There have been doubts about US hubris, about the idea that smart Americans with Ivy League degrees can manage not just the US, but the entire world, since even before Vietnam served as comeuppance, but did not, regrettably, occasion repentance. From The Best And The Brightest, David Halberstam’s history of Vietnam:
It would not be the last time Riesman [Harvard sociologist David Riesman] was prophetic: In 1961, when the Kennedy team was already on board and there was great enthusiasm over the new theories of counterinsurgency…and Vietnam had been chosen as a testing ground, Riesman remained uneasy. In mid-1961, he had lunch with two of the more distinguished social scientists in the Kennedy government. On the subject of Vietnam the others talked about limited war with the combativeness which marked that particular era, about the possibilities of it, about the American right to practice it, about the very excitement of participating in it. All of this smacked strongly of the arrogance and hubris of the era, and Riesman became more and more upset with the tone and the direction of the conversation, until finally he stopped them and asked if they had ever been to Utah. Utah! No, they said, not Utah, but why Utah, had Riesman ever been there? No, Riesman answered, but he had read a great deal about the Church of the Latter-day Saints, and it occurred to him that his friends did not know much about America, about how deep the evangelical streak was. “You all think you can manage limited wars and that you’re dealing with an elite society which is just waiting for your leadership. It’s not that way at all,” he said. “It’s not an Eastern elite society run for Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations.”
He left them after lunch, uneasy about the direction the country was taking. He had made a hobby of studying the American Civil War and he had always been disturbed by the passions which it had unleashed in the country, the tensions and angers just below the surface, the thin fabric of the society which held it all together, so easy to rend. They were, he thought, provincials. Brilliant Atlantic provincials.
Nothing has changed.
