'THIS is the true frontier of transportation,' said Ms Marion Blakely, head of the United States Federal Aviation Administration, when SpaceShipOne, designed, built and flown by American private citizens, flew into space for the second time in two weeks and won the US$10 million (S$17 million) Ansari X Prize.
Victory cry: Pilot Binnie celebrated his feat by holding up an American flag and intoning: 'Let me say I thank God I live in a country where this is possible.'
Then Mr Richard Branson of Virgin enterprises made a deal with Mojave Aerospace Venture, the team headed by Mr Burt Rutan and funded by Mr Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, to develop a fleet of larger spacecraft based on Mr Rutan's design and start commercial space flights in 2007 to 2008.
It took us all back to the romantic early years of aviation, when thrusting entrepreneurs teamed up with iconoclastic engineers and bold pilots to create whole new technologies in a weather-beaten hangar. There we were once again, at the airstrip out in the desert, watching mavericks mould our future. It was a great achievement, redolent of the 1930s and yet relevant to the future - and then Mr Brian Binnie had to go and ruin it.
Mr Binnie, a 51-year-old former US Navy test pilot who flew SpaceShipOne on its second trip to the edge of space, celebrated his feat by climbing on top of the vehicle, holding up an American flag as big as he was, and intoning: 'Let me say I thank God I live in a country where this is possible.'
Suddenly, it wasn't the romantic, sepia-toned past any more. We were yanked back to the crude nationalist bombast of the present, and it didn't feel good at all.
Let us imagine for a moment it had been a Japanese team that was the first to get its space vehicle up twice in a fortnight and win the Ansari X Prize. And suppose the successful pilot had then climbed up on his vehicle, unfurled a huge Rising Sun flag, and thanked his ancestral gods he lived in a country where such a thing was possible. You might not have said anything out loud, but what would you have thought in private?
Well, that's what most people elsewhere think when Americans do it, too. When Mr Binnie thanks God he lives in 'a country where this is possible', does he think God has changed His nationality since 1957 (when He chose the Soviet Union to be the first country into space)? And by the way, how did He get a Green Card?
The problem with even commenting on this sort of stuff is you soon start sounding as petty as those you criticise, and churlish to boot. Why not let Mr Binnie - who is only a test pilot after all, not a statesman - have his little moment of nationalist self-glorification? After all, there are plenty of nationalists in the backwoods of China, Russia and India who are just as convinced that God, Destiny or some other Cosmic Authority has chosen their nation as His chief instrument.
Americans are hardly unique in their fervent nationalism, though they do register high on the scale for a developed country. When the World Values Survey asked the citizens of 14 countries if they were 'very proud' of their nationality in 1999 to 2000, no European countries except ultra-nationalist Ireland and Poland reached the 50 per cent mark. Americans ended up at 72 per cent, between the Indians and the Vietnamese.
Yet most Americans do not even recognise they are nationalists like everyone else, living in a country with a highly nationalistic foreign policy. They believe their 'patriotism', since it is not tied to some specific ethnic group, is somehow different from other people's nationalism. In fact, it is very like the nationalism of other multi-ethnic countries such as Canada, Brazil, South Africa and India, being based mostly on shared ideals and at least some elements of a shared history.
The problem is not the fact of American nationalism - a huge surge of nationalist sentiment was inevitable in the US after the appalling events of 9/11 - but the in-your-face coarseness with which it is increasingly expressed. A psychologist might wonder how much this is driven by the need to deny the inevitable relative decline in America's power over the coming two or three decades, as first the Chinese economy and then the Indian grow to rival that of the US in size. In any event, triumphalism has become a normal mode of expression right across the US political and media spectrum in the past few years.
Mr Binnie crowed about how his God had put his country ahead of all the rest because that is the example he has been shown by his leaders and his media. A generation ago, even ordinary American spacemen knew better than to behave like that. Mr Neil Armstrong didn't say 'This proves America is best' when he became the first human being to set foot on the Moon. He said: 'One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.'
Nationalism is a normal phenomenon, generally unattractive to people who do not share the nationality in question but useful as social glue in holding large numbers of people together. But it has gone beyond that now in the US. Much of the public space is taken up by ritualistic self-congratulation of the crudest kind, and Mr Binnie was just going with the flow. Legitimate pride in real accomplishments is one thing; arrogance and hubris are something else.
The writer is a London-based independent journalist.
Once in a while I come across an article that has its thumb right on the pulse of some vein of life. This one says so subtlely and succinctly what I've been feeling about American patriotism but yet unable to articulate.
I hope we are all reminded that every time we express a strong emotion or belief, we turn a blind eye to something that is important. A large segment of Americans, unfortunately, are living in a world of blindness in which they cannot see.
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1 comment:
That's amazing!
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