Response to Frank Rich on “Decline”
P. Schultz
December 10, 2012
Here is a post from Facebook that I
wrote in response to an article forwarded to me by a friend written by Frank
Rich on what he alleges is an essentially delusionary concern with the decline
of American dominance. I am simply interested in understanding what this
concern with decline, if that is what it actually is, is about as it cuts
across the political spectrum. I have
attached a link to the Rich article below and if you read it, my response will
make more sense.
“A little speculation here based on the assumption that what
all these people, the declinists, are talking about must be something other
than delirium or panic. Assume momentarily that they are on to something but it
is not yet clear what that "something" is. Suggestion: The loss of
"dominance" is not a loss so much as it is or could be a gain, making
possible a "return" to or an opportunity to adopt an alternative way
of being in the world. That is, perhaps what is going on is not so much a
"loss" of dominance as a "critique" of dominance, a
critique of the politics of dominance. These "declinists", as Rich
call them, tend to confuse the issue and to clarify it they would need to see
that what they bemoan, the loss of dominance, is actually a critique of dominance.
A politics of dominance is troubling, this the declinists get. But what they or
most of them don't get is that such a politics is and should be controversial,
that the "decline" they bemoan reveals that controversy.
“Hence, contra Rich, we can and did survive previous
"crises" and still were not and could not be comfortable with
ourselves insofar as we had adopted and continued to pursue a politics of
dominance. Also, the combo Rich mentions as odd, decline paired with American
exceptionalism, is not so odd. A critique of dominance is quite compatible with
and could even explain the nub of this alleged exceptionalism: the US is
exceptional precisely because, unlike most other nations, it questions or is
bothered by, is not quite comfortable with the pursuit of great power,
political, cultural, and economic - which need not and should not be called
"isolationism" because it is not a retreat, an "unmanly''
retreat from the world but rather is or could be an embrace of an alternative
politics to a politics of dominance. A politics of dominance is based, these
days, on "the will to power" that Nietzsche attributed to "the
best" of human beings. Such a politics must be controversial and
especially so in a people like we "Americans." [An aside: Isn't it
interesting that some of those who should see the controversy in such a
politics, those who allegedly take on Nietzsche, those "neo-cons" and
some Straussians, are those who embrace a politics of dominance? Not only
interesting but weird.]”
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