"Some Cynical Guy" No. 63: February 15, 2002

Is The U.S. Really The Best?

Is it just my imagination, or is the United States the only nation that currently feels an abiding need to proclaim itself the greatest on earth? I hear our president say it; I hear pontificating politicians repeat it; I hear the windbag hosts of radio talk shows shout it to their loyal listeners; I wouldn't be surprised to see it printed on shopping bags and bumper stickers across the republic. We're like the dominant rooster atop the dung-hill, and we never seem to tire of crowing 'We're Number One! We're Number One!' Americans always have to be Number One, whether it's a matter of international clout or their kids' little league hockey teams. 

I have a problem with this mentality. If an acquaintance of mine were to proclaim, over and over again, his superiority to all other humans on this planet, I'd probably dismiss him as an obnoxious and irredeemable oaf. Wouldn't you? Doesn't the oaf realize that nobody loves a braggart? Doesn't he consider the feelings of those who suffer by his outrageous comparisons? (If he's the greatest, then clearly we're his inferiors.) Has he actually measured himself objectively against all the folks over whom he claims superiority? Such unapologetic arrogance tends to spawn enemies, and it's no wonder that the victims of his braggadocio would bubble inwardly with hot resentment. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to pop him on the chin. It's no different with nations.

Granted, the U.S. isn't the only arrogant nation on earth. The French can be insufferable with their sniffy airs of cultural and gastronomic superiority, but you don't hear them proclaiming their superiority in public places. It's simply understood among them that the rest of the world is hopelessly déclassé. We don't take them seriously because, after all, it's been centuries since they've won a major war without major help. In fact, all of history's strutting nations have eventually come to grief. The Soviets, the Japanese, the Germans, the Spaniards, the ancient Romans and Athenians all had the hubris knocked out of them, though the Japanese seem to keep coming back for more until they're knocked out again. Britain, perhaps the most decent and civilized of the former strutters, has simply devolved from a brilliant empire into a minor island nation, comparable to Iceland or Trinidad. It's a glum scene, this latter-day Britannia, a land of belligerent soccer fans, bad teeth and even worse artists. No wonder America is continually bragging; all the competition has fallen away like rotting British teeth, leaving us as the sole survivor.

The fact is that we Americans have much to brag about. We prance and gesticulate upon the world's most spectacular stage. After all, we swiped the lushest part of a great virgin continent from its original inhabitants and diligently made it our own. Even as our landscape fills with vile condo developments and office parks, our mighty mountains, rivers and canyons retain most of their capacity to inspire awe. The names of our rivers alone resonate with majestic primeval music: the Susquehanna and the Potomac, the Shenandoah and the Missouri. Our Founding Fathers were probably the finest flock of alpha males ever assembled in one place in the history of our species. None of our presidents -- even counting the occasional rascal like Nixon or Clinton -- have ever attempted to install themselves as supreme potentates in the flamboyant manner of Caesar, Napoleon, Mussolini or Fidel Castro. Our constitutional government is a masterpiece of balanced power, an elegant eighteenth-century Chippendale clock that still ticks valiantly. We've accepted the outcasts, desperadoes and opportunists of a hundred nations, and somehow they all feel welcome here. No other country has produced more celebrities, for better or worse. (Our daring inventors, capitalists, engineers and computer wizards should be even more renowned than our overhyped actors and singers.) We rescued the aging nations of Western Europe from certain destruction in two world wars, and it was our steadfastness that finally made the Soviets blink. We created baseball, jazz and sitcoms. We sent several gentlemen to the moon and returned them safely to earth, something no other nation (not even France) has yet to accomplish. We delighted the world with our cowboys and our homespun yarns and our frontier bravado. We were the Old World's most spirited and ingenious child.

Do all these brilliant achievements make us the greatest nation on earth? It depends on your definition of 'greatest.' If it's social justice you crave, the Scandinavian countries put us to shame. If you're looking for a life of grace and beauty, you'd probably do better in Italy, Portugal, Spain or France. (The French have their reasons for being snooty.) The cities of the United States are predominantly hellholes with fancy restaurants; you'd have to venture into the former Communist bloc to find urban settings of comparable ugliness. Though some of our vintage skyscrapers are impressive, our architects have yet to produce anything approaching the cathedral of Chartres or the Taj Mahal. The ancient stones of Greece and Egypt make us seem like transients. Even our storied landscape offers too many endless miles of flat and featureless terrain. Diminutive countries like Austria and Switzerland, by contrast, offer charm and natural loveliness at every turn in the road. Few destinations in the buttoned-down U.S. can match the tropics for ripe and sensuous abundance. Brazil has more dazzling birds and butterflies, Africa boasts the best wildlife, Bali and Tahiti are earthly glimpses of heaven. The U.S. has never given the world a painter comparable to Rembrandt, a composer like Beethoven, a philosopher like Aristotle, a scribbler like Shakespeare. The Russians produce better figure skaters, at least according to their own judges. If we were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, our culture would be remembered mainly for movies, fast food and Coca-Cola.

Believe it or not, I love our sprawling, big-hearted republic. I'd rather live here than in Senegal or Saudi Arabia. But I'm growing tired of our grandiose national posturing. I don't think of the U.S. as a better place than France, Italy, China or even Uzbekistan. When it comes to nations, I don't think in terms of 'better than' at all. (How can you compare malls and minarets?) Imagine if the smartest kid in the class kept reminding everyone else of his superior IQ. Imagine a great nation continually reminding the other nations of the world, directly or indirectly, that they don't measure up. A country founded on the concept of equality should be ashamed of such blatant and immature nose-thumbing, and it shouldn't be surprised when the have-nots start taking pot-shots. 

The cruel attack of September 11 has, unfortunately, triggered even more posturing, more boasts, more asinine chants of 'We're Number One!' The boasts sound suspiciously defensive this time, as if we feel the terrorists have shaken us to our eighteenth-century brick foundations. It's as if the crowing rooster has been temporarily toppled from the top of the dung-hill, its feathers ruffled. All right, we've struck back; we've reasserted our primacy in the world pecking order, and we've pecked our way back to the top. But I don't think we see the core of the problem: a dung-hill is no place for a great nation to reside. 

Cynic's Pick of the Week
Well, we should have known, as two heartbroken Canadians found out, that you have to be more than perfect to top even a flawed performance by a pair of Russian skaters in the Winter Olympics. Naturally all the former Communist bloc judges (and a politically pressured French one) lined up behind the Russians. The Soviet Empire may be a memory, but apparently it still rules the skating rink.

.© 2002 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," lives with his wife in a 100-year-old former livery stable in Philadelphia. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online.