Superpatriotism (Michael Parenti)

Superpatriotism
Author	Michael Parenti
Publisher	City Lights Publishers
First published	2004-09
Type	Book

Superpatriotism is a book by political scientist Michael Parenti discussing Statesian nationalism and chauvinism, published in 2004.

Acknowledgements

Amanda Bellerby, Juliana Baker, Violetta Ettare, and Marisa Tregrossi rendered valuable assistance during the course of writing this book. Jenny Tayloe also gave much appreciated support. My thanks also to Nancy J. Peters and other staff members of City Lights Books for their efforts.

Dedicated to Robert E. Lane and Helen Lane

What Does it Mean to Love Our Country?

AS A GUEST ON RADIO TALK SHOWS, I HAVE criticised aspects of US foreign policy. On one such occasion, an irate listener called to ask me, "Don't you love your country?" Here was someone who saw fit to question my patriotism because I opposed certain policies put forth by US leaders. The caller was manifesting symptoms of what I call superpatriotism, the readiness to follow national leaders unquestioningly in their dealings with other countries, especially in confrontations involving military force.

Many people in various countries consider themselves patriotic in that they share common loyalties and national ideals. Generally, in uneventful times, they do not make all that much of such attachments. But during periods of special urgency or national crisis, their leaders take every opportunity to transform their perfunctory patriotism into superpatriotism.

In this country superpatriotism rests on the dubious assumption that the United States is endowed with superior virtue and has a unique history and special place in the world. For the American superpatriot, nationalistic pride, or "Americanism," is placed above every other public consideration. Whether or not superpatriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, as Dr. Johnson might say, it is a highly emotive force used by political leaders and ordinary citizens to muffle discourse. I think that was what the caller was doing (whether he intended to or not) when asking me if I loved my country. In any case, I would answer his question with another one: What exactly does it mean to love one's country?

Do we love every street and lane, every hill and dale in America? There are so many sights and sites within the USA to which one might grow attached. Yet most of us have had direct exposure to relatively few parts of this nation's vast territory since we lack the time and money to make that meandering trip across its great continental expanse. And what of all the natural beauty in other countries throughout the world? Would I be less a patriot if I am forced to conclude that there are parts of Ireland and New Zealand that are even more beautiful than the lovely sights of our Pacific Northwest region? Would I be wanting in patriotism if I felt Paris to be more captivating than San Francisco? Or the Piazza Navona in Rome more endearing than the Rockefeller Center in New York?

Perhaps love of country means loving the American people. But even the most gregarious among us know only a tiny portion of the US populace, that vast aggregate of diverse ethnic, religious, and class groups. In any case, any number of superpatriots feel no love at all for certain of their compatriots whose lifestyles, beliefs, ethnicity, or lowly economic status they find repugnant.

It might be that we can love whole peoples in the abstract, feeling a common attachment because we are all Americans. But what actually is so particularly lovable about Americans, even in the abstract? Although many Americans are fine and likable, some are not admirable at all. Among the compatriots who fail to win my affection are ruthless profiteers, corporate swindlers, corrupt and self-serving leaders, bigots, sexists, violent criminals, and rabidly militaristic superpatriots.

Maybe our superpatriots love this country for its history. One would doubt it, since so much of US history is evidently unknown to them: the struggle for free speech that has continued from early colonial times down to this day; the fierce fights for collective bargaining and decent work conditions; the long campaigns to extend the franchise to all citizens including propertyless workers and women; the struggles to abolish slavery, end racial segregation, and extend civil rights, to establish free public education, public health services, environmental and consumer protections, and occupational safety, and to impose a progressive income tax and end wars of aggression, and other such issues of peace and social justice.

Here certainly is a history that can make one feel proud of one's country and love the valiant people who battled for political and economic democracy. But many superpatriots are wretchedly ignorant of this history, especially since so little of it is taught in the schools. How unfortunate, for it would add more substance to their love of country.

Also largely untaught is the darker side of our history. What is there to love about the extermination of Native American Indian nations, a bloodletting that extended over four centuries along with the grabbing of millions of acres of their lands? There is nothing lovable about the systemic kidnapping and enslaving of millions of Africans; the many lynchings and murders of the segregationist era; the latter-day assassinations of Black Panther Party members and other political dissidents; the stealing of half of Mexico (today's Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and a portion of Colorado); the grabbing of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba; the blood-drenched conquest of the Philippines; and the military interventions and wars of aggression against scores of other countries.

Should we love our country for its culture? We Americans can boast of no Shakespeare, Goethe, Cervantes, or Dante, but we still can be proud of our playwrights and poets, our art and opera, our music and dance, our museums and symphony orchestras, our libraries and universities. Yet as far as I can tell, the superpatriots evince relatively little interest in these things. If anything, arts and education are being subjected to merciless budget cuts by those superpatriotic policymakers who prefer to pour our treasure into a gargantuan military budget. They would starve Athens for an ever stronger Sparta.

While we might embrace the good things in our culture, some other aspects are hard to celebrate: the mind abuse of most television and cinematic offerings; the omnipresent, soul-numbing commercialism; the urban and suburban blight and crime-ridden, drug-infested neighbourhoods; the proliferation of homeless beggars and shanty encampments; the toxic dumps, strip-mined wastelands, denuded forests, highway vehicular carnage, and widespread contamination of our rivers, bays, and groundwater; the astronomical homicide rates, hate crimes, and child abuse; the widespread emotional depression and spousal abuse; the enormous and still growing gap between the obscenely rich and desperately poor; the overweening rapacity of the giant corporations; the money-driven corruption of much of our public life, and other such dispiriting things.

Some superpatriots claim that they love America because of the freedom it gives us. Yet most of them seem to love freedom only in the abstract, for they cannot stand the dissidence and protests that are the actual practice of a free people. They have trouble tolerating criticisms directed against certain US policies and institutions. If anything, superpatriots show themselves ever ready to support greater political conformity and more repressive measures against heterodoxy.

We might question the quality of the freedom we are said to enjoy, for in truth we are not as free as we often suppose. To be out of step in one's political opinions is often to put one's career in jeopardy—even in a profession like teaching, which professes a dedication to academic freedom. The journalists who work for big media conglomerates and who claim to be untrammelled in their reportage overlook the fact that they are free to say what they like because their bosses like what they say. They rarely, if ever, stray beyond the respectable parametres of the dominant paradigm, and when they do so, it is at their own risk.

The major media in the United States are owned by giant corporations and influenced by rich corporate advertisers who seldom question the doing of the free-market profit system at home and abroad. The assumptions behind US foreign policy go largely unexamined in news analysis and commentary. Those who have critical views regarding corporate power and US global interventionism rarely get an opportunity to reach a mass audience.

Many of our superpatriots love this country because it is considered a land of opportunity, a place where people can succeed if they have the right stuff. But individual success usually comes by prevailing over others. And when it comes to the really big prizes in a competitive, money-driven society, almost all of us are losers or simply noncontestants. Room at the top is limited to a select few, mostly those who have been supremely advantaged in family income and social standing from early in life. Even if the US economy does reward the go-getters who sally forth with exceptional capacity and energy, is the quality of life to be measured by the ability of tireless careerists to excel over others? Even if it were easy to become a multimillionaire in America, what is so great about that? Why should one's ability to make large sums of money be reason to love one's country? What is so admirable about a patriotism based on the cash nexus? In any case, some Americans have trouble feeling patriotic about the rat race. They do not wish to spend their lives trying to get rich, trying to advantage themselves at the expense of others. They seek to do work that enhances the quality of life for the entire society. If then they are rewarded for their contributions, so much the better, but that is not their prime concern, nor do they feel that the rewards should be so astronomical and nontaxable.

Of course, economic opportunity is not exclusively about getting rich. In America, it is said, millions enjoy the opportunity to "get ahead," to live in comfort and prosperity, short of reaching a stratospheric income. But millions who have worked hard all their lives do not achieve a comfortable life. Upward mobility in the United States is no greater than in other industrial nations. Almost all Americans remain at the same economic level to which they were born. If anything, with the free-market rollback of recent decades, there has been much slippage. It is no longer to be taken for granted that Americans will live better than did their parents. In fact, most are not living as well. Life has become increasingly more stressful and difficult as growing numbers find themselves working harder and harder to stay afloat, with fewer benefits, insufficient income, more stress, and less job security.

Contrary to a popular myth, the USA has the smallest—not the largest—middle-income stratum of the industrial world. Average incomes are rising modestly but only because of more intensive workloads. (In the much-vaunted economic recovery of 2003-2004, investments, sales, and profits climbed, but wages remained flat.) US workers face one of the longest work years in the world. They average only about ten days a year paid vacation, compared to Western European workers who usually get thirty days. Even some Latin American countries mandate one month paid vacation.

America has not been a land of opportunity or economic betterment for the Native American Indians (except for a few casino owners) who have had their lands stolen and their populations sadly reduced by death and disease; nor for the industrial workers who still face life-threatening occupational hazards, or who see their jobs being exported to Third World sweatshops; nor for the farm labourers who currently put in long hours at stoop labour for subsistence wages; nor the millions of others who work at joyless dead-end occupations for poverty-level pay, or who manage to attain a higher education only to face a lack of employment opportunities while mired in hopeless debt from student loans.

In sum, it seems that the America our superpatriots claim to love is neither a geographical or demographic totality, nor a cultural heritage as such, nor really a land of such unlimited freedom and economic opportunity and prosperity. The superpatriot's America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history. For the superpatriot, those who do not share in this uncritical Americanism ought to go live in some other country.

America—Love It or Leave It

DURING THE LATE 1960S, GROWING NUMBERS of Americans took it to the streets to protest the war in Indochina with its savagely intensive US bombings of civilian populations in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In response, supporters of the war were quick to attack the demonstrators, both verbally and sometimes even physically. Steeped in the belief that any war fought by the United States must ipso facto be a noble undertaking irrespective of the human costs, the superpatriots could only conclude that the antiwar protesters were little better than traitors who gave aid and comfort to the enemy. In this instance, our "enemies" were often impoverished Indo-chinese peasants fighting to liberate their countries from foreign control.

It was not long before the superpatriotic slogan "America—Love It or Leave It" began appearing on signs and bumper stickers, making its way into the pronouncements of hawkish politicians.

Opponents of the Vietnam War performed many worthy deeds. By galvanising great numbers of protesters they overthrew the sacrosanct notion that one could not oppose war while the country was actually at war. They contested the widely accepted idea that the United States played a primarily virtuous role in the world. They exposed the selfish material interests behind US overseas interventionism. And many of them began to question the whole elitist political system that produced such policies.

The antiwar movement also publicised the terrible aspects of the Indochina conflict: the villages destroyed and innocent people massacred; the children burnt with napalm; the groves, orchards, farms, jungles, wildlife, and peasants themselves poisoned with Agent Orange and other defoliants—information that was largely suppressed by news media and government officials through most of the war. Peace protesters encouraged tax resistance and civil disobedience. They blocked draft boards and induction centres, challenged military recruiters on college campuses, trashed recruitment booths, marched and even rioted in the streets, and generally acted as an insurgent restraint on the war leaders.

The movement reached into the US military itself, creating a climate of dissent that affected the performance of soldiers in Vietnam. During the latter years of the war, infantry squads and platoons sometimes refused to advance deeply into the jungle to make contact with the enemy, some 700 US servicemen deserted, and a few outright mutinies occurred, including at least one of company size. Officers were occasionally the targets of fragmentation grenades from their own men. At home, the peace movement assisted conscientious objectors and other draft resisters, and helped create a climate of opinion against the war.

The dissenters also demonstrated to the world and to the United States itself that there was another America, one that did not mindlessly fall into obedient lockstep once the flags were unfurled and the martial music sounded. So while some people cried, "America—love it or leave it," the protesters now responded, "America—change it or lose it."

'America—love it or leave it" is a variation of an older saying that enjoyed currency for more than a century: "My country—right or wrong," a bald proclamation to support the United States government in its conflicts with other governments regardless of the moral issues involved. It is hard to say which posture is more insufferable: the "right-or-wrong" mentality that supports any US action including ones that are arguably wrong, or the "love-it-or-leave-it" mindset that refuses to see anything wrong.

Having witnessed what is done in the name of Americanism, some protesters during the Vietnam era attacked the patriotic symbols of our country. Some burnt American flags, thereby convincing more conventional Americans that they were either maniacs or traitors. The war resisters mistakenly put the blame on an entity called America, sometimes writing it as "Amerika," intended to give the word a more Germanic Nazi-like tone, or "Amerikkka" with three k's, the initials of the Ku Klux Klan, treating the word itself as a kind of curse. Thus, the protesters mistakenly made America the issue, blaming the nation itself for what was being perpetrated in its name by US leaders.

In so doing, they played directly into the hands of leaders who opportunistically sought to treat their own war policy as a manifestation a true Americanism. America was transformed into an entity that had a living moral existence of its own—supremely virtuous for the flag-wavers, and primarily evil for the flag burners.

"America" was made an issue in another way at about that same time. Many Latin Americans and some Canadians, along with some US peace advocates themselves, were—and still are—opposed to applying the terms "America" and "Americans" to the United States and its citizens. They argue that "America" refers to the entire Western Hemisphere and is not to be appropriated by one particular country in the Americas. In fact, people in other Western Hemispheric countries call themselves Brazilians, Chileans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Canadians, and so on. They do not identify themselves nationally as Americans. They just do not want US citizens to do so.

One might wonder why the appellation "America" should be coveted by anyone anyone at all. It derives from explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who happened to be a despicable slaver and plunderer, every bit as ruthless as Columbus. (In this book I apply the terms "America" and "American" to the United States and its citizens because that is the unavoidable nationalistic idiom I am addressing.)

To this day, US political leaders continue to wrap themselves in the flag, branding all opposition to their policies as attacks against the nation itself. In the 1992 electoral campaign, the older Bush responded to Bill Clinton's criticisms of the economic recession as follows: "My opponent says America is a nation in decline.... Well, don't let anyone tell you that America is second-rate, especially someone running for president." Thus, he misrepresented criticisms of his administration's faltering economic policies as an attack on America itself.

This reminds us that America would have been made the issue by the superpatriots even if no flags had been burnt, and even if nobody had thought to spell it "Amerikkka." "America—love it or leave it" is too inviting a slogan for those who have no desire to subject existing policies to rational scrutiny. By crying "love it or leave it," they can claim a monopoly on patriotism, and denigrate the dissenters for not loving their country.

This continues to be the case. Opponents of US foreign policy are still accused of blaming or hating America. Once again, the protesters are made the issue instead of the policies they are protesting.

In response, we must repeatedly point out that those who criticise the particular policies, leaders, or social conditions of their country do not thereby manifest a deficient loyalty. If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy.

We critics of US policy are not directing our protests against that entity known as America but against particular US leaders who, we feel, do not represent the interests of the American people or any other people, but who advance the goals of a privileged coterie. We are not being anti-American when we criticise the president's policies, no more than we are being "anti-Middletown" and lacking in community spirit if we oppose the policies pursued by the mayor of Middletown, or whatever community. Quite the contrary, our opposition arises out of concern for what is being done to—and in the name of—our country or community.

By the same token we are not being anti-Semitic if we criticise the Israeli government for the incursions and settlements in the occupied territories and for mistreatment of Palestinians. Some of the most outspoken critics of Israeli policy are themselves Israelis in Israel or Jewish-Americans in the United States who—contrary to the facile psychologists charge made against them—are not "self-hating Jews." In fact, most happen to be rightly proud of their Jewish heritage. Likewise, we are not showing hatred for Mexico, Italy, Poland, China, or any nation, nationality, or ethnic group if we denounce the particular policies of the Mexican, Italian, Polish, or Chinese governments.

The expression "love it or leave it" means love America as it is. Its national institutions and foreign policy are to be treated as above criticism. Those who see some serious problems in US society are deemed unappreciative of the American Way of Life. But the American way is to criticise and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country.

The superpatriots tell us that in many countries people do not have the right to criticise their governments. Presumably, we should show gratitude for our freedom to dissent by refraining from dissenting; and if we speak freely and critically, we are proving ourselves ungrateful and therefore unworthy of the right to speak. It seems we "abuse" our rights by simply using them. To repeat, the only thing to match the superpatriots' celebration of our freedom in the abstract is their intolerance toward anyone who actually puts that freedom into practice.

Some superpatriots think that we must not criticise the wonderful country that has given us so much. In fact, we were not given anything, certainly not by those who have ruled over our society. The American people, including all the immigrant groups and minorities, have had to fight long and hard for whatever rights they now enjoy. As the son of a poor Italian-American working-class family, I was able to go to school in the first half of the last century only because generations of people before me struggled against the privileged plutocracy for the right of free public education.

So with every other good thing we have been "given." Why should we feel indebted to the ruling moneyed interests for "giving" us the good life, when in fact they furiously resisted every democratic and egalitarian gain that the American people have won over two centuries of struggle, every advance in labour relations, popular electoral participation, public education, environmental and consumer protections, retirement benefits, human services, and other worthwhile measures. Like the good reactionaries they are, the plutocrats continue to oppose most of these things. And in recent decades they have enjoyed increasing success in bringing us back to the old days of Big Money and small democracy.

Getting back to the "love it or leave it" issue, many Americans would be surprised to learn that every year there are substantial numbers of people who permanently leave the United States. Public focus has always been on the waves of immigration to our shores, with little attention given to the outgoing tide. Emigration is a phenomenon that is rarely publicly recognised or even officially recorded—almost as if it were an embarrassment or, worse, a downright un-American phenomenon unworthy of attention.

Despite the deficiencies in data, enough reliable information is available to determine that during much of the twentieth century the United States gained some 30 million newcomers from abroad and lost about 10 million to emigration. Currently more than 150,000 people depart every year. About two-thirds of them are former immigrants who chose to go home or to another country. The remainder are US citizens. Some 300,000 US citizens permanently left the United States in the 1960s, a relatively prosperous decade. And this does not count the others who might have wished to depart but who lacked the wherewithal to do so.

About a third of the US citizens who emigrate each year settle in Canada or Mexico. The next most popular destinations are the United Kingdom and Germany, with Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Hong Kong receiving large flows in proportion to their size. Considerable numbers also take up permanent residence in Japan and Australia. Americans emigrate usually for the same reasons that cause people of other nations to leave their homelands: better job opportunities abroad, unhappiness with the quality of life at home, a wish to escape troubled circumstances, attraction to the culture and lifestyle of some other country, a desire to unite with family, and marriage to a foreign national.

In sum, every year tens of thousands of US citizens reveal that they are not swept up in any mystique about the unsurpassable greatness of life in America. Since they don't love it, they leave it. Or they may love it but, for whatever reason, they find some other place more promising. Such data contradict the chauvinistic notion that everyone wants to move to America but no one wants to leave.

"The Importance of Being "Number One"

SUPERPATRIOTS PROUDLY PROCLAIM THAT the United States is "Number One." US presidents are especially afflicted by this numero uno syndrome. In the late 1960s President Richard Nixon said: "America is still Number One" (the "still" bespeaking an anxiety about some possible slippage). In the 1988 election campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis asserted that "we have to make America Number One again." Throughout the 1980s President Ronald Reagan averred that America was both "Number One" and "standing tall—unlike those other nations that slouch or are rather short. In the 1992 campaign, Republican presidential incumbent George Bush reassured us that America is "Number One" and not "second rate." And years later his son, President George W. Bush, declared that "America is the greatest country in the world," which is just another way of saying we are Number One.

None of these leaders ever explain what is so important about being Number One or the greatest, nor what actually is entailed in occupying the top slot. What specific traits qualify us for that position? What exactly are we Number One in? Is it population? No, certainly China walks away with all the awards in that category, followed by India. Geographic size? Russia and Canada have more real estate than does the USA.

Are we Number One in cultural heritage? That might depend on how we define "culture." Taken in the usual sense of arts, crafts, architecture, music, law, mythology, philosophy, literature, and learning, the age-old civilisations of India, Egypt, Iran, Syria, China, Korea, Japan, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Peru, and others too numerous to mention can each lay claim to a cultural heritage that is vastly older and richer than what has developed in North America since the seventeenth-century European settlements. In fact, the European settlers systematically destroyed the resourceful and equitable age-old cultures of the indigenous North American people.

Africa comes down to us as a forbidding "dark continent" of barbarism, but it too is the home of an ancient cultural heritage, rich in art, architecture, music, literature, and mythology. African art has been a source of inspiration and even the object of blatant plagiarism for many famous Western sculptors and painters.

Regarding cultural heritage, consider Iraq. That beleaguered country, attacked and occupied by US forces, is regularly depicted in the US press as in need of our guidance and uplift; we will teach the Iraqis how to govern and care for themselves. Perhaps we should recall that the Iraqis invented writing, founded the first school of astronomy, and developed modern mathematics, using a kind of Pythagorean theorem 1,700 years before Pythagoras. Beginning around A.D. 800, they founded universities that imported teachers from throughout the civilised world to teach medicine, mathematics, philosophy, theology, literature, and poetry (at a time when Christian Europe had long suppressed serious study of such subjects). For thousands of years, the Iraqis wrote some of the greatest poetry, history, and sagas in the world, and fashioned some of the most imposing stone, metal, and clay artworks. With the Code of Hammurabi, they brought forth the first legal system that protected the weak, the widowed, and the orphaned. Twelve thousand years ago, they invented irrigated farming, and became so proficient at it that in the 1990s, despite sanctions imposed by the West, they still managed to produce all the food they needed.

And in the present century, though depicted in the US press as tribal and backward and in need of our enlightened guidance, the Iraqis continued to be a highly capable and well-trained people with noted achievements in science, engineering, literature, and the arts—not to mention their resourcefulness in waging an armed resistance against powerful US occupation forces.

Culture aside, is America Number One in finance? The major banks in the world are now Japanese, I am told. And some American top financiers are too busy plundering pension funds and small investors to set any admirable world standards in banking.

We used to be Number One in steel production and other heavy industries. But our superpatriotic corporate leaders have taken to exporting US industries to cheaper overseas labour markets so they can rake in higher profits.

Is the United States tops in trade? We Americans are supposed to be the world's best salesmen, but in fact most of the world seems to be outselling us, as is evident from the immense trade deficits that the USA runs up annually. Anyone who has brought durable-use consumer goods in recent years cannot help noticing how many of them seem to be made in the sweatshops of China, Indonesia, Taiwan, or some other Third World nation.

Perhaps this country is Number One in cuisine? Certainly the USA has produced some fine cooking schools and chefs, along with a variety of natural food delights and other gastronomic innovations. But then one thinks of China, France, India, Italy, Greece, Ethiopia, Japan, and any number of other nations whose national cuisines are cause for salivating. In sheer market penetration, however, the United States, with its McDonald's and other fast-food chains burgeoning overseas, is unsurpassed in corrupting the tastebuds of millions of people around the world. But that really is nothing to be proud of. And when the superpatriots talk about being Number One, I think they have something more momentous in mind than nouvelle cuisine or greasy, salty, chemical-ridden, genetically engineered hamburgers.

What then is the United States Number One in? As best I can tell, it comes down to two things: wealth and military might. Let us consider these in turn. Wealth does not reside in a society as an undifferentiated aggregate. It is possessed by particular individuals and their corporate organisations and financial institutions. In the United States the vast majority of us are not rich. A tiny fraction of one percent own a lion's share of the wealth. There is a modestly sized middle class that manages to do well enough but knows no certain economic security. Then, there is a large lower-middle to low-income population, some 80 percent of our population, who live with chronic money concerns and little or no net financial assets. And below them, are millions of extremely poor who endure severe deprivation at the very bottom of the pile.

As noted in chapter one, there are Western European social democracies that have a more equitable standard of living and superior benefits and public services than are found in the United States. In that sense, they are, if not richer than we, certainly freer from poverty and want. To celebrate our national wealth, then, one might first consider how it is distributed and used. To talk about our wealth is like talking about our oil in Texas or the Middle East. We the people do not own US oil reserves at home and abroad. The world's oil supply is controlled by a few giant cartels, owned by a relatively small number of obscenely rich individuals. As with oil, so with our wealth in general: a select coterie at the very top of the economic ladder control more of it than all the rest of us combined. We just produce it with our hard work. They pocket it.

Wealth aside, consider the other thing that the United States is Number One in: military might. We need to question why being Number One in kill capacity is such a great accomplishment. In 1992, the first President Bush said, "We must be a military superpower." The celebration of military prowess as a sign of national greatness is predicated on the questionable assumption that such power is for laudatory purposes only.

President Reagan once exclaimed, "We love America because America is the greatest." This view implies that if America were not so great (read strong), we would not find it so lovable. Our love seems predicated on the country's being bigger and more powerful than other nations. What then of peoples who inhabit these lesser lands that cannot claim such "greatness"? For instance, can citizens of Luxembourg love their country? Luxembourg can never aspire to be Number One. In fact, it must be about Number 138, not that far ahead of Liechtenstein in the greatness of its military might. Do people from Luxembourg walk about shamefaced because they rank so low? Do they try to pass themselves off as French or German? When asked if they love their country, do they mumble: "What is there to love? A few border police, no navy, no real air force."

While political leaders boast about US military strength, they say nothing about its costs: the distorted technology, material waste, ecological devastation, enormous debt and high taxes, and the neglect of social needs and infrastructure—not to mention the terrible consequences that other countries must endure when finding themselves on the receiving end of this superpower's military might.

The United States is Number One in certain other things that are rarely if ever mentioned by our leaders. Compared to other industrial nations, we are Number One in homicides and death by firearms. The US murder rate among young males is twenty times higher than in Western European and forty times that of Japan. We are Number One in per capita prison population and in financial bailouts, trade imbalances, and budget deficits.

This wealthiest of all nations has a public debt that is the largest in the world. We also have schools that are falling apart, public hospitals that are closing down, and all sorts of essential public services that are being cut back for lack of funds. So alongside the highly concentrated private wealth there exists a growing public poverty. We are tops among the Western industrial nations and the number of people lacking medical insurance. The USA is also Number One in family farms that are going broke, genetically modified foods, the factory-farm use of pesticides and herbicides, and the amounts of antibiotics and hormones injected into livestock.

The United States is Number One in managers per employees. A country like Japan, supposedly encumbered with traditional hierarchy, has less than one-third the number of managers per employees. In other words, while the leaders of US industry complain about bloated government bureaucracies, they themselves populate top-heavy bloated corporate bureaucracies.

The USA is also Number One among industrial nations in income inequality and executive salaries. The number of multimillionaires has increased by over 80 percent in the last two decades. We also have the largest number of newly minted billionaires. Average remuneration for chief executive officers (CEOs) of corporations is anywhere from two to six times higher than CEOs abroad. A Fortune magazine survey of a hundred of the nation's largest corporations found that the typical CEO enjoyed a 14 percent rise in income in 2002, bringing his or her total yearly pay to an average of more than $13 million, irrespective of whatever scandals or slumps the company underwent. Meanwhile, stock options for these top tycoons continued to expand, in some instances to astronomical levels. Thus the former chairman of Tenet Healthcare, the nation's second largest hospital chain, pulled in stock options worth $111 million in 2002. At the same time, in many of these companies, employees were laid off or endured wage freezes, cutbacks in benefits, or disappearing pension funds.

In sum, before bragging in the abstract about how America is the greatest, the superpatriots ought to attend to the unsettling specifics. Number One indeed, but at what price?

Military Patriotism: For Flag and Missile

A KEY COMPONENT OF SUPERPATRIOTISM is its uncritical dedication to military glory and nation-state aggrandisement. Patriotic ceremonies are more likely to commemorate a nation's military history than its history of struggle for politico-economic equality, peace, and social justice. Consider the many monuments, memorials, parades, public gatherings, movies, and television documentaries that evoke images of war: Valley Forge, the Alamo, Gettysburg, the Winning of the West (that is, the extermination of Native American nations), D-Day, the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, and the like. Our country right or wrong, but mostly our country at war or ready for war.

4 July Independence Day celebrations and other national holidays such as Veteran's Day (11 November) in cities and towns across the nation would be incomplete without the martial music and parading veterans. 4 July fireworks are a benign replication of "the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air," as goes our top patriotic song. Not many years ago, television stations would sign off the air at night by playing the national anthem, accompanied by footage of aircraft carriers slicing through the seas, fighter jets cutting across the sky, and other militaristic images. Some stations still do.

Young men and women join the US armed forces out of a desire to serve their country—we are told. But critics note that the lack of employment opportunities in civilian life is often the real spur to recruitment; it is called economic conscription. The promise of career training, travel, and scholarships, or just the simple guarantee of regular meals and pay, are a paramount part of the lure. And if one is an officer, the pay, pension, and lifestyle are quite good indeed. Military recruiters themselves say little about patriotic sacrifice—such as dying for your country or getting your limbs blown off or your eyesight or brain destroyed in combat. Instead, recruitment appeals focus on career opportunities and personal fulfillment: "Be all you can be" says one Army recruitment poster. "Expand your experience," says a Navy television advertisement.

Still, the military is seen as the special repository of national devotion and patriotic sacrifice. Even some of the military's weapons systems are endowed with nationalistic and patriotic sounding names. There were the "Liberty Ships" of World War II, and more recently the "Minuteman Missile," the "Frontier Missile," the "Patriotic Missile," and naval vessels such as the USS Constitution, the USS Liberty, and the USS Abraham Lincoln. And if that is not enough, the second US war against Iraq was accorded the code name "Operation Enduring Freedom"—without the slightest trace of intended irony.

The message is clear: patriotic and militarism go together. A flag in one hand, a weapon in the other, that is what makes America great; that is what supposedly makes us free and independent, safe and prosperous.

The marriage of militarism to patriotism makes it difficult to criticise the enormously bloated military budgets yearly allocated by the US Congress, reaching well beyond $500 billion by 2003 (including the sums spent on the war in Iraq). According to a General Account Office investigation, the Pentagon somehow lost track of the enormous sum of $1.1 trillion over the last several decades! As noted in one newspaper, "waste has become ingrained in the Defense budget because opposition to defense spending is portrayed as unpatriotic." Imagine if the Department of Housing and Human Services or the Social Security administration had "misplaced" such a titanic sum; many members of Congress would ring the welkin with demands for drastic cutbacks and punitive reform.

One would think that tolerating massive thievery in the Pentagon is itself a rather unpatriotic thing. As Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) charged, the Pentagon has failed to address financial problems that dwarf those of anyone else. "While vast sums of money are being siphoned off into hidden coffers, America's schools, hospitals, and public services are facing cutbacks and closures." If those missing billions were returned to the states and cities on a pro-rata basis, argued Waxman, the fiscal crises that state and local governments were suffering would have been solved, and life in America would be better for many of us.

With the link between militarism and patriotism so firmly fixed, any criticism of the military runs the risk of being condemned as unpatriotic. The film company Mirimax endured endless headaches trying to decide when to release its darkly satirical movie, Buffalo Soldiers, about bored, thieving, drug-dealing US soldiers stationed in Germany. The film was attacked by conservative groups as "flamboyantly unpatriotic fare" and "demoralising" to our troops "who have put their lives on the line defending America and its freedoms." Thus, critical issues about the mistreatment of enemy prisoners and killing of unarmed civilians, massive budgetary corruption and Pentagon mismanagement, and drug problems in the ranks are ignored or downplayed.

Militaristic superpatriotism is closely linked to the macho values of violent dominance. In the aftermath of the US Civil War, a chaplain for the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans' group, conflated military patriotism and manliness with these words, "The Union stands for American Manhood, a manhood strong in physical courage.... being once aroused [it] has the spirit of that order given by Gen. Dix: 'If any man dare insult the American flag, shoot him on the spot.'" The Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, summed it up when he said a man must be "a husband, a father and a soldier." In other words, a "real man" must fulfill the patriarchal and patriotic roles as one, ruling over his family as a tyrant while serving the tyrant who rules over his country. In one phrase Mussolini makes clear that patriarchy and militarism are essential components of reactionary patriotism. Il Duce himself was almost a caricature of the macho leader, strutting about in jackboots and a uniform laden with medals, with chin jutting out in a puffed-up tough-guy posture. The superpatriot is a militarist, and the militarist in turn is a swaggering he-man patriarch, celebrating the male chauvinist values of force and power.

One US Air Force captain, reminiscing about his bombing attacks against the peasant population of Vietnam, made an explicit connection between high-tech war, machismo, mindless patriotism, and nation-state moral supremacy: "Flying a fighter plane is... a macho thing, maybe—an extension of your manhood. You do it, concentrate on it, and under the circumstances it was damn hard for me to get worried about the political implications of the war. It was a chance for us to show our military power. We're basically patriotic, conservative people. And we're blameless."

The women, who now enter the armed forces make the grade only if they are a close approximation of the male model in toughness and force. That women recruits would inject a kinder, gentler, more humane modus operandi into the ranks is an idea that has never been seriously entertained by the military brass or anyone else, as far as I know.

War is often a great incitement to state idolatry, especially when people think they are going to win easily. Reflecting on the war fever she observed in Paris on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, an American woman wrote: "The war, the war, there is no other topic. Utter strangers would stop to discuss the situation. The confidence in the generals and the army was immense. It was to be one long but straight march to Berlin; not a soul doubted it." Thousands crowded the Place de la Concorde nightly, indulging in frenzied dancing. Boulevard windows were thick with flags. And anyone who dared question the wisdom of the war was jeered as a "Prussian spy" and chased down the street. But the chauvinist ardour cooled precipitously when the war brought a disastrous defeat for France.

Something similar happened in the United States with the onset of the Civil War in 1861. There was an eruption of patriotic sentiment in the North coupled with the anticipation of an early victory over the Southern secessionists. But after a year of conflict, during which the Union Army suffered a number of military disasters, patriotic fervour plummeted. Lincoln's effort to rally the populace for a long and costly conflict met with little enthusiasm. Only after Union forces finally emerged victorious in 1865 did patriotic sentiment regain its momentum.

Like all bullies, superpatriots are at their best when picking on someone smaller and weaker. They like "wars" that are hardly worthy of the name, steeply one-sided assaults that bring quick and easy victory with few American casualties. In 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, a lieutenant colonel in the US Marines told his troops, "We are going to slaughter the 51st Mechanized Division," an Iraqi unit. It would not be a fair fight, he said. "My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby harp seals. We will hit them with everything we have." Enjoying a total advantage in firepower and airpower, he gleefully glorified a military engagement that was hardly more than a one-sided slaughter.

The late comedian Bill Hicks once remarked that the people who dismayed him the most at the end of the first Gulf War (a quick easy victory) were the ones who said, "Well, the war made us feel better about ourselves." "Who are these people with such low self-esteem," Hicks asked, "that they need a war to feel better about themselves? I saw them on the news, waving their flags. Could I recommend instead of war to make you feel better about yourself, perhaps sit-ups? Maybe a fruit cup? A walk around the block at dusk?"

Many superpatriots were exhilarated by the US aggressions perpetrated against Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. Ronald Reagan, the Conqueror of Grenada (a tiny island nation of 102,000 inhabitants), reflecting upon his great military victory, hailed the venture as an example of how the USA brings democracy and prosperity to other lands. In fact, after Grenada was "liberated" by Reagan, its unemployment rate skyrocketed. The new enterprises and development projects and health and educational programmes initiated by the revolutionary New Jewel movement were wiped out. Public services were privatised or abolished outright. Farm collectives were driven off the land to make way for privately owned golf courses to accommodate North American tourists. Grenada was again made safe for neoliberal capital penetration. The Reagan invasion served notice to the Caribbean nations that they had better not try to develop a collectivist social order that goes against the corporate free-market way of doing things.

The same story can be told about Panama. The 1989 US invasion brought a sharp increase in unemployment, homelessness, economic misery, crime, drugs, and government corruption. Nothing was gained except the deaths of several thousand Panamanians, a US occupation, political repression of reformist groups, and a boost in the opinion polls for President George H. W. Bush. So with Iraq, which once had the best standard of living in the Middle East. The 1991 attack on the country and the subsequent dozen years of sanctions left that country with a shattered technological infrastructure, a destroyed agriculture base, cholera and typhoid epidemics, a spectacular rise in cancer rates in the areas contaminated with depleted uranium, and over 200,000 deaths. So too with the younger Bush's invasions of Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003, bringing more death, destruction, and deeper poverty for the people of those countries, and a sharp—if temporary—hike in popularity for his presidency.

For all their militarism, American superpatriots dislike difficult, costly wars, such as the one in Vietnam. Here was a small country but one still strong enough to inflict heavy casualties on US forces while enduring a terrible pounding itself. The superpatriots complained that we fought in Vietnam "with one hand tied behind our backs," exercising too much restraint—despite the fact that the United States dropped more explosives on Indochina than fell in all of World War II, leaving several million Indochinese dead, and millions more maimed or missing. The jingoists would have applauded the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. That certainly would have finished off all these troublesome Communist rebels, and US forces would have "won" the war, creating another radioactive cemetery and calling it peace.

The second war in Iraq is another case. The swift and apparently decisive victory in the spring of 2003 evoked much enthusiasm from the patriotic hawks. But in the months that followed, US occupation forces founded themselves unexpectedly embroiled in a people's resistance, enduring more than thirty daily guerrilla attacks that inflicted mounting US casualties. Suddenly facing a protracted and costly struggle, the US public no longer registered such a gung-ho approval rating for the president or the military venture in Iraq. War is much less fun when the other side starts hitting back with any deadly efficacy.

"USA! USA!" Sports for Superpatriots

SUPERPATRIOTISM EXTENDS INTO THE world of sports. At every major league baseball game, just before play begins, a voice comes over the loudspeaker telling everyone to rise to their feet and remove their hats. The stadium's giant electronic screen projects an image of the American flag flapped vigorously in the wind. A vocalist belts out "The Star Spangled Banner." Many spectators sing along, while the players of each team stand in lines, reverently holding their caps to their chests.

In the previous chapter, we noted how militarism is linked to patriotism. And as the above example suggests, so is sports. Thus it is a short step to weaving all three together—as when militaristic patriotic hype is injected into major sporting events. During the Gulf War of 1991, the televised National Football League conference championship began with US Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force personnel in parade dress, carrying flags down the field as the crowd chanted "USA! USA!" That same year's Super Bowl game, on ABC-TV, featured gigantic patriotic floats and fans waving a sea of little American flags while singing patriotic songs. A taped appearance by the first President Bush and his wife Barbara was flashed across the screen. At half-time, ABC news anchorman Peter Jennings came on with an upbeat update on the US destruction of Iraq.

During that same Gulf War just about every basketball team in the National Basketball Association, and some college teams too, had American-flag patches sewn onto their uniforms (in imitation of the ones on US combat uniforms). As one announcer pointed out, it was "in support of our efforts in the Gulf." Flag patches became a permanent fixture for the uniforms of many basketball, football, and baseball teams at the professional, college, and high school levels.

In a joint venture with the Department of Defense, the National Football League sponsored a sixty-minute documentary on Operation Desert Storm (the official name of the 1991 attack on Iraq). Steve Sobol, president of NFL Films, proudly maintained: "I don't want to say that war is the same as football. But... the same spirit and ideology that football glorifies is also the spirit necessary for a successful military endeavour."

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, and again during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, sporting events took on an increasingly patriotic hue, especially in their televised presentations. Impressions of the American flag along with glowing images of "our fighting men and women" floated across the TV screen in pregame warmups and during breaks in the play. Some of the game-time commercials even featured US military personnel using the advertised products.

Along with militarism and patriotism, sporting events sometimes enlist another nationalistic adjunct: religion. Some football players, moved by a divine urge—or perhaps by a desire to maximise their time on camera—assume a posture of prayer in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. Some genuflect and make the sign of the cross. During key moments of play other team members on the benches will affect a praying posture, an act of devotion that is often rewarded with camera attention. Some baseball hitters are given to tapping different parts of their head and upper body in what seems like a religious ritual, or maybe it's just some voodoo thing. One famous baseball slugger, Barry Bonds, upon hitting a homerun, points with both his hands up to the sky as he begins his trot around the bases, thereby claiming divine assistance for his feat. God, it seems, is a San Francisco Giant fan. (In fact, an investigation in early 2004 implicating Bond in the use of performance-enhancement drugs suggests that his inspiration may be less ethereal and more substantive.)

When it comes to international sporting events, the "Number One" syndrome is activated full force. Instead of bringing Americans closer to other nations, international contests seem to fuel a winning-is-everything mentality, an unrestrained aggressive rah-rah competitiveness that defeats the purpose of goodwill games.

During the Cold War, for instance, contests between the United States and the Soviet Union always provided occasion for furious flag-waving and Red-bashing. In the Reagan era, when Soviet-hating was at its height, the US Olympic hockey team defeated a second-string Soviet team at Lake Placid, New York. The screaming crowd could hardly contain itself. The ABC Nightline announcer crowed: "The Americans withstood an all-out Soviet assault." In an after-game interview, the US hockey coach said that he had reassured his players they "have some things the Russians don't have... the American belief that we can succeed at anything we do." Had the Soviets claimed such a faith in their own invincibility, it would have been taken as evidence of their aggrandising ways.

When asked how was it that his team did so well, this same coach said that some time earlier he had travelled to the Soviet Union and had met with Soviet hockey coaches, who had shown him the new fast-breaking techniques they had developed. He then put these methods to good use with his own team. No comment was proffered by him or the interviewer regarding the generosity shown by the Soviet coaches in sharing their skills with the American visitor, whom they seemed to treat more as a fellow sportsman than an arch-Cold War rival.

When the Soviet Union beat the USA in basketball in the 1988 Olympics, NBC treated it as the end of civilisation as we know it. In postgame commentaries, NBC announcers described the US team as seriously handicapped by insufficient practice team and the loss of a key player and thus unable to withstand "the Soviet onslaught." The Soviets, it seems, "never let up their attack," and were a "relentless juggernaut." The impression left was that the American players were facing the Red Army rather than another basketball team. After this defeat the United States decided to enter professional basketball players in the Olympics, making sure there would be no more basketball defeats at the hands of the Communists or anyone else.

Four years later in the 1992 Olympics, American fans were able to roar their delight when seven-foot NBA pros pulverised a ragged team from Zaire, composed of kids who had to work for a living, who barely raised enough money to get to the Games, and who had begun to practise in their spare time only a few months before. Many Americans love the advantage of a highly tilted playing field. So intense is their need to see America win that they are not too particular about the quality of the victory and the fairness of the contest. For them, America always gets its way! America is the greatest! Don't mess with America!

The Olympics are supposed to promote international goodwill and sportsmanship, an appreciation of athletes from all nations, not a shrill nationalism. But at the 1996 Olympic Games hosted in Atlanta, Ga., American spectators seldom if ever applauded the foreign teams or showed any sign of hospitality toward them. And they practically hissed with rage when the Cuban women's volleyball team beat the US team.

It is quite natural for US viewers to favour their own country in international athletic contests, but it is something else to shout with such unrestrained partisan intensity when the Americans win, or lapse into sudden silence or hisses when they lose, begrudging even a display of polite applause for the other team. So we are treated to the spectacle of our compatriots frantically waving hundreds of little American flags, loudly chanting "USA! USA!" and drowning out the applause or cheers that other spectators might express for athletes of other nationalities.

Such ungracious partisanship is encouraged by the television coverage itself, which has been marked by an undisguised US chauvinism. ABC's presentation of the 1984 Summer Olympics so shamelessly favoured the performances of US athletes as to evoke an official reprimand from the normally placid International Olympic Committee. Similar complaints were registered by South Korean officials regarding NBC's coverage of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

The 1996 Olympics coverage was more of the same. The sports in which the United States did not excel got little coverage. Soccer is by far the most popular sport in the entire world (called "football" in most countries). Yet we saw almost none of it because the US team was eliminated early. Volleyball is far less popular than soccer. Many nations do not even enter volleyball teams in the Olympics. Yet we saw lots of volleyball because the United States had a strong team. The same held true for softball, an American-invented sport.

The networks project an image of US athletic superiority, focusing mostly on American contestants to the neglect of those from other countries, including many who might give superb performances. At the 1996 Games, in the kayaking competition we saw a premeet interview with the American Davey Hearn; we saw his girlfriend; we even saw them getting married, and we saw him through most of the race. The only trouble was, our Davey finished ninth. First place went to a Slovak, whose name flashed across the screen only for an instant. In another event, the US entry was allotted an extensive interview—without mention of the fact that he finished sixteenth. In some instances, the medal winners were never even announced if they were not Americans.

Sometimes racism wins out over nation-state chauvinism. In the triple jump, the gold medal was won by Kenny Harrison, who was an American but African American. TV coverage instead concentrated on second-place Jonathan Edwards, a white Englishman, who happened to be a devout Christian, who talked about his gift from God to compete and how he would never compete on Sundays—until he realised he was missing out on too many important matches, then it seems God sent him a different message. The bronze medal went to a Cuban whose final jump was not even shown.

The 2000 Olympics were not much better. The scorecard ranking nations according to the number of medals won showed the United States as top medal winner. This ranking was repeatedly displayed on the screen and reproduced each day on the sports pages of just about every newspaper in the USA. Images of US gold medal winners floated across the screen again and again, some of them holding aloft giant American flags, accompanied by misty lightning, inspirational music, with all sorts of red-white-and-blue graphics in the background.

Also in 2000, US women athletes got an unusual amount of television and press coverage—mostly in the instances when they were doing better than US males. The women were competing against females from countries in which women's sports was given even less active recruitment, training, and financial support than in the United States. So we saw more of the winning US women's soccer team than of the unsuccessful US male soccer team of that year.

During that same Olympics I watched the men's volleyball contest between China and the United States. China won the first game and was leading in the second, at which point the American announcers repeatedly commented on how the US team was "plagued by injuries," and had been training together "for not very long." Actually, some of the players were veterans from the previous Olympics team of four years earlier; nevertheless, the announcers insisted that the team as a whole was rather green and inexperienced. In contrast, the Chinese team "has been playing together for years." That the US team was losing had to be explained away as due to a set of implicitly unfair circumstances. Then, as the US team began to catch up and went on to win the second game, the announcers stopped whining about injuries and lack of seasoning. Nor did they mention such things in the third and final game which the Americans also won, giving them the match.

The International Gold Cup football (soccer) competition of 2003 received zero attention in the US mainstream media until mid-July when the US team put itself in the running for the championship by beating the Cuban team 5 to 0. This particular victory was widely reported. In sports as in war, reports of US losses are minimised while US victories are shamelessly heralded as evidence of American supremacy.

I like sports. I just do not like the mean-spirited competitiveness, and all the whining when losing and crass trumpeting when winning. And I have a hard time with the rabid militaristic chauvinism that too often comes with the coverage, and infects the spectators. With sports we need to foster international friendship and the more gracious side of the human spirit. Let us have less chest-thumping and more handshaking, less emphasis on who wins and more appreciation for how well the game is played by both sides. Better a family of nations than a multitude of screaming nationalistic egos.

The Divine Politicos

IN THE UNITED STATES THERE IS NO SINGLE state-established church, but religion per se, as represented by the major faiths, is so closely identified with the patriotic process as to have become a kind of unofficial establishment. Opening convocations by clergymen from one or another denomination have been an essential prop for political party conventions, congressional sessions, presidential inaugurations, Thanksgiving Day dedications (a national, not a religious holiday), and a host of other patriotic gatherings. Religion in America resembles capitalism in the way it attaches itself to potent symbols beyond its own sphere: democracy, patriotism, public virtue, and the American Way of Life. "Religion and democracy go hand in hand," said Vice President Alben Barkley in 1952.

With the lines between political and religious belief blurred, nonbelievers often run the risk of being labelled "un-American." Years before he became president, Richard Nixon suggested that atheists be disqualified from presidential office. In 1955, the American Legion, not the churches, launched the first "Back to God" campaign, on which occasion President Dwight Eisenhower observed, "Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life."

US leaders repeatedly weave piety with patriotism. President Nixon made it known that when he had an important decision to make regarding a moral issue, "I counsel first with Billy Graham." A famous evangelical preacher, Graham was a regular visitor to the White House through several administrations. What moral dimension he actually lent to presidential decisionmaking was never made clear. Still, bringing a symbol of religiosity like Billy Graham to the White House was the next best thing to bringing God himself. It was a way of showing that the deity was on the president's side.

Another president of the Gott mit uns school was Ronald Reagan. A right-wing Christian organisation calling itself the "Moral Majority," furnished with huge sums from reactionary tycoons, played an active role in the campaign to put him in the White House in 1981. During his eight years in office, Reagan entered into conversations with fundamentalist clergy about how the Bible prophesied a nuclear apocalypse that would destroy the Antichrist forces of godless Russians and allow Jesus to return triumphant. In this scenario, God was a Cold War militarist.

On one occasion Reagan announced that the United States "is a Christian nation"—which must have come as unsettling news to the millions of loyal American Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and nonsectarian deists. In a mawkishly staged moment during his 1987 State of the Union message, Reagan cast his eyes upward as he proclaimed that our nation pays homage "to Him," and "could not have been created without divine guidance." God, it seems, is not just Our Father but Our Founding Father.

In fact, the founders of this nation affirmed that the Republic was not beholden to Christianity or any other religion. Jefferson bemoaned "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who... established and maintained false religions over the greatest parts of the world." James Madison wrote, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 left the deity very much out of the picture, even refusing to follow Benjamin Franklin's suggestion that their daily sessions be opened with a prayer for divine guidance.

The Constitution makes clear that ours is not a Christian nation. Article VI reads, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Edmund Randolph of Virginia, who had been a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention, hoped that the absence of a religious qualification "will prevent the establishment of any one sect in prejudice to the rest, and will forever oppose all attempts to infringe religious liberty." And George Washington maintained that "every man" should be free to worship "according to the dictates of his own conscience."

Another democratic victory came with the passage of the First Amendment, which in part states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." The government could neither inhibit religious groups nor act as an agency in support of them. Church and state were to be kept separate.

Every US president who goes to war enlists God as his ally. In an appearance at the Southern Baptist Convention in 1991, the elder Bush grew visibly tearful as he spoke about praying to God before ordering the attacks that massacred tens of thousands of Iraqi conscripts and civilians in the first Gulf War. During the subsequent presidential campaign, he cited Jesus Christ himself as the moral force behind US policy, claiming that "America, as Christ ordained" was "a light unto the world."

At the 1992 Republican National Convention, various speakers claimed that Republicans had higher moral standards and were closer to God than Democrats. One defector from the ultraright ranks, David Brock, challenged that view. In his tell-all book he revealed that any number of moralistic, family-values Republicans were guilty of infidelities, homosexual trysts, and other "scandals."

The GOP's religious posturing was too much even for some religious groups. The National Council of Churches, for one, charged that it was blasphemy to make "partisan use of God's name" and "assert the moral superiority of one people over another or one political party over another." And the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs announced, "We begin with the proposition that God is neither Democrat nor Republican nor, for that matter, American. God transcends all national and political affiliations."

But the younger President Bush seemed to oppose the idea of a nonpartisan deity. Having recovered "with the grace of God" from the alcohol and cocaine addictions of his earlier years, he became a born-again Christian. In 1993, the year before he ran for governor of Texas, Bush provoked a small tempest by telling an Austin reporter (who happened to be Jewish) that only Jesus worshippers go to heaven. After being elevated to the US presidency by a Supreme Court vote, Bush presided over the most resolutely faith-based White House in modern times, heavily populated with Bible study groups. He attended national prayer breakfasts with greater frequency than any other president, and delivered speeches and radio broadcasts that sounded like sermons, ending with "May God continue to bless America." He also hobnobbed with the right-wing evangelist ministers who had come to occupy a central place in the Republican Party.

On 27 June 2003, President Bush announced: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." God told me? He instructed me? Does it not become a cause for concern that the US president, sounding like an Old Testament prophet, is justifying his war policy by claiming to be in direct communication with the Almighty? It is a worrisome chain of command.

On another occasion Bush voiced his determination to "rid the world of evil" and "evildoers" even if it meant repeatedly resorting to war. It is laudable when a leader wants to help make the world a better place but somewhat disquieting when the man in the Oval Office feels he has a divine mandate to reshape the world through violent means.

Pursuing policies designed to undo the separation of church and state, Bush favoured prayer in the schools, opposed legal abortions, and opposed federal education programmes that taught birth control and safe sex. He also supported a measure to allow churches, synagogues, and mosques to use federal funds to administer social welfare and other human services. Critics feared that the faith-based programmes would replace government services for the needy but would be neither sufficiently developed nor reliably managed.

Another official who saw himself as part of God's crusade on earth was the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for intelligence, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin. In 2003, appearing in uniform before fundamentalist Christian groups, Boykin announced that Bush "was not elected by a majority of the voters... he was appointed by God." Boykin charged that Islamic radicals and the North Koreans hated America "because we're... a nation of believers." Our "spiritual enemies will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus." Other countries, said Boykin, "have lost their morals... but America is still a Christian nation." Explaining how he prevailed against a Muslim militia leader in the 1993 US invasion of Somalia, Boykin proclaimed, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Apparently when God was not talking to Bush, he was talking to Boykin.

The superpatriotic religionists pursue a fairly reactionary politico-economic domestic programme: deregulation, privatisation, elimination of publicly funded human services, an ever increasing military budget, and the like. But they also want to see the strictures of fundamentalist Christianity prevail over all aspects of American life: no separation of church and state, no abortion, no birth control, no "promiscuity," no public office for atheists, no toleration of blasphemy or "false doctrine," no homosexuality or feminism, plenty of public funds to support religious interests, Bible studies in the public schools, prayer in the classrooms, textbooks rewritten in keeping with religious credo, music and arts in a pro-Jesus idiom, so too media and movies—creeping theocracy in action.

Fundamentalist Christianity is a totalitarian system, just as it was for more than a thousand years after gaining dominance over Rome in the fourth century. Back then, the Jesus proselytes proceeded to burn all the many fine pagan libraries that existed, and destroyed forever the corpus of pagan works in philosophy, literature, history, astronomy, science, and the arts, ushering in more than a thousand oppressive years of ignorant and intolerant theocracy.

In recent times, right-wing fundamentalist Randall Terry, founder of "Operation Rescue," the terroristic campaign against abortion clinics, announced that Christ worshippers have "a biblical duty to conquer this nation." He told an audience of like-minded faithful: "I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you.... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty; we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." Were any leftist leaders to make such an encompassing proclamation about the goals of their political organisations, they would likely be roundly denounced as totalitarians, subversives, or terrorists. But Terry continued to be treated as a more or less reputable figure in public life.

As of 2004, the right-wing fundamentalist viewpoint was openly espoused by the US attorney general, the House and Senate Republican leadership, and almost 200 House representatives and senators. At the same time, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, announced: "The 'wall of separation between church and state'... should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."

But who is controlling whom? Is there just a natural symbiosis between reactionary politicos and religious fundamentalists? Or do the fundamentalists serve a greater agenda that is choreographed by more powerful financial interests? One thing is certain, as long as the religionists hew to a reactionary line, they will continue to enjoy the generous contributions provided by various right-wing moneybags.

In June 2002, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals offered a flicker of resistance to superpatriotic religiosity by ruling that the phrase "under God," inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance by Congress in 1954, violated the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of a state religion. President Bush immediately supported a bill that Congress passed almost unanimously reinforcing support for the words "under God" in the pledge and for "in God we trust" as the national motto. The Bush administration also appealed the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the reciting the Pledge of Allegiance "is a patriotic exercise, not a religious testimonial." As of early 2004 God continued to maintain a place on our national coinage and in the pledges mumbled by uncomprehending children in overcrowded, underfunded classrooms.

Messianic Nation

THE IDEA THAT THE UNITED STATES WAS intended by God, history, or destiny to play a unique and superior role in the world gathered strength early in our history as national consciousness took hold. "The hand of Divinity itself" shapes the nation's destiny, according to a youthful Alexander Hamilton. And John Adams intoned, "Our pure, virtuous, public spirited, federative republic will last forever, govern the globe and introduce the perfection of man." From the earliest days of the Republic, orators dwelled on America's beauty, abundance, and, above all, its promise of material progress. In 1845, the United States Journal rhapsodised, "[All] the channels of communication, public and private, through the schoolroom, the pulpit, and the press—are engrossed and occupied with this one idea, which all these forces are combined to disseminate: that we the American people are the most independent, intelligent, moral, and happy people on the face of the earth."

Such a conviction prevails to this day. In 2002, a prominent right-wing publication, asserted that "our country has, with all our mistakes and blunders, always been and always will be the greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in history." But the superpatriotic dedication to freedom has been honoured more in the breach. This was evident during the early Cold War era when opinion polls indicated that some 97 percent of Americans believed in the superiority of democracy and the right to free speech, but over two out of three would refuse a Communist the right to speak, and almost the same proportion would deprive an atheist of a public platform. We might recall the celebrated writer and humourist, Mark Twain, who once said that the three most precious things Americans possess are "freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either."

Nationalistic devotion tends to mimic religious devotion, not only in its intolerance of dissent but in its very forms and belief structure. Like the church, the nation-state has its inspirational myths of sacred genesis and apocalyptic crises; its early prophets and martyrs; its sacred dogma, rituals, symbols, monuments, and hymns; its parchments engrossed with the revealed word; its devotional pledges uttered like prayers; and its commemorative holidays and convocations.

At the core of a nation's devotional message is its claim to playing a uniquely ordained role in the world. In 2003 President George W. Bush announced that the United States was unique in that it was doing God's work on earth, bringing God's gift of liberty to "every human being in the world." To be sure, the United States does have a unique history, but so do many other nations with their extraordinary annals, filled with epic social struggles, unusual ethnic mixes, international clashes, inspiring achievements, hopeful visions, and horrific political crimes and atrocities. And the nationalists of other other countries have claimed a unique messianic mission for their respective peoples—much as our superpatriotic leaders do for the United States. If anything, Americans are rather unexceptional in thinking that theirs is an exceptional nation.

Start with the Old Testament itself, with its asseveration that the Israelites were God's Chosen People, doing Jehovah's bidding, serving as his exemplary acolytes here on earth as they levelled whole cities of heathens and nonbelievers. Indeed, there is no bloodier compendium of nationalistic carnage and messianic atrocity than the Old Testament.

Then there were the leaders of the Roman Empire and, centuries later, the British Empire, who had nothing critical to say about imperial plunder and exploitation and instead spoke of conquest as a grandly civilising accomplishment, an uplifting expedition that brought unity, peace, and happiness to the colonised peoples.

Among the various nineteenth-century nationalistic movements was the Indian National Congress, which propagated a vision of India as fulfilling the unique historic task of guiding humankind toward a redeeming path. Endowed with a rich and ancient spiritual tradition, India would save Europe from its competitive strife and its crass and superficial materialism. The Indian patriots sermonised their youth: "You shall help to create a nation, to spiritualise an epoch, to Aryanise the world. And that nation is your own, that epoch belongs to you and your children, and that world is no mere tract of land, but the whole earth with its teeming millions."

At about that same time in France, Jules Michelet was putting forth a messianic message: The French Revolution had given humanity the great gift of liberty, equality, and national self-realisation, with France itself now "the glorious pilot of mankind's ship." France's unique mission was not only the deliverance of its own citizenry but of all other peoples. La belle France was the great amphitheatre in which ideas and arts assumed world importance and radiated everywhere. Upon France depended the world's salvation, the climax, and fulfillment of human history itself.

If France had Michelet, Italy at the threshold of its unification had Vincenzo Gioberti and, more important, Giuseppe Mazzini, both of whom proclaimed the moral and historic primacy of the Italians. "Italy is the chosen people, the typical people, the creative people, the Israel of the modern age," declared Gioberti. With even greater fervour, Mazzini saw in the emergence of a newly united Italian nation the instrument for the regeneration of all humanity. Italy had served as the "center of civilization" twice before, under the Roman Empire and later under the Roman Church. With its long delayed Risorgimento, Mazzini went on, Italy would emerge afresh in the modern age "to unite the world," this time advancing the cause of freedom, peace, and democracy.

Less benign than Michelet and Mazzini were German nationalists such as Johann Fichte and Heinrich von Treitschke, who believed that Germany was destined to conquer and expand in accordance with the natural laws of history, not by using democracy and parliamentary rule but with Macht, with sheer power exercised by a strong monarch and a victorious army. And this would benefit everyone, for Germany—with its nobility of soul, intellectual preeminence, and martial strength—would lead the world away from the degenerating effects of liberalism, materialism, equality, and individualism.

Consider also the messianic Pan-Slavs and Russian supernationalists, most notably the great novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, who held forth about the "Russian soul." According to Dostoevsky, the Russians possessed a deep intuitive grasp of life and a deep God-bearing orthodox devotion that was lacking in the decadent Western nations. Russia would unite all the Slav peoples not for the sake of empire but to ensure their peace and wellbeing. Holy Mother Russia was destined to become the arbiter and ruler of humankind, revealing to the rest of Europe a new social order that she alone embodied.

So into the twentieth century, the hypernationalists and imperialists of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan put forth their "unique" versions of moral regeneration, nationalist supremacy, racial purification, and world domination.

To repeat, the one certain thing about the US superpatriots' claim to messianic exceptionalism is how strikingly unexceptional and unoriginal it really is. Throughout history any number of other movements, nations, and empires have thought of themselves as God's gift to humanity. Captivated by their own Chosen People mythology, they believed they alone were preeminently qualified to lead the world—much as the present-day proponents of a global American empire.

The messianic impulse is compounded when national virtue is wedded to extraordinary military power. The superpatriots see evidence of their divine calling in the very power that enables them to thrust themselves into every corner of the world. The contention that "we must mobilise our power in order to lead" soon becomes "we must lead because we are so powerful." It might do us well to recall the counsel afforded by Senator William Fulbright in 1966: "We are not God's chosen saviour of mankind but only one of mankind's more successful and fortunate branches, endowed by our Creator with about the same capacity for good and evil, no more or less, than the rest of humanity."

Almost forty years later, a news columnist, Jon Carroll, put it even more emphatically: "We are not the only democracy in the world; we are not the only country that exhibits courage in the face of adversity. We lie and cheat and steal and murder. Any assumption that God conferred on us a special blessing is not backed up by the facts. We fail to sign international treaties, and we reserve the right to violate such treaties whenever we feel like it. Is that because God speaks to our leaders as he speaks to no others?"

The peoples of other nations are understandably reluctant to accept the messianic view of the United States as the all-knowing world leader. International surveys reveal that they see the United States as "arrogant, aggressive, and self-absorbed." Large majorities in various countries are distrustful of US leaders and strongly disapprove of US military invasions, such as the one launched against Iraq in 2003. And they keenly feel that Washington's policies have a deleterious effect on their own countries.

A survey conducted by New York Times correspondents around the world in 2003 found a widespread opinion of the United States as "an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force," bent on "controlling global oil supplies and on military domination." Unfortunately, such negative responses only convince our superpatriotic leaders and media pundits that we need to project our image more effectively so that other peoples will have clearer appreciation of America's virtuous intentions. In effect, the superpatriots are saying that when foreigners challenge US policies, this should lead us to question their judgement, not our own, certainly not the policies that evoke such negative responses.

Messianic nationalistic morality is an inversion of individual morality. Ordinarily we might think of the nation-state as an instrument of social organisation whose function is to protect the interest of its populace. For the superpatriot, however, the nation-state is not just a legal unit of rule, with contractual rights and obligations; it is a kind of living entity that offers its citizens meaningful direction and moral regeneration. The nation becomes something of an end in itself, a powerful Absolute that claims our ultimate loyalty, whose existence and survival is taken as self-justifying, beyond the reach of moral criticism.

The ethical code applied to nationalism does not operate like the one pertaining to individuals. Individual morality calls for self-restraint and even self-sacrifice. There are certain things one should not do (as in "thou shalt not") even if one has the impulse and even if it serves one's pleasure or advances one's self-interest. Individual morality is predicated on the realisation that sin (that is, unjust and harmful behaviour toward others) is always within the human potential. To err is human, to sin is all too human. But these premises are inverted when applied to a nation's behaviour, for the nation-state is something more than human.

At the heart of the secular religion of nationalism rests the belief that the messianic nation's existence and its action are so endowed with virtue as to place it beyond the commonplace rules that govern individual morality. As a kind of supreme entity, the nation knows no restraint other than what is imposed by the limitations of its own desires and power. The most ruthless violence—insupportable in civil society—is applauded as heroism when performed in the name of the nation. "Thou shalt not" becomes "Thou shalt do anything by whatever means necessary if it can be said to be in the national interest." Ergo, the willingness to kill other human beings in combat is treated not only as morally acceptable but as a heroic measure of one's patriotism. Instead of going to gaol, the perpetrators are honoured with medals and ceremonial acclaim.

The inverted morality of superpatriotism demands that a nation have not only a right but a duty to do whatever it deems necessary to protect its own security. While the end is laudable, one might question the blanket mandate. Since "national security" is as difficult to define as the dangers that might threaten it, the tendency is to equate the barely possible with the almost certain, the remote conflict with the imminent threat, the imaginable with the inevitable. Thus, homeland security and national self-defence are interpreted not merely as defence against actual or impending attack but against anything imaginable that might possibly infringe upon US security. One can never be too sure, so let's arrest the whole lot of them here at home, and bomb the hell out of them abroad. US security, in turn, is seen as requiring the expansion of US influence into every corner of the world, with military force being applied in whatever way the president so chooses.

"Why is it that, no matter what the cost to another nation or to international society, the right of preserving the nation and all its vital interests is considered morally unquestionable?" asked Albert Weinberg over sixty years ago. Were we ever to ponder that question we might decide that there are some questions that—even if deemed vital for preserving some vaguely defined "US interests"—are so morally reprehensible as to be eschewed.

We might further wonder whether the limitless pursuit of national security does not itself become self-defeating. If doing "whatever we judge fit to maintain our security" necessitates wreaking death and destruction on other nations, this can have terrible repercussions for our own country. The result is that the nation most obsessed with "organising the peace" and "propagating democracy" and "uplifting the world" is the one that propagates autocratic control and ends up entangled in perpetual war.

Messianic nationalism is the path down which a nation can lose its soul.

Follow the Leader

THE DISTINCT CHARACTERISTIC OF THE state, said German sociologist Max Weber, is that it alone claims a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." The state's irreducible essence rests in its capacity to wield legally defined violence against its own citizens. In many instances, the target is not just the criminal element but also political dissenters who challenge the existing distribution of privilege, wealth, institutional authority, and ideological orthodoxy.

Laws dealing with sedition and terrorism are enlisted against troublesome dissidents, but so is the ordinary criminal code: disorderly conduct, mob action, criminal trespass, destruction of property, felonious assault, resisting arrest, and the like. In this way, acts of dissent and protest are both depoliticised and criminalised by the repressive operations carried out by state authorities.

State power is wielded primarily by the executive, specifically the president and the national security apparatus. Representing the entire nation rather than a particular locale, the president "possesses a sort of divine right," as Marx noted of the French presidency in the Second Republic in 1852. "He is the elect of the nation" who stands "in a personal relation to the nation." Through its individual representatives the National Assembly exhibits manifold aspects of the nation, but in the president the "national spirit finds its incarnation."

The US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to make war. Yet again and again US forces are committed to military actions by presidential order, without a declaration of war. Indeed, some presidents make a point of ignoring Congress on this matter. In late 1990, while the legislators debated whether the United States should engage in hostilities against Iraq, President Bush père went on record as saying, "I don't care if I get one vote in Congress. We're going in." Bush understood that during times of crisis and national peril—real or fabricated—Congress would not dare impeach the commander-in-chief for such a trifle as an undeclared war, especially since so many of the lawmakers were themselves fervent superpatriotic militarists.

Presidential usurpation of the warmaking power took a final giant step in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and a wing of the Pentagon, with the loss of some 3,000 lives. Congress voted outright to give the president the power to decide when the nation should go to war. This surrender of congressional power to the executive was itself an unconstitutional forfeiture. In effect, Bush fils could now unilaterally declare war whenever he wanted, a one-man decisionmaking power usually enjoyed only by absolute monarchs and dictators.

And when Bush exercised that unconstitutional power by going to war against Iraq in March 2003, in the face of worldwide protests, the great majority of congressional lawmakers, out of fear of seeming unpatriotic, fell into line, including many who had initially opposed the war as ill-conceived and illicit. Thus Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaking as if she were in the US Army rather than in the US Congress, announced that now that our troops were committed to action, we had to support our commander-in-chief. "I support the president.... We are one team in one fight, and we stand together," she proclaimed.

Some of our citizens are understandably cynical and suspicious about politics. Politicians, we hear, cannot be trusted; they are often corrupt and self-serving, saying one thing during election campaigns, then doing something else once they get into office. All true though. Yet these same citizens display an almost childlike trust and kneejerk faith when politicians trumpet a need to defend our national security. So it happens that with the launching of each new US war against one or another small but "menacing" nation, superpatriots rally around the flag, draped as it is around the president. The nation is under siege from a lethal foreign threat, we are told. This is no time for splitting hairs about right and wrong. Get behind our president and our nation; support our troops; destroy the alien menace. When he claims to serve the higher good, the commander-in-chief can do no wrong. The inverted morality is activated.

We should remind ourselves of what happened in Germany in the 1930s when Hitler and his Nazi thugs took power (financed by the big moneyed cartels). The Nazis insisted that unquestioning obedience and adulation be accorded the leader. It was governance by das Führerprinzip, the leader principle, the notion that the head of state is the living embodiment of the state itself, the supreme repository of the nation's virtues. It is a short step from the cult of the nation (superpatriotism) to the cult of the leader. In the case of Nazi Germany, the world reaped bitter fruit.

To those who say that during times of crisis we must have faith in the president, we might ask: Faith? Is this religion or politics? Is the president to be treated as an object of worship? We are told we must trust the president, but what does that mean? Trust is something we extend to loved ones or very close friends and family (and even then, check them out once in a while). Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on.

There is nothing like a war or a major crisis to reduce adult citizens to mindless conformity, ready to play "follow the leader" out of a perceived need for national unity and a hope that our Reichsführer, the president, will see us through the danger. President Franklin Roosevelt's highest rating, 84 percent, came immediately after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. President John Kennedy's 83 percent approval rating came after his 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, even though the operation failed. And after the Gulf War of 1991, the elder Bush's approval rating zoomed to 93 percent.

Consider the case of George Bush the younger and violence were especially good to this president. As of 10 September 2001, his presidency was floundering and his approval ratings were sagging woefully. Then the next day came the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and Bush saw his rating leap up to 82 percent. This was swiftly followed by his newly trumpeted "permanent war against terrorism" and the massive bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. Bush was transmuted into the determined leader who would rally the nation, shore up our defences (or certainly our defence budget) with ever larger military allocations, and protect us with legislation that strengthened the repressive powers of the federal executive.

Here was the president protecting us from threats at home and abroad, addressing military gatherings, flying onto aircraft carriers for photo opportunities—unmindful of how in earlier years he himself had been AWOL from his duties in the Air National Guard and arguably was a deserter. Standing proudly in front of the cameras, with a steely gaze fixed on the nation's ramparts, ready to move decisively against any and all, never did this corrupt but affable draft-dodging Jesus-freak billionaire and former cokehead alcoholic seem so presidential. His approval ratings skyrocketed.

Then came the corporate scandals of the spring and summer of 2002, the Enron, WorldCom, Harkin, and Halliburton investment crimes. By July, both President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were directly implicated in fraudulent insider trading practices. Their respective companies, Harkin and Halliburton, made false accounting claims of profit to pump up stock values. Bush and Cheney, along with other company officers and top investors, armed with insider information about when to get out, sold their stock at prime value just before it was revealed to be nearly worthless and collapsed in price. Both the president and vice-president made dubious statements about what they knew and did not know. They refused to hand over documents and gave every appearance of being directly implicated in deceptive practices that cost smaller investors billions of dollars.

By July 2002, the Republican Party was reeling from the insider-trading scandals and was pegged as the party of corporate favouritism and corruption. But by September, with war pending against Iraq, the GOP reemerged as the party of patriotism, national defence, and strong military leadership to gain control of both houses of Congress, winning elections it might not otherwise have won. The impending war blew the whole Enron-Harkin-Halliburton scandal off the front pages and out of the evening news. Instead of being subjected to criminal investigation and impeachment, Bush, the insider trader, remained untouched in the White House, reemerging as our fearless peerless wartime leader.

The elder Bush had done the same thing in 1990–1991. In late 1990, his popularity was slumping badly because of the savings and loan scandal. Every evening, TV news programmes were peeling off successive layers of corruption, thievery, bribery, and plunder of the public treasury, in what was the greatest financial conspiracy in the history of the world, involving a raid of the public treasury that has come to over $1 trillion. Two and possibly three of Bush's sons risked going to gaol for financial legerdemain. But once Bush launched the first Gulf War against Iraq, the networks became preoccupied with selling that war, and the savings and loan issue was blown out of the evening news and sent into media limbo. The Gulf victory also made it harder to investigate disclosures implicating Bush senior himself in the Iran-contra conspiracy, as he basked in what seemed like an untouchable popularity.

There is no guarantee that such popularity will last. As mentioned earlier, Bush senior's approval rating after the Gulf War was at 93 percent. Yet the following year he lost the presidency to a garrulous governor from Arkansas. So with the younger Bush. His ratings began to sag in the winter of 2002–2003 as the terrorism hype subsided and the economy remained in the doldrums. By 14 March 2003, his approval rating was at 53 percent. But on 18 March, after he began war operations against Iraq. Bush's ratings climbed to 68 percent. By late April, with a swift and easy military victory seemingly at hand, he was once more over 80 percent.

In the months that followed, Bush II continued to play the terrorism card. Within a brief span of several weeks in September 2003, he referred to terrorist dangers when talking about (a) the war in Iraq, (b) energy policy, (c) the state of the economy, and (d) US dealings with the United Nations. Such persistent references to terrorism were designed to discourage criticism and keep the public rallied behind his leadership. But then, as the "liberation" of Iraq devolved into a protracted people's resistance that proved costly in American lives and dollars, this strategy no longer played as well, and Bush's ratings slumped decisively.

In sum, the executive mantle of militaristic patriotism makes it easy for US presidents to gain quick—but not necessarily durable—popularity. In turn, this follow-the-leader popularity allows them to deliver the nation into wars of aggression that arguably serve non of the people's needs. But on some occasions, when the military ventures prove too costly, Americans began to balk and show signs of disaffection.