American exceptionalism comes in many forms. Manifest Destiny, Rugged Individualism, our intense shock every time an American dies at home or abroad as though we were somehow immortal, or above being targets accidental or otherwise. We divorce ourselves from our foreign policy because either we didn’t vote for the people who made the decisions at the time, or its all about corporations that we don’t work for or hate just as much. A cop out to be sure, given tacit consent, and paying taxes erases whatever lack of responsibility we feel for putting certain people in office elected or appointed.

As of late, this disconnect comes from the way interaction with other leaders or other countries is deemed a social call, in our fervor for absolute safety. Rather, than a matter of national security which it is, and always has been. Because of this disconnect, we as a culture, have no sense of blowback. Consequences unintended, expected (although not always publicly expected), or random, through policy, covert operation, or other state sponsored actions and manipulations.

Chalmers Johnson wrote a book on Blowback which details the concept. Johnson isn’t the only one to understand this concept, the CIA, our maligned little brother, teaches it to its agents as well, it was a part of the debate surrounding the Reagan Doctrine (Iran Contra ringing any bells? …Bueller?).

The concept of Blowback is important to understand because its going to keep happening regardless of who is in office, which corporations we love or hate today, or who voted for whom and when. Foreign policy, in the short term is directed by the administration holding office. In the long term its the conglomeration of all those directions, building a history, and determining what options are on the table in the short term. Each new administration is not a clean slate. Precedents have been set, themes have been built upon, layers have been added.

The world keeps score. Americans do not, at least not long term. American’s popular sense of history is kept to things in books we once read in school, or what happened last week or last year. Our longest national memory in recent history is 9/11. Arguably, this only stays fresh for people who weren’t directly involved in the attack, because politicians of all stripes repeat it like a nervous tic at every photo op,speech, or any time the fear level seems to drop among the American people.

In much of the rest of the world history extends over millennia, and not because of some primordialist, “intractible conflict” explanation, but rather because they are high context societies. America is not. In low context societies, blowback comes as a terrible shock that continually takes us by surprise. We call cultures backward, attempt to change them, using the language of colonization in the same breath we ask why formerly colonized people hate us. We have a limited understanding of the full scope of our activities in other countries across the globe, but we are sure they are our enemies even if we can’t find where they live on a map if asked on the spot. And yet, we’re surprised when they blow up our embassies. We give our government the right to torture them, and respond with horror when they torture us. Actions have consequences, expected, unintended, or random.

Foreign policy is a policy because it has a history, a long history, that most regular Americans don’t fully understand, but the people on the receiving end do. Precedent moves the threshold of what’s acceptable forward. If we as a society, not the government, but the society, are interested in our continued safety, it’s time to understand this history, and elect leaders that will make responsible decisions. Not ones that add more names to the recruiters list of those who are willing to carry out, those unintended consequences.