There are only imperfect tools --defective societies, flawed people-- available for us to use in trying to build a better world. We need to recognize that America, as imperfect as it was even before the Bushites, was such a tool-- if we're to able to make it into such a tool again.

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Imperfect America as a Force for Good

My previous critique of leftist America –found here at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_060227_why_we_lose_3a__field_.htm"> www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_060227_why_we_lose_3a__field_.htm -- led to further conversations about how we should regard the United States (as it has been before this Bush regime) in relation to the battle of good against evil in this world.

It seems that one’s judgments about this question greatly influence how one sees the struggle now in Bushite America, and how one sees that struggle in the context of the overarching challenge to humankind to create a more whole and humane civilization.

Many on the left seem to see this Bushite regime merely as an extension of the persistent evils of America. And they are therefore dubious about a strategy that would direct our efforts to save our Constitutional system, or about any other approach that regards “restoration” and “repair” as worthy (even if not sufficient) goals.

I’d like to reply to that position with a simple assertion: If the United States had not existed –I mean, if there had been simply the whole rest of the world, but no United States or anything else in its place– during the twentieth century, the state of the world civilization at the end of that century would have been significantly worse than it was.

Yes, the United States is a flawed society. And yes, the United States as a great power did did many shameful things in the world. But the truth of both those statements does not make my assertion false.

(I am not including the ecological impact of American consumption of resources in this assessment, but rather I am focusing –as do such critics as Noam Chomsky and Harold Pinter– simply on the geopolitical impact of American actions in the world.)

When it comes to evaluating the impact of American power, the relevant issue is not how American conduct compares with some ideal of perfection but rather how the impact of America's wielding of its power compares with what would have happened in America's absence.

Power is by its definition a zero-sum game: If A has more power in the system, then players B, C, and D necessarily have less. If A disappears, the other players become greater powers. In the twentieth century, that would have meant more power in particular for Germany, for Russia, for China (toward the end of the century), and of course others.

Can anyone reasonably argue that if the United States had not existed at the time of Nazi Germany, and had not existed at the time of the Soviet Union, the world would have evolved in a better way?

Why History Has Been a Nightmare: The Social Evolutionary Perspective

There’s a reason that history has given us such highly flawed societies, and such deeply wounded people. The dynamic set in motion by the rise of civilization (as I try to show in my book, THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES: THE PROBLEM OF POWER IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION) made it inevitable that civilization would develop for millennia in very warped and wounding ways.

Destruction and disruption come from what is newly emerged into the evolving wholeness of life. That problem with the newly emergent is why, for example, the virus that came to the New World on the Asian chestnut, with which that virus had worked out a more harmonious relationship, decimated the great American chestnut trees. So also with civilization, still a relatively new arrival onto the scene of life on earth.

Humankind unwittingly unleashed a new social evolutionary force that, in its lack of harmony with the biologically evolved systems that created us and the biosphere, has temporarily sundered the harmony and wholeness that life on earth had taken almost four billion years to create.

It is our task as humans –in aligning ourselves with the Good and thus in trying to heal this civilization– to strive toward the Wholeness that would be the fulfillment of our potential and the nurturing of life on earth. But in this imperfect world, there are only very imperfect things available to do the work of moving toward that Wholeness.

The United States has been one of those imperfect things that has nonetheless overall, over the past century, been a force for creating goodness.

Has been, but not now. Not in the years of this Bushite regime. Right now what the United States is doing within itself and in the world is destroying goodness. This regime has been damaging America, and it has been damaging the world.

It is vital that American progressives recognize what is fundamentally different between the American of the Bushites and the America that the world has previously seen.

All we get are shades of gray. And to refuse to perceive the differences in the shades is to render one’s map of the world irrelevant to the task of moving it forward.

Yes, in the history of this country there’s always been ugliness. But by the standards of civilized history –dismal as that history is—America has also been a glowing moment. That glow should be honored.

We ought not get so focused the enduring major imperfections that we cannot see the important truth that there has been much that is good in America, that things would be even worse in this world had there never been this American experiment, and that any transformation of America for the better will require building upon what’s best in what’s already here.

We ought not see all shades of gray as black, thus disabling ourselves from using the lighter grays to hold the darker grays in check.

One of the Dimensions of Our National Polarization

America’s polarization in recent decades has played a key role in breaking down the structures of Wholeness that protect the good in America.

The pulling apart of the two sides signifies the inability of the culture as a whole to integrate the various competing truths about the good and to reconcile the various aspects of our humanity that are in tension. That failure of wholeness facilitates the advance of the forces of division and conflict, rather than harmony and integration. It facilitates, that is, the advance of the forces of evil.

When I do talk radio shows in Bush country, I encounter people on the right who seem unable to condemn their country when it yields to its ruthlessness and greed and self-righteousness and lust for power. To them, God is always on the side of the United States of America.

And then there are those who see America solely in terms of its defects.

This is one aspect of our national polarization.

There’s another level –a higher wisdom—that integrates the half-truths of both sides. It is this higher wisdom –which acknowledges both the virtues and the defects—that will best guide our working to advance goodness in America and through America as well.

A Crisis– Literally
Here is America, then, under the sway of forces that damage everything they touch, and that threaten to seize hold of this country’s destiny not just for a term of office or two but for the foreseeable future.

Here, then, is a country that has continued to be seen –until recently– by people around the world as a force for goodness, even as warranting Lincoln’s characterization of the United States as “the last best hope on earth,” now in danger of being a force that carries the world deeper into the domain of war, injustice, deception, lawlessness, and reckless plunder.

No longer, as in Lincoln’s day, are we so unique in being a government of the people, for the people, by the people. But much hope still must depend upon this land, if it is to be found anywhere.

Such limited progress as was made in the course of the twentieth century toward a world ruled by right instead of might owed a great deal to the United States’ overall role in the world. But now we’re tearing down what was built then.

Such limited progress that was made also in bringing environmental awareness into the deliberations of humankind also owed a great deal to the movement that arose in America. Now we are an obstacle to progress toward the goal of creating a civilization that lives in harmony with this planet.

A “crisis” is, literally, a time that is like a crossroads. We are at a crossroads. History –and the Good that is trying to realize itself through history– therefore makes special demands on us.

People are always called to serve the good. So teach all the religions. Compassion in Christianity and Buddhism; in Judaism, a willingness to submit to the law as a way of staying mindful of the Fundamental Good; etc. We’re always supposed to make an effort to serve the good. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” was understood to be a tough assignment.

But some times are special. Sometimes the battle between the battle between the forces creating wholeness and those destroying it reaches a point of crisis. At the crossroads, things might go either way.

At such time, because there’s more than usual at stake, more than usual is required. And so it is urgent that we strive for the more whole vision, now especially in this polarized country. It is urgent that we use the best available imperfect tools to do the job of rebuilding and of building anew. And we need to develop good maps showing the overall lay of the land so we can devise good strategies to defeat the forces of evil that face us.

And for all that, we need to draw down and find the fortitude that’s called for in a time of crisis, when engaged in a battle in which so much is at stake.

Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.