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As the national holiday has crept up, once again, I’ve found myself wondering about America and its place in the world and considering all of this from a slightly new angle. In brief: is it time for us to be Belgium?

By which I mean—no offense to Belgians—is it time for America to get over ourselves and aspire for nothing more than just being a regular country? I’m not sure anything specific has prompted this line of inquiry, probably just various events, any number of which might plausibly leave a sane American thinking wistfully of a relatively humble state which actually works, for the people who live there, without the histrionics about “greatness” or “exceptionalism” etc., etc., etc.

And while this is obviously no more than a thought experiment, I think it’s potentially a worthwhile one, pointing up one or two genuinely-interesting areas for speculation.

Looking around at this nation, today, it seems like there probably is still such a thing as “American Exceptionalism,” but it doesn’t seem like it is really a good thing in any discernable way. We consume an exceptional amount of resources and, per person, produce an exceptional amount of pollution. We expend an exceptional amount on armies and armaments, and on a health care “system,” in both cases with the poorest of returns to ourselves or anyone. We are perhaps an “exceptional” outlier when it comes to politicized ignorance about science. And of course there’s our exceptionally-large prison population.

There doesn’t seem to be much here that either America, or the world, is better off for having, either on its own or as a model. And thus, I wonder whether everyone might not be better if we were to haul down the flag and become a non-exceptional country like Belgium (or ideally an only-faintly-exceptional-in-mostly-good-ways country like Sweden).

But I’m not quite sure. Perhaps there remains, at least potentially, some unique role or task for America. (more…)

(Note: so, I wrote the rest of this post earlier in the day. Which only multiplied the disconcerting feeling when I returned home, and found that the storefront across the street which has been filling its windows with old clothes now has a sign up. And so for the time being, whenever I enter or leave my apartment, or stand in front of the living room window, I’m going to be confronted with a banner reading “FUTURE NO FUTURE.” Great.)

Is this the link of the week?

I think it may be. I found the whole thing fascinating, in any event. Others may not, and I admit that I’m pretty terrible about being directed to something and then thinking “this is too long, what’s the executive summary?” So I’ll pull out a few key items:

“…cuts are just a sideshow, a diversion from the main event. They’ll keep rolling on and on and on, because the simple truth is that wealth is being extracted from society at an ever faster rate.” Yes, this does seem to be one of our era’s big, largely-unrecognized patterns.

“If America can reform its banking sector, it has a fighting chance at a prosperous future. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t… without the institutional reinvention of finance, America simply won’t be able to create the future, because it will keep investing in yesterday’s already overleveraged, zero-social-return ‘ponziconomy.’”

“…consider the Irish Bankers’ Strikes of the 1970s, when fed-up bankers petulantly decided to go on strike (with the assumption that the economy would collapse, and society would beg to have them back). Instead, the economy kept growing…”

“…the ‘instability’ that is the heart of Wall Street’s scare tactics is in fact already upon us, savagely so.”

“…the Dutch just digitally self-organized to force their parliament to axe bankers’ bonuses. Not just going forward, but retroactively… using technology invented in the U.S.A….” Once again, if only Americans were not so ignorant, and to some extent determined to remain ignorant, of what happens in other societies. If only.

Also, re-reading the interview, it seems like a great many of these comments can be applied to the energy industry as well, probably not coincidentally.

P.S. While I’m at it, “Constitutionally Rotten” isn’t bad, either. Will Wilkinson has one of his good days, doing an admirable summary of a Fareed Zakaria essay rather as I’ve done here with the remarks of Umair Haque. (See also.)

P.P.S. This is rather pithy, as well. And while there’s nothing at all really new, I may as well throw in this while I’m at it. Meanwhile, assuming that I don’t just drink myself to death before I even make it that far, after I get back from France I think I’m going to just stay in bed curled up into a fetal ball for several days.

Busy. Lots of work, leaving for a trip to Europe a week from Friday, stuff to do. So naturally I’m going to post a bunch of links here.

So you can experience “a day on the world wide web with Matt.”

Okay, this first one I actually read yesterday, and it was posted last week, but “Lessons of the Montreal Protocol for Climate Policy” is still interesting. The thing is, I’m not entirely sure what the point of this list is. It mostly seems to be things which advocates of environmental protections were aware of, and would certainly like to act on, but don’t seem to have a clear path to doing so. e.g., “It is important that the science not be politicized.” Great, how? Arguably, this list seems like it would be of more benefit to industrialists who want to block environmental activism, and could use this as a step-by-step guide. (Assuming that said industrialists elect to disregard the second item on the list, which is probably safe to assume.)

Lot of stuff from NPR.org and The Economist, of course, since those are major sources for me. I’ve almost wanted to avoid NPR out of embarrassment at their farcical self-directed inquisition following that latest idiotic “sting;” would that they applied such aggression to other subjects. But for all that, the site has been producing a lot of good material of late.

For example, this morning the politics blog posted an informative update on the battle over congressional redistricting. (more…)