Steven Cobert coined the term “truthiness” when his TV show, The Cobert Report, launched on Comedy Central. “Steven Cobert believed America to be split between two camps whose philosophies could never reconcile – those who ‘think with their head‘ and those who ‘know with their heart,’ he explained, was the quality of a thing feeling true without any evidence suggesting it actually was.” (Click on truthiness above for the wiki that gives some good examples.)

“Thus by the time Cobert took to the airwaves, by the time James Frey landed in trouble, the rift between the actual and the artificial had already become a topic of wide discussion. For many on the left, it was Bush himself who stood as the clear cause of it. A born-again Christian who credits unquestioning faith with saving him from delinquency, Bush is notoriously, even proudly uncurious about the world. Online, many bloggers highlighted this detachment by branding themselves of ‘the reality-based community.’ This was a reference to an infamous and revealing interview that an unnamed Bush aide had once given to the journalist Ron Suskind. According to the aide, opponents of Bush were part of ‘what we call the reality-based community’ – a label not meant to be complimentary, because to the aide, ‘discernible reality’ was a stock of faltering value. The United States was ‘an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,’ the official told Suskind. ‘And while you’re studying the reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.’” [True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, by Farhad Manjoo, pp.191-192]

I remember a while back reading several articles on Neo-Conservatism and about those within our current administration who were neo-conservatives. One aspect of neo-conservatism mentioned in the articles was the notion of the “American Empire” – we are to be (or already are) an empire and should act as one in the world. Our current foreign policy demonstrates the ascendancy of this ideology. We can also see this ideology within the American-Christian Religious Right and their frenzied attitude concerning America – the idea that the United States is a divinely created and prospered country.
I wrote in a blog post a while back (among several) that I do not want Empire! There is no need for this country to be an empire! Why should we be? What do we gain from being such a thing? Certainly not security.
I contend that there are those who have made the United States of America an idol. American has become their god and they worship at the foot of this nation-state. Their sense of self-worth and purpose is embedded in the “success” of this nation-state and comes from imposing their way of thinking – religiously, politically, culturally – on all others. Their hubris blinds them to “reality” and establishes a fantastical idea of the world and their place in it – “feeling” over “discernible reality .” They would rather have goose-bumps than truth.
I am certainly thankful for the freedoms we have in the U.S., for the opportunities available to those who work hard (at least in the past), for our Constitutional form of government, and for the good that we as a people have done in the past (recognizing the harm that we have also caused), but as a Christian I believe that this is only a nation-state that will wax and wane, be virtuous and corrupt, and will ultimately survive as a worthwhile society only when we put aside our self-interest and work against arrogant-pride and the vainglory of empire.