Lingua e cultura dei Paesi di lingua inglese

Prager's Perspective on American Exceptionalism and the Trophy Culture

Prager argues that there is only one country that can be considered exceptional, and it requires a deciding force to determine which country holds this status. According to Prager, Americans are the only ones who view their country as exceptional.

Prager uses a metaphor of a family to illustrate his point. He mentions his son who plays baseball, even though he is not skilled at it, he still receives a trophy. This, according to Prager, reflects the current culture in America where everyone is rewarded regardless of their performance. He finds this absurd and believes that trophies should only be given to winners.

Prager sees this trophy culture as a symbol of what is wrong with America today. He believes that compassion has become more important than winning or losing, which goes against his idea of morality. Prager argues that morality should be based on discipline, competitiveness, and instinctual impulses. This aligns with the strict father model that he advocates for.

Overall, Prager's perspective highlights his concerns about the shift in American values and the impact it has on the country's exceptionalism and moral framework.

In America, the state should be smaller and smaller and one should get one's notion of what liberty is from one's belief in God. For Prager, God is essential to the American experiment which cannot work without God. This means American culture has to be rooted in a Judeo-Christian value structure. He then offers us a metaphor of the flower - we're living in a cut flower (?) era. The soil is the Judeo-Christian value system. If you cut the flower, you have eliminated the root of what's giving the flower life and therefore the flower will die. You need this soil which are Judeo-Christian values. Without these values, America will wither like a flower and die. The hierarchy - first we have God, then the founders of the nation, then men or fathers, then women, children at the bottom. This is exactly the way Lakoff explained the strict father model. Prager sees the problem with America exactly in the terms that Lakoff sees the hope for America. For Lakoff, the hope for

Highermoral nature

When you self-assign your position as being higher than that of anyone else, you’re saying something pretty revealing.

He says the US has been guided by a better idea (of liberty, democracy, peace, etc) and that has to be taught over and over again. Unless Americans are taught these values, America will forget it was founded on this better idea and will become like every other nation.

This model of exceptionalism is dangerous because you will no longer be subject to any kind of criticism others may have of you. Ex. US goes into Iraq and they go to war with thousands of people dying and at the end we find out there were never any arms of mass destruction and Saddam had nothing to do with it.

But Prager would say that does not matter because we did it with an idea of spreading liberty and democracy through the world, and now the Iraqis can vote.

Q&A of March 27th

The pluribus unum can become part of the strict father model but it’s really just a sign that America is

A multicultural society. Trump is a perfect example of someone who thinks America has become too multicultural. Most of the strict father model people have a certain problem with it today. D. Prager's idea of exceptionalism is an idea where there is no necessary equality. Half of the dog and cat food in the US is bought by poor people. Why did the senate decide not to go ahead with the impeachment? The representatives who are republicans are in a very difficult position. Trump is not a politician, he knows if a republican goes against him that republican is not going to be in the senate for very long. There are a few republicans who voted for the impeachment, but in order to impeach you need a two-thirds majority. It was the first time in American history that no documentation was provided by the president and no witnesses were allowed to appear. In a system that should be guided by checks and balances, in an impeachment trial it's clear the legislative branch should have had the

Right to force the president to turn this document over. The senate decided to go against its own constitutionally given power. Adam Schiff went over to the senate to illustrate the acts of impeachment. The senate is majority republican so it didn't allow witnesses or extra material to be presented. Impeachment proceedings are televised and the entire nation sees what's happening. House of representatives brings up the possibility of an impeachment. They're part of the legislative branch. The mother is not an independent figure equal to the father in the strict father model. This model depends on the power and decision-making on the part of one person who has the right to say what's wrong and what's right. Many people in the US want to believe Trump is the moral leader of the country. The role of the woman is important in a nurturing family model more than it is in the strict father model. By putting radical Islamic terrorist together the relationship, radical.

andterrorist is an oxymoron-> there’s no moderate terrorists. It’s a hyperbole or exaggeration. By adding Islamic, it creates a relationship between islam and terrorism so that we come to think of islam as radical and terroristic. Domestic violence isn’t seen as terrorism unless it’s a muslim who’s committing violence.

After the end of WWII we have the cold war which was mostly fought on the propaganda front, but it was also fought with arms. When you’re at war you want power because you have to take decisions more quickly, or at least that’s the justification. The executive branch is a lot faster and slowly presidents had been gaining power with the complicity of the legislative branch and the judicial branch. A president can nominate who is in the supreme court. The judicial branch still resembles the political forces that have been in charge for the last 20 years. Over the years power has been increasingly invested in the executive branch and you

can tell by the number of bills. Executive orders-> he’s trying to increase his power. Bush Junior took a huge step in the direction of gaining more executive power. After Bush, everyone followed. Obama never did anything to go back to the way things used to be.

The centrality of God allows people in the strict father model to say my morality comes first from God and then from whoever it is who incarnates the strict father, in this case Trump; then the priest, the head of the family etc. If you fail in America you’re responsible for the failure. If you commit a serious crime, you can die for it.

The republicans are not pro-Russian. Given that Trump is ambiguous about Russia and Putin, the suspicion is that for a number of reasons dealing with Trump’s financial holdings we know he was in debt and was lent money by the Russians. This could be one of the reasons.

Trump would rather deal with Italy, Germany etc. on their own than the EU. Putin has the same mentality.

They can be

very much on the same page.Class of March 30 – Andrew Bacevich part IthWe’re going to shift focus from Prager to A. Bacevich. Dennis Prager fits well intoLakoff’s model of conservative thinking with his plea for American exceptionalism.Bacevich also considers himself a conservative but his ideas are closer to the positionswhich Lakoff considers ‘of the left’. Robert Kagan is one of the theoretical designers ofa certain type of new model of American interventionism in the world.Bacevich talks about America’s expansionism. We notice Bacevich is not coming fromradio or TV, he’s a university professor. He has a background in the army. He went to aprestigious military academy and served in war. He comes from a background which isnot that of a typical liberal. He’s giving this speech at a specific time-> towards theend of 2008, just before the election. The US had just fallen into an enormous financialcrisis. The country starts going into debt.