NO SELF-INQUIRY FOR MALFEASANCE

The War in Iraq has been judged as the most profligate misadventure in the history of U.S. foreign policy. But, kudos to the Brits, who have a governmental system that holds inquiries which, while lacking any threat of accountability, at least tries to ascertain the facts from the prinicipals involved.

A Brit asked in rhetorical fashion (and perhaps with some incredulity): "Tell me--does the US government never hold public, sworn inquiries the way the British do? Is no one going to be called to give an account of why the US chose to invade Iraq?"

My answer: Yes, the American system of governance never holds public sworn inquiries the way of the British system. The hauling of governmental officials before an investigative body conflicts with two leading principles of American political culture: Our highest political leaders must never be accountable for actions they take while in power; and, whether their official acts are "illegal", especially the starting of wars, is utterly irrelevant. Instead of formal investigations, we wreathe them post-incumbency as elder statesmen who bask in media reverence.

It is then left for historians to investigate the Iraq War fiasco, about which, in any case, the consequences, still developing (and they could be dire), will not be clear for decades. The early histories, though, are already in print (e.g., Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq [2006], by Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas E. Ricks).

It will, also, be left for our children and grandchildren to ask of us how it was that nearly an entire country--from the intelligence and defense establishments, including the U.S. military, to Congress (failure of oversight) and nearly the entire mainstream media--could have gotten it so horribly wrong (count up the hundreds of thousands dead and even more maimed, the several million refugees, and the near total physical destruction of Iraq).

Ultimately, though, the American citizens themselves will have to answer why they were not more responsibly awake, even unto being comatose, during the hard-selling of an illegal, shoddily planned, tragically executed war. Not so difficult to blame another nation as delusional, as we did the German people--"Hitler's willing executioners" (as a book title has it)--for their cooperation with the murderous Nazi regime. But, it is not even in the realm of possible national self-reflexivity for America to look inside--the deep structure of its cultural psyche and institutions--to see how it is that we could allow the prosecution of such massive horror on another people.

Our grandchildren might want to know.

DEEP STRUCTURE OF THE ICEBERG OF CULTURAL AWARENESS

An area of particular interest to me is how nations view themselves. I feel I have lived on the front-line of this issue as a Peace Corps volunteer for 3.5 years (in Jamaica) and spent extended stays overseas in other places and capacities, from rain-forest hovels to hanging out in seven-bedroom houses.

First, it might be useful to understand how each of us knows of our respective culture. Picturing an iceberg is one way to conceive of our individual cultural knowledge: It is like an iceberg in which the bobbing above-the-waterline 10% of culture in our daily awareness is material culture: clothes, dance, music, art, architecture, etc. But, the greater portion--the below-the-waterline 90%--is hidden from our conscious awareness and includes our conceptions of time and space, beauty, courtship, child-rearing, and conceptions of insanity, adolescence, health, death, and so very many other areas--in fact, all other areas of culture.

For example, proxemics--the practice of interpersonal bodily distance--is culturally determined. I have visited places where people stand and converse close to my face, usually an uncomfortable prospect for Americans (and others?). How about eye contact? Some cultures reserve direct eye contact for friends or family. Otherwise, it is considered rude behavior. How about the classic Maya: Did they consciously think about why they hung a jade pendant between the eyes of newborns so they would become cross-eyed; or tied headboards to infants' foreheads to create a sloped cranium from nose tip to the crown--other than cross-eyed and pointy-headed was seen as "beauty"? Who can gainsay it (probably not the classic Maya)?

Unless we consciously think of these culturally-determined behaviors (with the caveat that there are always individual differences), they are not in our awareness and knowledge of our own culture and, in fact, of our own selves. The culture each of us was acculturated into determines much of what each of us is, even if we do not realize it. I am never more aware of this than when overseas. I cannot escape it: I am thoroughly American (as everyone else whom I have met overseas seems to know all too well) even as I think I am supremely unique. Unique, yes; but only within the parameters of American culture.

The reason I bring up the Iceberg Conception of Culture is that it is so very difficult for us to understand our own culture (and our very selves) while we are operating within that same culture. We are like fish swimming in the ocean of our respective cultures not (usually) aware of the medium of the water, the determining influence of our own culture.

The seminal book for this discussion is the 1958 classic, The Ugly American, which the New York Times revisited last summer (<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/books/review/Meyer-t.html?_r=1>), and whose title entered the lexicon about the role of the U.S. abroad. The main theme is that Americans do damage because they do not have cultural expertise in those places in which they operate (in the book it is Vietnam before Pres. Johnson's build-up).

The "ugly American" is not the last word on Americans overseas, as it has been my experience (and some of you have said this, too) that Americans as individuals are generally liked (not so governmental policies), while some are obnoxious, demanding, and intolerant. (The Ugly American was sent by Pres. Kennedy to his top staff and influenced him in creating the U.S. Peace Corps to counter that very image.) On the other hand, as was the case with me personally, Americans will treat the maid or servant the same as the aristocrat--we tend to be more egalitarian than most. I am not exaggerating when I say I have personally played out this very scenario, when, an English aristocrat sent his liveried driver to deliver my then-wife and me to a "little dinner" of about 17 served by a staff of several and attended by some top politicians in Jamaica. I probably broke the unspoken code when I spent too much time speaking to the drink servant who was from Ascension Island, located in the middle of the northern South Atlantic, the only person from there I'll probably ever meet. (I got plenty inebriated.)

Just last week, for my A. P. Human Geography course, I assigned, as I have for the previous four years, chapter two of The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy (2004), by T. R. Reid, Washington Post bureau chief who has been assigned to extended stays in London and Tokyo. (As a result of the latter stay he wrote a book I highly recommend, if you want to understand Japan and really all of East Asia--Confucius Lives Next Door). In The U.S of Europe chapter Reid writes of the attitude the Brits have vis-a-vis Americans, especially the fun they have at our expense, nearly a national past-time, he claims. He describes, for example, public entertainment such as the stage show, Jerry Springer: The Opera (with vignettes such as my step-brother's girlfriend is my father), and the television show, The Lardburgers, about obese, profane, wife-beating, gun-toting trailer trash. My students get quite incensed.

Perhaps the message here is that the iceberg bobs with an entertainment center planted at the apex. What we think of ourselves and others is presented to us by media. The deep structure of culture that we each embody is now mediatized in postmodern reflexivity. We are, and they are, who we see on screen. Are we conscious of it?

CLOSING OF THE MENTAL FRONTIER

Criticism of government seems to be a deeply ingrained attitude in the American psyche. Think of Western movies out of Hollywood in which the sheriff is not doing the job of ridding the town of scofflaws. The lone hero rides in and supplants the ineffectual government of the fainthearted sheriff. Feelings of powerlessness by the western townspeople in the face of lawlessness are reflected in current feelings of individual powerlessness. This could be part of the reason why we Americans enjoy, even perhaps have some need, to criticize government, because we do feel powerless in the face of large corporate and governmental interests, and because we are an individualistic people, and because we are free to criticize government in various ways. Thus, we might feel more powerful when we do.

This reminds me of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, first propounded in 1893, in which the American Frontier, as it moved gradually westward across the continent, was the font for American institutions and American character. Out of the Frontier was created American individualism, distrust of authority, and dependence on ad hoc organization. The Frontier Thesis has fallen out of favor, but does it not prefigure the frame story of many Hollywood films? The western townspeople distrust the sheriff (always for good reason in the movies), the Lone Hero is the ad hoc organization to take care of the problem, and individualism as the highest value suffuses the hero's persona.

It is my thesis that a salient segment of the deep structure of American culture was formed in the space--both literally and figuratively--between tamed urbanized-civilized places, on the one hand, and on the other the untamed Wilderness. If the Frontier Thesis is more myth than reality, I contend this does not entirely override my thesis, because a myth is a social creation that "never happened, but is always true." This means that the myth itself, as a mental construct in the minds of millions of people through many generations, has the power to substantiate and reify. Humans create myths; myths, in turn, inform minds.

I remember 30 years ago, while working as a strip coal-mining Inspector for the Kentucky Dept. of Natural Resources, in Appalachia, one day we were out looking at some mining operation when I made fun of the Civilian Conservation Corps, set up in the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s. The older, wiser Inspector drew me up short and pointed out that the work accomplished by the CCC was of the highest quality, sometimes carried out under difficult conditions; and that some of the very stone bridges we were traveling over were built by the CCC, and looked as if they could last forever. Take a look at some National Parks: they have many CCC-constructed facilities that are still functioning yeomanly 70 years later.

I learned to be careful about the knee-jerk criticism of government which seemed to be a part of my nature. It was so automatic and government is such an easy, non-responding target. Perhaps Turner's Frontier Thesis has been operating within my own psyche. If so, then it is time to close the Mental Frontier and operate on a different set of assumptions and values and myths.