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Reading some of your comments over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed a sort of ideological infection setting in: Americentrism.
It’s easy to think that because you live in the most powerful country on the planet, that yours is the only country on the planet—or the only country that matters.
Donald Trump certainly subscribes to this imperial worldview. People who share it reflexively discount the interests of smaller countries and the people who live in them simply because those countries are, well, small.
Take this comment on my colleague Evan Gottesman’s piece, “The True Cost of Greenland.” Evan wrote about how the Danes sacrificed on behalf of their US allies after 9/11. To which one reader—who I can only assume is American—retorts:
…to cite Denmark’s contribution to the GWOT/Ira[q]/Afghanistan is a joke, it was symbolic as was every other country’s contribution…
Danes and other NATO allies filled essential roles in Afghanistan, including frontline combat. Every Danish soldier did a job an American servicemember would not have to. Denmark—with a population under six million in 2001—suffered more casualties per capita [ [link removed] ] than any country other than the US and Great Britain. I’m sure the families of Denmark’s fallen felt their losses were as “symbolic” as Copenhagen’s contribution to the war effort. Fuck you for your service, I guess.
This attitude, that “bigger is better, and we are big, so we are better,” is increasingly pervasive on the right.
Yet the left has its own version of Americentrism too. I’ve seen this crop up in response to ongoing events in Iran.
In Iran, the Islamic Republic regime is gunning down protesters in the streets. Many are calling for American help [ [link removed] ], some carrying signs appealing directly to Donald Trump. My friend Masih Alinejad—an Iranian dissident whom Tehran tried to assassinate [ [link removed] ] on the streets of New York—published a piece [ [link removed] ] in The Next Move outlining how the US can support her people.
This was the smug response [ [link removed] ] from someone calling themselves “Rational Lib” (quite the confident screen name!):
I will strongly, strongly advise, no matter how bad things get, do not ask Trump for help.
Another reader offers an equally useless [ [link removed] ] contribution:
USA should not intervene. We’re in this IRAN situation bc of our failures in supporting the despot regime of the Shah.. now his son is involved from the outside! Stay out of their internal politics! Let the Iranian ppl determine their future!!
Essentially, America is bad—maybe, the most bad—and the rest of the world has to pay for its sins. Iranians are expected to die to satisfy your guilty conscience because of something the United States government did ages ago. Self-reflection is good. Self-flagellation is destructive and even deadly. How long should the US sit on the sidelines while the Iranian authorities wantonly murder protesters before you feel sufficiently righteous?
We are all justifiably outraged by the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, but there is little appreciation that the Islamic Republic has killed thousands of Renee Nicole Goods. The nightmare many Americans are trying hard to stave off is in its forty-seventh year in Iran.
Facing murderous regime thugs under the shroud of a nationwide telecommunications blackout, Iranians do not have the luxury of ideological litmus tests.
I get that the idea of Trump saving the day rankles a few of you, and I am personally very skeptical that he will rise to the occasion. But the Iranian people also appealed directly to Barack Obama and he went on to strike a deal with the regime instead. Even Obama now says he regrets letting the protesters down [ [link removed] ]. We would not be in a situation where Trump was being called upon to help if his predecessors had gotten things right. And America is the most powerful country in the world, perhaps the only one capable of balancing the scales in Iran. Doesn’t it make sense that hopeful Iranians would turn to the White House?
The president has said that the US will intervene if the Islamic Republic kills protesters. There is no more “if.” If you are really concerned about Trump, demand your representatives hold him accountable for his commitments to the Iranian people—and swallow your guilt. Don’t wag your finger at a desperate nation fighting for its freedom. Remember that your independence was won with the help of France’s absolute monarchy
It’s time to curb your Americentrism. Where the MAGA right centers US brute force strength, the left wants to center America’s problems and weaknesses. Where the right is overeager to flex its muscles, the left is afraid of power.
To our readers on the right: show some respect for America’s friends before you find out what it’s like to live in a country that has no friends. And to our readers on the left: don’t impose your purity politics on the rest of the world. I can tell you that Soviet dissidents did not shun the United States because of Vietnam or segregation. There was no prize for having the cleanest conscience in the gulag.
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