volprof
Destroyer of Nihilists
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2011
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While the Amazon river is mostly navigable, it overlaps dense rainforests and jungles. This means that, while a magnificent river system to look at, it really services no one. Nor will it ever, unless you want to raze the entire Amazonian rainforest and import millions of people, who will then have difficulty making crops work in year-round 90-110 degree heat.
Brazil will always work. It has the right dynamics for that, but it will never project. And, as we know, Iraq 2003 being our best evidence, working and projecting are two entirely different things.
In the circles I run around, and even on here, as conservative as this forum tends to be, people often act surprised or even with ridicule when I say that the US is truly an exceptional nation and that I'm an American exceptionalist.
I don't say these things out of ignorance or dogma. Although I like to joke a lot on here and sometimes resort to name-calling, I'm not an ill-informed mouthbreather. Americans are Americans. They're no different, really, from anyone else. They have dreams and aspirations, prejudices and failures. They **** and fart, just like anyone else. However, the republic of the United States of America is truly exceptional for multiple reasons:
1. It's the first country (and perhaps the only one ever) to be founded largely upon morality. Yes, economics played a huge role, and our textbooks often try to ignore the fact, but you still can't work around the American moral project as a stark reality on the world stage.
2. As a result of being a moral project, the US both functions well and faces grave threats. When it fails to live up to these expectations it has admittedly set for itself, it falters a bit. And yet, inexplicably, it still makes things work. Geography not only helps the moral mission but also helps the practical one, a suitable terrain and climate helping sustain enough jobs to keep folks relatively happy. It makes extreme diversity work, even despite the completely inorganic nature of this diverse wedding.
3. Practically speaking, the geography. The US is just different. It has more navigable waterways than the rest of the world combined. It is oriented towards not two, but three oceans. It has the largest contiguous collection of arable land in the world. It is nearly impenetrable to a foreign invasion, or at least a foreign invasion that is worth half a damn. American citizens are actually concerned about such questions as "How does the rest of the world view us?" Just sheer exception and privilege. And it's not America's fault. It just is.
I remember watching a George Friedman lecture, wherein he recalls, as a Jewish immigrant escaping the Holocaust, how his father once came into his room in their house in Queens (I imagine some setup similar to Archie Bunker's house) as young Georgy was playing the Pete Seeger "Little Boxes" folk tune about how everyone was losing their individual identity in post-WWII, consumerist America. Apparently, his father, who didn't speak English, heard the tune and walked into his room, asking what it was all about. George responded that it was about losing one's identity. His father, incredulous, asked, "Is that what Americans are concerned about?" In other words, his father's primary concern was keeping his family safe. He couldn't give a damn about the privilege of individual statements and self-expression.
America, it truly is exceptional. I don't care what anyone says otherwise. Besides the moral/philosophical project, I have geography (which never lies) on my side.
