The Myth of American Exceptionalism

I have been reading a new book by a British journalist Godfrey Hodgson "The Myth of American Exceptional ism". He has first studied and then worked in the US for most of his illustrious career for almost half the century, and he wrote extensively about American politics and history. He more or less concludes that at some point the America he loved and respected, the beacon of freedom, has slipped into the Messianism and the fallacy of believing in its own supreme greatness and uniqueness. Hence it not only is rapidly losing the respect of the world, but it is also refusing to see how this greatness and prosperity is slipping away from it. Complacency and greatness are two things incompatible.

Today, MSNBC is reporting about Americans going to China (mainland China) for jobs at a fast rate. It turns out that our recent graduates who have extreme difficulties finding even marginal jobs in the US, have a much brighter prospect of finding one in China. The article even goes on to quote one person saying that China today is what America used to be in the 1930s. Here is the link to that article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32937628/ns/business-world_business//.

In everyday life I see all the time that we are complacent and uninformed. The other day my hair stylist asked me how we felt about the health reform, and was dismayed that both my husband who is a physician, and myself felt it was timely and necessary. Unavoidable in fact. She went on to claim that we had the best health care in the world, and was truly amazed when I told her that we are trailing behind EVERY developed country on Earth in our life expectancy and outcomes of many diseases despite spending times more money on our medical system. I told her that Germans and French have a system which ensures better outcomes and longer life spans despite the fact that they eat butter, smoke, don't take cholesterol or pain pills and spend considerably less money as a society on their health care system while having everyone covered. She really has not heard that before. She asked in disbelief: "So-o-o... Why do they ALL want to come here for treatments???" And was again incredulous when she heard the answer: "Well, ... they DON'T!"

Some systems are better than others. I do not think there is much positive to be said about the Canadian system, or even the British one. Some of the things which make the British system dangerous are not going to apply in our situation anyway, like for example the fact that since they have joined the EU any doctor with a diploma from the medical school anywhere in Europe can come and practice medicine in Britain. Some countries' medical education is still substandard. This clearly is not going to happen in the US where licensing rules are very strict and religiously enforced. So I am not advocating blindly following some inferior models. But we need to recognize that there are models which are clearly superior.

We need to come to the realization that we are not the greatest in many respects. My father who is a math professor in one of the US universities has said long ago that a) if the US stops accepting foreigners into grad schools, all the US graduate schools in mathematics can be closed, and b) that it would have made much more sense economically for him to learn Chinese and to to go teach students in China rather than teach Chinese students math in the US in the language which is foreign to both the professor and the students. Like I said, he made this observation years and years ago, and the situation has not improved since then. There has long been a joke in Russian that American universities are places where Jewish professors from Russia teach Chinese students math in English. Every joke, as we know, is a joke only to a degree.

If we ignore the facts, and continue to pat ourselves on the back complacently basking in the myth of our greatness, we are going to irrevocably miss the boat into the future.