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It was the United States that disrupted this version of a perfect world by pursuing its imperial ambitions–the United States, therefore, that merited a genuine rage, whether in regard to the Korean War (which sparked massive protests in Paris), or fifteen years later in regard to the Vietnam War, or another fifteen years later in regard to Ronald Reagan’s arms race against the Soviets. Then communism, having turned out to be the actual example of odious imperialism, collapsed, and a certain kind of left-wing hope evaporated. Even so, a new vision of world peace emerged, and once again the United States loomed as the principle threat.
The perfect society, this time, was pictured as the rueful progeny of Europe’s failures of the past–a new international system that arose out of the recognition that Europe needed to come to grips with its own disasters. In this new and modern idea, modesty reigned as the highest of virtues, and a peaceful and prosperous world was pictured as on the brink of emerging, if only everyone would accept the new spirit of ruefulness. And yet, the United States demurred once again, and, after September 11, went about behaving as if global perfection were not at hand, and things ought to be shaken up, and tyrants overthrown.
And so, like the woman whose human qualities mark her as the enemy of amorous bliss, and like the Jew who is imagined as the betrayer of one version after another of the perfect state of grace, the Americans come to be seen as the people who keep destroying the perfect world of peace that would otherwise prevail–the peaceful world that communism claimed for itself long ago, and that, in the post-communist era, is claimed by the rueful opponents of all communist-like projects to re-make the world. And hatred pours down–a hatred in the name of love for a perfect and peaceful world that is actually a hatred for the human condition. A hatred of the imperfect self. Or so argues André Glucksmann.
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