The Enduring Illusion of a Separate America: Thoughts of a Returning Ex-Patriot

When recently returning to live in the United States after fourteen years in Beirut, I was struck by the pervasive and enduring appeal of a separate America. Like Canadian scholar Sacvan Bercovitch who, when he moved to the United States in the 1970s, felt like “Sancho Panza in a land of Don Quixotes,” I also seem surrounded by people captured by an illusion: a nation uniquely favored by destiny - the freest, greatest place on Earth, populated by people of surpassing courage, industriousness, and goodness.

This all rests on the more fundamental illusion of separateness. The desires for a massive border wall to screen out poorer, darker others and for an enormous military budget to create a Maginot Line in defense of “fortress America” are among the most obvious expressions of this illusion. Although the aspiration for a separate America is increasingly contested, it is remarkable how deeply it resonates with so many Americans and how central it remains to our political culture.

Author with partner Betsy in 2005 at the Martyr’s Square monument commemorating the Lebanese Civil War, and an enduring focus of protests of all kinds.

Beirut

In Beirut, no one could take seriously the notion of a separate America. Like so much of the planet, it is awash in American influence - economic, military, and cultural. But this influence is different from the global connectedness felt everywhere.  

To begin with, the US military is not designed simply to defend the homeland. With over 800 bases spread to almost every corner of the planet, US leaders have clearly attempted to shape the order of the world, and they have also employed US economic and cultural power towards that end.

I arrived in Beirut in 2004 as first director of the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at American University of Beirut (AUB) that, like the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin, attempts to understand America from a distinct perspective. Both centres promote interaction among people working inside and outside the US to develop a more complete picture of America in the world today.

At AUB, I was continually reminded of America’s reach, particularly when - after I had moved to the position of Arts and Science Dean - the newly-appointed university president asked me why he was getting calls from a US senator about CASAR’s hiring of Steven Salaita, a scholar whose dismissal from the University of Illinois had been controversial because he was one of the most articulate critics of Israeli actions vis-à-vis the Palestinians. This all became crystal clear when my recommendation to appoint Salaita as CASAR director was denied and I was dismissed as dean. After personally running right into the face of American power 10,000KM from Washington, the fantasy of a separate America rendered the scene here, for me at least, one of bizarre dissonance. Salaita himself has lost his career. He now drives a school bus, which he calls “an honest living.”

Author in center of Beirut attending demonstration following the assignation of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, 2005.

Colonial Legacies

Although few Americans today see it, the roots of the illusion of separateness, and the accompanying dissonance, lie in the historical reality of western colonialism. Art historian Ariella Azoulay offers a clear recent analysis of the pervasiveness of the Western colonial project. She argues that one cannot grasp even the history of photography (a 19th-century invention) without considering a context that goes back to at least 1492. Colonialism, she explains, is a process of extraction - not just of minerals, agricultural products and labor, but also of cultural artifacts which could be placed in western museums, freezing these cultures as part of a static past which could then serve to highlight the “progress” of Western development.

The inevitable dissonance in the European nationalisms that emerged during the colonial era were all about trying to manufacture a national community in a situation where those inside the country’s national borders were often a minority of those the country (or rather empire) ruled. The dissonance increased along with the intercourse between colony and homeland. Settler colonial nationalisms often emerged under the even messier situations where enslaved labor was part of the scene. The color line - in places like the US and South Africa - was one attempt to distinguish true members of the national community.

Each Western nation has attempted to create a national community in the face of this dissonance, often by appealing to the purportedly unique virtues of their people. So, in the time of coronavirus, echoing the emergency of the London Blitz, stories of the true grit of the British come out. In the United States, the dissonance is so blaring that the stories of American greatness must be screamed, and printed on ball caps.

Our current global system bears the marks of its origins. In the last half-century, the United States has become the single most dominant force, but the system is still one that extracts and concentrates wealth while trying to maintain the human separation of the homeland. “Fortress America” attempts to dominate what lies beyond while pretending to be separate. The empire is denied, but its contradictions are bursting out at the seams. For one thing, the United States, like many other wealthy nations, has a growing “Global South” within—a different object of extraction.

Author teaching a graduate course at the University of Tehran, 2008.

Contradictions

I happened to move to the City of Greenfield in the poorest county of Massachusetts. The level of homelessness, opioid addiction (and overdose deaths), and veteran suicides is shocking and all too reminiscent of conditions in the Middle East. Donald Trump successfully appealed to the white section of this internal South in 2016, returning to the bedrock racial argument: keep us separate. But how does one separate what is already mixed? Netanyahu cannot protect Jewish citizens from coronavirus without also protecting the Arabs who live among them. These contradictions are not new: every nation/empire had to decide how to appease its own traditionally exploited classes with a trickle of imperial gleanings and the status of being on the right side of the color line, but the coronavirus pays no heed to lines or walls.

In this beleaguered little corner of Massachusetts, there are signs of hope. Activism on climate change, homelessness, health care, prison reform, stopping a war with Iran, LGBTQ rights, and more, is seething. I am a member of a Friends of Palestine group that has several Jewish members. Some churches, mosques and synagogues gather communities focused on activism for justice. Environmental work is local and participatory here. Cooperatives of many kinds are thriving. Young people seem less absorbed by the illusions of America and more prepared for basic change. Many people are displaying what I can only label goodness, but I don’t call it American.