Paglia: “If Ms. Paglia finds the U.S.’s ‘reputation in tatters,’ she’s describing some internal or personal state of perception.”)
America’s commitment to a drawn-out, asymmetrical, multi-theater war with a global enemy has thrown up an array of sticky challenges. One of them is securing the ongoing commitment of allies. But Paglia’s (and Sullivan’s) hysteria is another matter.
Among whom, exactly, has the U.S.’s reputation taken this alleged dramatic downturn? Spain; Iran and Syria, the enjoyment of whose friendships would be both a disgrace and a functional liability; the totalitarian Hugo Chavez, whose loathing the U.S. should wear as a badge of honor.
Canada’s conservative government continues to pledge troops to the Afghanistan fight, though there are some grumblings there about creeping American fascism. Yet these come from the same quarters that hold state-sponsored censorship hearings in the name of human rights.
There is, of course, the case of Vladimir Putin and Russia. But can the chill emanating from Moscow really be chalked up to cowboy diplomacy? If anything, George Bush has been too trusting and deferential towards the Russian president.
North Korea is everyone’s problem, and will remain so no matter who is in office, even if it’s Barack Obama.
It’s worth pointing out who likes us, too. The Brits under Brown are still fighting with us. France under Sarkozy has taken an unprecedentedly pro-American stance, even upping its contribution to active NATO forces in Afghanistan. Germany’s Angela Merkel is no longer cringing away from George Bush, as she was a couple of years back. Eastern Europe seems fairly content to have the U.S. erecting a protective missile shield there. Bush’s decision to share nuclear technology with India has ushered in a new age of economic and diplomatic comity with the sub-continent. U.S. aid to Africa over the past seven years has made Bush an adored personage continent-wide.
Yet unless you admit the sky is falling, Sullivan diagnoses you as delusional and moves on to the next Obama convert who “gets it,”who understands that Obama’s willingness to talk to everyone (and trade with no one) will repair America’s tattered image.
This is the bi-polar political impulse that’s characterized Sullivan’s work since 9/11. The Iraq War was the bravest, most thoughtful, most promising exercise of military might in modern history–until it was the biggest moral and strategic catastrophe America had ever seen. To find yourself in the path of Sullivan’s hyperbolic pendulum only means that you’ll find yourself there again when it swings from the other direction. In time, even I will presumably “get it.”
| »Back to Contentions | »Back to Commentary |
April 10th, 2008 at 12:12 PM
I used to read Sullivan’s blog until he became unhinged. And I often wondered what happened to him until a insightful neighbor, a long-time activist in the gay community, told me that Sullivan’s pro-war stance immediately following 9/11 and continuing until 2003 or thereabouts made him a pariah among most of his gay friends. So hostile and poisonous did the atmosphere towards him in Provincetown and Washington, D.C. become, says my neighbor who knew Sullivan well at one time, that he was virtually isolated and abandoned by even those gays closest to him. The result was at first a subtle shift away from his previous pro-war stance that became notably sharper and violently anti-Bush as 2004 approached. And with his increasing anti-Bush rhetoric — worsened, in part, by Bush’s opposition to gay marriage and the administration’s support for harsh interrogation techniques which the left characterized as “torture” — Sullivan experienced a growing warmth towards him within the gay community, an embrace that he desperately needed emotionally and psychologically. While this explanation might simplify the sea change in Sullivan’s positions, I think it explains much: the personal became political.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:46 PM
Sullivan is a good writer and obviously a knowledgable and intelligent man, but his blog is difficult to stomach. He fails to make concise, analytical, and logical arguments. Instead he asserts (or more often, reasserts for the 1000th time) one of his usual political beliefs (Bush is awful, Obama is wonderful, torture is bad, Hillary is abysmal), he links to someone else who also states this same policy belief, he exaggerates and conflates what people who disagree with him believe, and then he closes with a provocative statement that is disconsonent in degree and magnitude with the issue at hand. He’s not really worth reading.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:32 PM
Who was it — Pauline Kael? — who couldn’t imagine who voted for Nixon in ‘72, because she knew no one who did?
I fear that left-wing columnists (along with curmudgeonly would-be mavericks like Sullivan) mistake the four Europeans they know personally for “everyone in the world” who now hates us because of Bush. Of course, there is indeed some strange pathology behind caring what Hugo Chavez thinks — or Assad of Syria, or Ahmadinejad of Iran, or Kim of North Korea.
I’m not sure Sullivan realizes this isn’t high school any more. Popularity contests may earn a lot of money for media empires, but they don’t mean squat for the security of borders and peoples. Respect, however, does. If Europeans “liked” us, as they did so much under, say, Jimmy Carter, they wouldn’t agree to a NATO missile defense shield — they’d advocate putting the issue on a negotiation track, and give Russia an effective veto over it, as they did with the Pershing missile deployment in the late 1970s.
If Ahmadinejad “liked” us, he would already have wiped Israel off the map, and be trying to blow up oil tankers and aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. That sort of popularity, we can do without.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:17 PM
Every time I read something by Sullivan I am reminded of the silly song from years back: “Feelings, wo oo wo, Feelings.” As my mother often said” people who think with their feelings get other people killed.”
What is really is that these so-called grown-ups view international diplomacy as nothing more than a scaled-up version of the high school social scene. But then, despite his intellect and writing skills Sullivan is not a grown up. What scares me is that it appears Obama is not, either,
April 10th, 2008 at 8:14 PM
Heroditus, I suspected it was something like that. I remember reading about a Black conservative intellectual (forget who) who went through the same thing, and eventually toned it down and made some conciliatory moves. (I wonder what’s up with Bill Cosby lately?)
April 10th, 2008 at 10:49 PM
Saw Cosby in Melbourne, Florida about a month ago. He did two jokes about politics - they were aimed at the President (something to the effect of “This President’s Library will be a comic book”).
He moved on quickly.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:33 AM
The jump in anti-American hyperbole seems to be in direct proportion to a Republican (especially one who stole the election!) in the White House. As J.E. says, there was plenty of anti-American bias among Europe’s elites going back … well, I would say going back about 250 years. It was pretty bad in the Carter years, for reasons most Americans would have agreed with), but then got even worse in the Reagan years — and then magically got somewhat better in the Clinton years. How surprising: the world has become the international wing of the Democratic Party. And after 9/11, which unhinged both the American and Eruopean left for all the wrong reasons, the elites hate us even more (how dare we respond to overt aggression on US soil!).
But all will be well once a Democrat regains the White House.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:41 PM
I believe Sullivan also wrote that he takes testosterone shots. I keep that in mind when trying to account for his angry statements.