Tolerance as a Prerequisite
for Civilization
By Lawrence Davidson
America’s Standing as a
Civilized Nation
November 15, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
-
There is more to being civilized than
being a citizen of some political
entity. This is so despite the fact that
both the verb
civilize and noun
citizen are derived from the Latin
civitas. To be civilized demands
more than just having the language and
mannerisms of the 5th century BCE
Greeks, or the 2nd century BCE Han
Chinese, or the 16th Century CE French.
All of these groups believed that being
civilized meant living and acting like
them. Today the Americans have joined
the chorus. They sing to the world that
theirs is the home of the brave and land
of the free, and claim that they are the
real model for civilization. They throw
in that rather ill-defined notion of
freedom as a modern customizing point.
None of these claims are
very convincing. After all, each
claimant has waged bloody wars of
aggression, discriminated against
outsiders and their own minorities, and
generally sought aggrandizement by
stealing other people’s land. Only
recently, since the end of World War II,
has there grown up an understanding
that: (1) language, mannerisms, and race
are so varied that they cannot be used
as prerequisites for civilized status
without breeding mass intolerance toward
minorities and “others,” and (2)
aggressive war and the pursuit of
conquest actually dehumanizes your
nation and destroys one’s civilized
standing. Postwar international law has
been designed to make intolerance on a
large scale illegal -
a crime against
humanity - and the
same goes for the
waging of wars of
aggression. It is
questionable how effective such laws
have been. Nonetheless, they are
undeniably a step in a civilizing
direction.
If you dig under the
surface of ethnic- or nation-based
claims to civilized standing, you often
find that they rest on such things as
military prowess, technological
advancement, and/or a dubious claim to
be some god’s favorite. Collective
cultural expressions of racism, sexism,
xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia and
other such displays of intolerance, as
well as the carrying on of a “muscular”
foreign policy, seem not to complicate
claims to civilized status for many
average citizens. But, of course,
they should. In fact, not being or
doing any of these things should be a
necessary prerequisite for any group’s
appeal to civilized status.
Based on such a
requirement, the claim of the United
States to be a civilized society seems
in serious trouble. For instance, no one
is going to accuse Donald Trump of being
a model of tolerance. Indeed, it would
seem that his election as president has
inaugurated an time of intolerance
embracing just those prejudices that
erode a nation’s civilized standing.
Hillary’s Greatest
Gaffe
It is true that during
her run for the presidency Hillary
Clinton made many mistakes. She was
wedded to a traditional, and very
corrupt, version of U.S. politics - a
version that put her in the pocket of an
array of special interests that,
themselves, were not very civilized (for
example, the Zionists). And, as
Secretary of State under President
Obama, she did her part to wage
aggressive war. Yet, she was, at least
in terms of her rhetoric, ready to take
a stand for tolerance when it comes to
social and cultural diversity within the
United States. Ironically, that
willingness to, in this regard, be
publicly civil - and call out those who
were not - led to her biggest political
gaffe of the election.
The campaign faux pas
came on 9 September 2016, during a
speech to a group of LGBT (lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transsexual) supporters.
Here is what she said:
“We
are living in a volatile political
environment. You know, to
just be grossly generalistic, you could
put half of Trump's supporters into what
I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
The racist, sexist, homophobic,
xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it.
And unfortunately there are people like
that. And he [Trump] has lifted them up.
He has given voice to their websites
that used to only have 11,000 people -
now 11 million. He tweets and retweets
their offensive hateful mean-spirited
rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -
they are irredeemable, but thankfully
they are not America.”
The Trump campaign people
jumped on this statement and declared
that it was a sign of "her true contempt
for everyday Americans.” In other words,
from the Trump perspective, “those
folks” were the real America. Trump’s
supporters proceeded to turn the term
“deplorable” into something of a battle
cry. I remember driving through the
small Pennsylvania town of Red Lion soon
after Clinton’s speech. There was a big
sign declaring “Welcome to the Home of
the Proud Deplorables.”
Trump the Decivilizer
Of course,
Clinton was correct in her criticism of
Trump and some of his supporters. In
fact, they were more than just
deplorable. They were downright
uncivilized. And, she was right that
Trump has incited and manipulated them
and their prejudices during the
campaign. And, he has continued to do
so as president. I think this became
quite obvious at the 12 August 2017
“unite the right” protest in
Charlottesville, Virginia. That event
signaled the fact that Trump, a wealthy,
self-righteous, impulsive,
one-dimensional man who, in his
simplistic ignorance, cannot tell the
difference between his own opinion and
fact, had let loose a substantial group
of racist and reactionary citizens.
These people see themselves not as the
uncivilized of America, but rather as
saviors of an anachronistic
pseudo-civilization - one based on white
supremacy and mass intolerance.
Regardless of how they see themselves,
the behavior of both these “average
Americans” and their approving
president, is actually tipping America
toward being unquestionably a“deplorable”
and uncivilized place.
It must be
kept in mind that President Trump did
originate all this prejudicial horror.
It has always been there in the U.S.
However, since the 1960s it has, for the
most part, been kept out of the public
realm. That is what the
Civil Rights Movement
and President Lyndon Johnson’s
Great Society programs
accomplished - to make it socially
unacceptable, and in some cases illegal,
to practice these prejudices publicly.
This was actually a great step forward
in the process of civilizing the United
States, and if it had been maintained
for say, another five generations, the
number of “deplorable” voters may have
shrunk to the point that the election of
a decivilizer such as Trump would have
been much less likely.
However, as it was, those
who harbored simmering prejudices,
restless anachronistic traditions, and a
fear of losing privileges in an ever
more diverse society, almost immediately
came together to support Donald Trump
when he appeared on the political scene.
And the rest of us were caught unawares.
The fact is that most
people do not think about what it means
to be civilized, often assuming that
this status is synonymous with having an
i-phone and a twitter account. Among
those who do think about it, some may
identify the term with those who are
snobbish and think they are better than
others. Or, perhaps they see
civilization as a class thing to be
identified with wealth. Those who think
in these terms may develop resentment
toward the concept of civilization. They
may come to see it as a threat to their
local culture and ways of life.
Finally, who knows how
many macho males there are out there who
might see too much civilization as a
subversive factor - something that would
make the nation effete. Too much
enlightenment could undermine that
“muscular” foreign policy (perhaps
reviving, in the case of the United
States, the dreaded
Vietnam Syndrome)
that has always been a mark of
nationstate greatness.
Of course, this is not
just an American problem. The
deplorables are to be found in all
populations - more in some and less in
others - but never absent. In the U.S.
Donald Trump is their leader. No doubt
he also serves as a symbol of leadership
for deplorables worldwide. As such
President Trump and his following
subvert our future - luring us in the
direction of barbarism. Remember Arnold
Toynbee observation: “civilizations die
from suicide and not by murder.”
Lawrence Davidson is a retired
professor of history from West Chester
University in West Chester PA. His academic
research focused on the history of American
foreign relations with the Middle East. He
taught courses in Middle East history, the
history of science and modern European
intellectual history.
http://www.tothepointanalyses.com
Please
read our
Comment Policy
before posting -
It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH.
Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section.
|
|
|
|
Search Information
Clearing House
|
===
|