Greg Grandin is nominally a professor of history at Yale. However, the fact that his
book won this year's
Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction should have tipped me off that it was not a history book. And indeed, if the book deserves any
prize, it should certainly have been in the category of "editorial writing". Because it simply isn't a history book; it's an op-ed that was too long for the NYT to publish all at once.
The basic thesis of the op-ed is pretty straightforward. Grandin inverts Frederick Jackson Turner's grand
frontier thesis of American history. Turner claimed that the whole character of the US was created by the history of its gradual expansion across the North American continent. The ever moving frontier bred the American belief in individual self-reliance, its focus on an egalitarian democracy (as opposed to an old European class system), and its suspicion of elite culture and too much centralized government. From Turner's view in 1893, these were all good things that made the US the good place that it was.
Grandin puts this theory on its head, the same way that Hegel put Marx on his head. The pun is intended here, because whereas Turner thinks that the material and economic conditions of expansion created the character of America, Grandin thinks this 'American character' (whatever the fuck that is) has
always been inherently racist and bloodthirsty, and that this national psychological character caused the material expansion. So insofar as the book has a theory of history, it runs as follows. America was bad from the beginning. It expressed this badness by conquering it's inland empire, so to speak. After that, the badness went off seeking further conquests like the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Then, when there was no more land to conquer close at hand,
whitey appointed himself a brutal chief of police for the world, which dovetailed nicely with the rapacious expansion of post-war American capitalism. Finally, Alexander
wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer, and the always malignant spirit of America turned in on itself to give us Donald Trump. Befitting an op-ed, the thinking is pleasingly black and white, and lends an inevitability to our current political moment that Hegel's Prussian-State-as-ultimate-expression-of-Absolute-Spirit would be proud of.
As history, I think this is just drivel. Turner's thesis already operated at a hugely abstract level, trying to convince us of the unified history and character of
63 million people (88% of whom were white). But at least Turner offered an
explanation of American spirit based on facts specific to American history. Grandin is trying to work at a similarly abstract level with a nation of 330 million people, 40% of whom are now not white at all. On top of that he's trying to reverse the equation and claim that all the facts of American history proceed from the bloodthirsty spirit of a white supremacy that extends unbroken and uncontested all the way back to angry settler mobs. Beyond being absurdly reductive, this doesn't even count as an
explanation at all because it never really addresses the original question of why (what he presumes to be) the Anglo-Saxon core of the US started off so damn
nasty (I say presumes because he never mentions the other 2 early immigrant groups, nor the huge cultural difference between Angles and Saxons that
Albion's Seed discusses).
I can try to read more generously and turn Grandin's thesis into a real explanation. Instead of arguing that the US is just inherently fallen, perhaps due to our twin original sins of African-American slavery and Native American genocide, Grandin could try to argue that the fearful and violent individualism that (partly) characterizes the country stems from its endless series of frontier wars. The US started as a small and weakly fragmented state in a big continent so always felt itself under attack from Natives as well as larger European powers. The result was a fragmented national character that only found unification in facing some external enemy (at first real, later imagined). So to hold the union together and give its people any sense of social or national solidarity, it had to keep crossing the frontier, even as this kept moving, and going to war. This history would account for the insecure, fearful, and violent streak our country possesses despite its current wealth and power, and is also meant to explain why we never developed enough solidarity to convert to what Grandin obviously sees as the one true political system and ultimately end of history -- Socialism, or at least Scadinavian style Social Democracy.
The book doesn't really lay out that thesis explicitly. As I said, it's fairly uninterested in causal explanation in general. It operates mostly at the level of trying to capture the "national mood" of the past, as if what editors write in op-eds and politicians say in stump speeches was the most important component of history. But -- "Americans are violent racists whose endless wars are both cause and consequence of their never discovering Socialism" -- is the thesis implicit in the story Grandin tells. I think this is a lousy explanation of history, but at least it would count as something of an explanation and not just turn all of US history into a battle for white supremacy that for some reason we've been inexplicably "losing" for 250 straight years.
So it's a flimsy history book. Maybe we should ask instead: what does this op-ed think we ought to do? Of course, the book can't make any explicit policy prescriptions because it's posing as a history book. But it's completely clear that the good guys are the Social Democrats of Europe, and the bad guys are, well, the inflexibly racist character of Americans. So I guess if we were to read positive policy prescriptions into it, these would include better healthcare, social security, unions, etc ... And of course it's easy to turn steps meant to vanquish the enemy into negative policy proposals -- less voter suppression of minorities, fewer foreign wars, less border and customs enforcement, etc ... These are all fine ideas, but you hardly need to read this book to make you think they're important. The book also leaves you with absolutely no reason to think that the US could ever change. After all, Grandin's history is of a uniform descent from Native American genocide to Trump's wall. So his opinion mostly just boils down to, "everything sucks" and his book to a long list of things that suck, followed by things that suck even more. Naturally, Grandin is entitled to this opinion. In many ways it's hard to argue with. Right now, the US really does suck. In fact, it sucks so obviously right now that they literally gave this guy a Pulitzer Prize for claiming that it has always sucked. Sign of the times.
But I ask you, for as much as the US indeed sucks, for as horrendous as Trump's presidency has been, do you really believe that it demonstrates a uniform downhill trajectory from slavery and genocide?
