That one dude at the embassy was an asshole

Aedan Roberts

Week 1

            I had a feeling that something sinister was going on when I found myself under the gaze of Howard Taft and Douglas MacArthur, forever immortalized in the air-conditioned halls of the U.S. embassy. I knew that some sort of dark history was being grossly overlooked. My semi-righteous instincts made me want to say something, but my ignorance left me without a vocabulary to even frame a simple question. This was Monday, after all– four days after I arrogantly arrived in this country, as devoid of context as I was of skin pigment. I had no idea how dark that history really was. I didn’t know that Taft was the secretary of war when “American troops swept over entire populations, exterminated tens of thousands of noncombatants and wiped out hundreds more by pestilence in concentration camps” (Alcantara, 2002 p. 211.) I didn’t know that General McArthur ensured that Manila was one of the most heavily bombed cities during World War II (Third, at some point in the van, 2016.) If I’d known the murder and suffering that my country was proudly flaunting I would have yacked all over the hall of Governor-Generals.

UP itself is a testament to benevolent assimilation

            But in the eyes of the U.S. government, as much in 1901 as now, these figures represent a history worth flaunting. The American political consciousness works because it imposes itself as an inherent, universal good– every act the U.S. government commits is always rationalized as morally flawless, and, according to Vincente Rafael, the colonization of the Philippines was no exception. “Given the putative absence of a Filipino nation, the U.S. presence in the archipelago could not be construed as usurping another people’s sovereignty. Intervention was understood, in official accounts, as an altruistic act motivated by America[n] concern for the natives’ welfare on the part of the United States” (Rafael, 2000 p. 20.) Rafael uses President McKinnley’s term “benevolent assimilation” to describe this deluded self-perception of conquest and imperial rule. “The allegory of benevolent assimilation effaces the violence of conquest by construing colonial rule as the most precious gift that ‘the most civilized people’ can render to those still caught in a state of barbarous disorder.” (Rafael, 2000 p. 21) Essentially, the American government justified it’s rule by claiming that the people of the Philippines were so backwards and ignorant that they needed to be dominated by a superior power until they were civilized to the point of self-sufficiency. Like the relationship between a father and son, the archipelago was helpless on it’s own and needed the firm guidance of an authority figure to protect it from itself. If any violence occurred, it was likened to the disciplining of a child for bad behavior.

This ridiculously condescending attitude seems to be just as imbedded in U.S.- Philippine relations today. The second in command at the U.S. embassy could not have made that more clear when he said, with all of us clenching our teeth, that the ongoing practice of active American cultural propaganda was an expression of “Goodwill.” For just over a hundred years, the U.S. has been able to actively exploit billions of people in the Philippines and around the world, infinitely plunder natural resources with it’s poisonous economic model that is never satisfied by definition, and ultimately murder anyone who gets in the way– intentionally or not. And for just over a hundred years, the U.S. has been able to remain convinced that it’s only intention is, and has always been, goodwill.

We saw at the Political rally on Monday that U.S. "Goodwill" is not going unchallenged

How does the concept of benevolent assimilation apply to U.S. foreign policy in other nations over the last century? Over the last decade?
How exactly does this American Exceptionalism work? Why is it so powerful? What makes it so effective, so convincing?

Alcantra, E.R. (2002) Baguio between two wars: The creation and destruction of a summer capital. In Shaw, A. V. & Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. (pp. 207-223). New York: New York Press.

Rafael, V. (2000). White Love: Census and melodrama in the U.S. colonization of the Philippines. In White love and other events in Filipino history. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.