To ignore the rest of the world is one of the inalienable rights of being an American.
There is no penalty or shame for being oblivious to the news, history and culture beyond our shores. As top dog among nations, we don't need to pay much attention to anyone else. We set our own standards and make our own rules. We do as we damn well please.
Our obliviousness is an outgrowth not just of our wealth and military power but an accident of geography. We are oceans removed from the cultural roots our families left behind. We may be a melting pot of nationalities, religions and races, but we have a shared destiny of establishing new lives and forgetting old ones.
Amnesia is an American birth-right. It is a condition that makes us unique among nations and creates contradictions that baffle the rest of the world.
We are a country that produced Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison and Jonas Salk. We are also a country that put Bill Clinton and two George Bushes in the White House. We are a country that cured humanity's most dreaded diseases and developed the technologies that electrified, motorized and computerized the world. We are also the country that developed fast food, teeth whiteners, cable television talk shows, panty liners, monster trucks and extreme sports. We are a country whose armies turned the tide of two world wars. We are also a country that will pack coliseums to watch a man race a motorcycle off the end of a ramp, over the top of 27 buses and onto another ramp to see if he breaks his neck.
Intellectuals try to convince us, from time to time, of our ignorance and our cultural and moral shabbiness and suggest we look abroad for a remedy. Why can't American school children grasp history, literature and mathematics the way the Norwegian and Japanese children do? they ask. Why can't we support the arts like the French and Italians? Why can't we develop a social welfare system like Denmark's? Why can't we protect historic lands and buildings like the British?
But such questions are beside the point. For most Americans, the rest of the world is viewed as a quaint but crumbling theme park, hardly the place to turn for advice. An American planning a family vacation may well ask: should we go to Paris or Orlando? There is a price to be paid for our blissful ignorance, of course, just as there are limits to good old American know-how. The war on terrorism, as it is called, points out some of them. Watch the correspondents, generals and official spokespersons trying to explain events in Afghanistan on the evening news. Listen to the uncertainty in their voices and the confusion in their words.
In a land of veils, incense, caves, poverty and swarthy bearded men with guns, Americans are truly strangers in a strange land. Because we have paid so little attention to Afghanistan, and surely it was of no interest to us after the fall of the Soviets, we have no way of telling friend from foe.
We stuff hundred dollar bills in the pockets of highway bandits to scout out the enemy, who, in turn, thank us kindly and then take more dollars from the enemy for safe passage to Pakistan. Our ignorance of culture and history will someday cost us much more than money.
Vietnam was probably the first installment on that debt. The war on terrorism is the sequel, probably one of many.
Just as Rome sowed the seeds of its own collapse by pressing the envelope of its empire, we may be setting ourselves up for a fall by engaging an enemy we don't understand on its own turf. And just as Rome, unwilling to sacrifice its native sons, enlisted mercenaries to fight its battles in the barbarous territories of Europe, America resorts to high tech weaponry and high-flying bombers to avoid meeting the enemy fact-to-face.
But there is no immediate reason for alarm. Our demise will be gradual.
When the bell finally tolls, we will not hear it over the voices on our cell phones, the music on our headsets or the reassuring hum of our air-conditioned cars.
David Morrill is a Florida journalist and Northern California native.
By David Morrill
