Beyond Foreign Policy Lies: Our Compliant Media & the Truth about US Exceptionalism

Beyond Foreign Policy Lies: Our Compliant Media & the Truth about US Exceptionalism

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Patrick Smith | Friday, January 2, 2015, 19:03 Beijing

A new year begins, and America must resolve to do different & better. Here’s a roadmap. It starts with clear eyes

 

Beyond the foreign policy lies: Our compliant media and the truth about American exceptionalism

William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney (Credit: AP/Janet Van Ham/Yves Logghe/Reuters/Larry Downing/Salon)

We have put away our argyle cardigans, drawn close to the fire, listened to the Crosby records, and roasted a few chestnuts for that God-sent aroma they give. Now, as we begin a new year, let’s think about what we all like to think about at holidays: Why is America in decline and just how far and fast is this going to go?

Cheerful New Year tidings to all, of course.

Anyone who thinks of America and its place in the world clearly and honestly understands, with no shred of doubt after the destructive year gone by, that this nation is now well into its late-imperial phase.

As history instructs us, two signs of an imperial power’s decline at this point in its story are blindness and deafness: It gives up all capacity to see the world as it is and takes no interest in what those dwelling in it have to say. Clear sight and open ears are unbearable, for both bring news that history’s wheel is turning and an era of primacy is passing into the past.

This is where we are as 2014 ends. It is not, I add instantly, where we have to be, only where we happen to be, where we have been led and find ourselves as we look to the year ahead.

A few years ago the words “decline” and “declinist” were much in debate. A declinist was not something a good American was supposed to be. The obfuscating chatterers on the opinion pages and in the magazines could hold these terms up for criticism because there was—apparently, not evidently—enough ground to stand on and dismiss the declinist’s  point. Recall all this?
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