Facing Reality - The U.S.A. and Chauvinism

It is understandable that people, societies and states want to protect themselves. However, the compulsion to see threats everywhere and also to classify friends as dangerous is often diagnosed as paranoia. (According to IDC 10, F60.0 this is a manifest clinical picture).

The U.S.A. and paranoia

If the U.S. feels so threatened by NATO members, heads of government of friendly states and democratic institutions that it listens in on them and spies on them, ignoring international and national law, then there is reason to suspect that it could possibly be some kind of paranoia.

Anyone who remembers the embarrassing accusations of guilt around 9/11 will surely still have that explanation in their ears: We had an enormous amount of information, but we were not able to evaluate this information in a way that would have allowed the terror attack to be detected and prevented at an early stage. Quite apart from the fact that the cooperation of various institutions that existed to protect the country and its citizens did not work.

Considering the amount of data that the NSA alone is currently collecting, and despite all the algorithms that have been worked out, the question arises: Are the U.S.A. even able to evaluate this vast amount of data in such a way that the results can be brought into any relation to the effort involved. Ultimately, what has to be said in detail to protect against burglars also applies here: Nobody can prevent a break-in. What can be achieved is to make a break-in as difficult as possible. And this alone should lead to the insight that proportionality is required.

The U.S.A. and economic imperialism...

The situation is somewhat different if one assumes that protection against the threat of terrorism is only a pretext and that national, above all national economic interests are behind it - in short: industrial and commercial espionage. Then this action would be rational in purpose, albeit immoral, but not pathological.

While the former behavior could be traced back to a traumatic experience, such as 9/11, and could not excuse but make irrational behavior understandable, economic and industrial espionage to the extent that the U.S.A. is currently practicing it would be a fundamentally hostile act that should and should not occur among so-called "friends".

In any case, the self-confident U.S.A. assumes that they can afford this behavior - for whatever actual reasons - and are not accountable to anyone. After all, they are the Alpha Nation of this world. As an Alpha Nation it strives for worldwide hegemony - and stands by it. Even if they can no longer afford military imperialism, economic imperialism should at least secure their economic supremacy.

The U.S.A. and chauvinism

Yet what the USA has been demonstrating for several years is not necessarily the result of capitalism. According to Schumpeter, the behaviourally conspicuous manifestation of lived dominance behaviour could possibly have other causes. The economist Schumpeter did not regard imperialism as a necessary result of competition in a capitalist economic order. "Rather, he saw it as an expression of irrational chauvinism by the upper classes to consolidate their power." (Wikipedia) And so Schumpeter may have hit the nail on the head.

Accordingly, the question is not how to counter U.S. imperialism, but how to show the chauvinism of the U.S. upper classes its limits

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