America

I read something by Garrison Keillor about the "Minnesota Mindset" that can best be summed up with the phrase, "You aren't so damn special", or put another way, "Yeah, you did a good job, now quit showing off." This is essentially how I feel about America since about high school. High school is when you first learn that America isn't so special and that we're not any better or worse than anyone else out there. Of course, a large number of people didn't pay attention to this lesson (and there's also a good deal of people who would shield American students from this lesson).

I was thinking about this in relation to Manifest Destiny the other day, on the drive to Stevens Point. I always get slightly annoyed when people argue against socialism by pointing out the excesses of monsters like Stalin or Mao. There's an inherent smugness that comes from this argument, as if America is immune from such atrocities. But then we were talking about Indian Removal policies in my Age of Jackson class and it set my mind in motion, thinking about the countless people who died as a result of Manifest Destiny (for those of you who missed that day in American History, Manifest Destiny was the idea that it was the United State's destiny to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific...correctly predicting that it would enhance American power and prestige).

While it's not at the level of, say, the Holocaust, American Indian Removal (one prong of manifest destiny) killed thousands of Indians, and displaced them from valuable land which they owned to land that was economically useless, resulting in great poverty. In addition, the United States provoked a war with Mexico that killed thousands of Mexican and American troops in a land grab. Manifest Destiny also included imperialistic ambitions in the Caribbean, igniting the Spanish-American War (killing about 900 Americans, though the Spanish weren't quite as lucky). This led to a long guerrilla war in the Phillipines which killed even more people, as well as the rule of the puppet dictator Bautista in Cuba (which eventually led to, you guessed it, Fidel Castro). So lots of people died because an idea in Germany, the USSR, and China...but Manifest Destiny shows that Americans are capable of taking the idea of Manifest Destiny and causing large scale death because of it as well. So...we aren't so damn special after all.

Now, this connects with our current situation in Iraq. George W. Bush probably has the best of intentions with his delusional attempt at Democracy in Iraq. But a lot of people are dying because of this idea. Will people look back in sadness at a delusional president who caused the death of far too many people? I hope not.