In excoriating American culture, Berman also makes the broadest sorts of generalizations, based on the most anecdotal of evidence. He cites bits of chatter he's heard on television or the radio -- or overheard in a bar -- to back up his assertion that "lack of the most basic knowledge is so extreme in the United States that one has to wonder if we are talking about ignorance or just outright stupidity." And he cites the case of a Capitol Hill staff assistant, who slept with several men concurrently and then posted a chronicle of her bedroom antics on the Web, as embodying "the dominant secular ethos of the contemporary United States, in which it's all about pleasure, PR and (self) promotion."
Berman writes that "up and down the scale in the United States, a lack of empathy, an almost congenital inability to imagine the pain or the reality of the Other, is bred in the bone." He refers to what he calls an "American hatred of freedom." And he asserts that "the value system of at least 90 percent of the American population (at a conservative estimate), down through the decades, has acted to exclude a number of options that are essential for a healthy society. On one level, one might say that America takes away love and gives its citizens gadgets in return, which most of them regard as a terrific bargain."
So indiscriminate and intemperate are Berman's complaints that they undermine the valid points he wants to make about the role the Iraq war has played in fomenting further terrorism, the moral implications of torture at Abu Ghraib and the dangers of a ballooning trade deficit and an overextended military.
But his apparent hatred of all things American will give right-wing ideologues like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter an opportunity to tar and feather those citizens who do not share Berman's contempt for America but who happen to share his concern about the Iraq war and the policies of the Bush administration.
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