I’ve been down on the United States for the past few weeks. When the missing-WMD meme hit mainstream on the weekend of May 30, I was moving house, and I kept coming back to the implications in my head as I loaded boxes into the car, feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of having been played so thoroughlyThe moment I decided to trust the US government: the Powell speech at the UN.. My blog post earlier that week had been measured, but it hid a burgeoning sense of betrayal.
As the Iraq war started, I had challenged myself and others not to move the goal posts post-factum to justify whatever the outcome might be. “This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history; revisionist historians is what I like to call them.” Bushism is what I like to call that, even though the second part of what he said is literally true. It sounds like he thinks revisionism is a morally suspect activity.
To be fair, Andrew Sullivan does see the need for an inquiry.To no avail; feel the least bit queasy now about this gulf between the promises and the evidence and you’re a “revisionist historian” according to George Bush. The Little Green Footballs of this world do not even feel the need for a congressional inquiry because, the argument seems to be, as winners we can write the history of this war, and the history will now show that the war was justified even for humanitarian reasons alone — just look at all the mass graves.
For the record, that is called dissembling, for it ignores the opportunity cost of not spending that money elsewhere for humanitarian purposes. Once we concede that there was no immediate threat from Iraq to the US and its allies, we need to ask what would be the most efficient way to spend $100 billion (and probably a lot more) and 250 soldiers’ lives (and counting). A third of Americans polled, including the President, seems to think WMDs were indeed found in Iraq.How could we get the biggest bang for the buck? If we had left Saddam to kill his 10,000 people a year, we could be saving millions of lives instead by flooding Africa with cheap AIDS drugs. Or we could ensure a moderate and stable Pakistan by buying every Pakistani kid a high-school education. Or we could eradicate an entire disease. My point is not that we should do this. It is merely that the humanitarian claims of the neo-con apologists are as bogus as the WMD claims.
So, I’ve been down on the US. But I’ve learned to be wary of such shifts in affiliation. Too often, in the past, my emotional allegiances depended on where I happened to live. When I left Switzerland aged 6, I wanted to be Swiss, not Belgian. The first time I left New York, aged 13, I wanted to be American, not European. But by the time I moved to Australia at the age of 15, though, I had figured out what was going on: the people I was trying to integrate with assumed (uncritically) that they were living in the best of all possible societies. I had to participate in the vernacular that maintains this belief (national stereotypes, food preferences, sport team preferences and even sport preferences) in order to play along. Eventually, I would come to believe it, and it would feel goodThere is nothing controversial in this. it’s at the base of Donald L. Horowitz’s excellent Ethnic Groups in Conflict..
Now, however, I make a point of recognizing this impulse in myself, and compensating for it. I make a point of recognizing it in others. It’s also why I tend to defend Europe in the US, and the US in Europe: Most anti-Americanism and old-Europism is borne from national allegiances that are irrational, pre-rational if you will, and they do not withstand scrutiny. But it was getting harder to defend the US here in Europe — until yesterday, when I found my bearings again in an unlikely place.
I was listening to last week’s show of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR while making dinner, and as Garrison Keillor led a local Oregonian band into some good ol’ country & bluegrass with a genial quip aimed at Republicans, I realized what my mistake had been. The US is not some monolithic agent. It is a complex and splendrous kaleidoscope of culture and ideals and optimism and fear; a fascinating experiment, 200+ years old, that can occasionally go awry, as with the neo-cons currently. I know all this, of course, but it’s easy to lose sight of such self-evident truths when not immersed in the culture day-to-day.
Remarkable that there should be one point where you and I are of exactly the same opinion! I always listen to A prairie home companion when in the US, sometimes over the web as well and friends in the States sometimes send me recorded tapes. In addition I have several of his books of which I positively love The book of guys and, of course, Radio Romance. I also own a doctoral thesis on Garrison Keillor (“A voice of America” sic!). GK also has some scandinavian links. His present wife is called Jenny Lind Nilsson – cute huh?
This being said I think that your picture of our picture of the US is rather sterotype. You will find much less “anti.Americanism” than you think. Most people probably understand the true values of the multifaceted US culture; yes I use that word deliberately. Unfortunately US governement has right now been kidnapped by a band of ruthless ruffians – let us fight them and hope that their reign will turn out to be an unfortunate parenthesis.
This strikes me as a distinction without a difference, just in the same way some Catholics say they don’t mind homosexuals but can’t abide the nasty business of anal sex.
Roughly half of that glorious multifaceted nation you so admire voted for George and his gangster cabal of neo-con Jew conservatives (the “axis of circumcision,” as David Brooks put it) so perhaps you only like the half that would listen to NPR. (Of course, nowhere near half the country listens to NPR, but you get the drift). Even more of them voted Republican in the midterms late last year. Nice attempt to distinguish between the people and the government, but the people voted for the government and still overwhelmingly support it regardless of the WMD question; which, as an aside, is something on which I largely agree with you.
So what are you left with? A “complex and splendrous kaleidoscope of culture and ideals and optimism and fear” which votes Democrat?
Liking/notliking the U.S. is not a binary proposition. Why are you jumping through more hoops than a circus clown to justify what would otherwise be a perfectly reasonable ambivalence towards government policy and the people who support it?
Actually, Matthew, it’s perfectly possible to combine a profound hatred for the current administration and everything it stands for with a certain amount of respect and admiration for Americans generally — even those who voted Republican. It’s often hard not to like Republicans, especially when you’re not talking politics — and it’s important to remember that most Republicans talk politics rarely, if ever.
Why is it, do you think, that half the country thinks that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and that a third of the country thinks that we’ve already found WMDs in Iraq? My theory is that these people are simply not interested in politics, and that they pay attention only on the most superficial level: we got attacked on 9/11, we’re going to war against Iraq because they have WMDs — that’s enough for them, now they can get back to their lives. These Middle Americans are not bad or evil in the way the Bush Administration is; they simply have faith in their government, more or less regardless of who’s in power. And if the government tells them that Iraq has WMDs, or that cutting taxes is the solution to all problems, then they’ll believe it, because believing it means they don’t need to question where their great nation is going.
Do I wish that these Republican voters asked more questions? Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not very good people, pillars of their community, morally upright individuals etc etc who individually make the world a better place even as collectively they help to destabilise it.
As one of the Republican voters discussed above (albeit one with major differences of view with the current administration) I would make the following points. First: there are many reasons why Americans make and stick with their political affiliations, most of which, I would argue, still have little to do with foreign policy choices that a given President from their party may make. There are many fiscal, social, local and even sentimental reasons behind American votes, just as there are in Europe. Tempting as it may be to associate voters with the views of their officials on any given topic, I think it misguided. Second: It is not just voters for one party or another in this country who believe that their interaction with and monitoring of government is confined to the period directly before or on election day. Ours is a fundamentally private-sphere oriented culture, and has only become moreso (for better or worse). This should surprise no one, given that the Revolution was largely fought so that the citizenry could, to the maximum degree possible, be left alone by those holding sovereign power. You and I may not like the idea of citizens ignoring the activities of their government, but it is part of the American package. Finally: the Prairie Home Companion makes my skin crawl. Not because of its politics, but because of its oozing sentimentality and the delusional pastoral picture of rural life that it spoons into the minds of Coastal urbanites.
Well Matty, if we have to conflate love for Americans with love for the current administration, how did you feel about the US under Clinton? It must have been very difficult for you to live there then. I don’t recall you wanting to move away, but perhaps you’re talking utter crap as usual. A point of information: LESS than half of americans voted for Dubya; it would have been even less had his brother not disenfranchised as many of his black constituents as he decently could get away with.
But I take your point, confusingly expressed as it is. Me, I have the feeling of a disappointed lover when it comes to the US. So much potential, such a nice bunch of people, but so unutterably misled. Led by a cabal of the corrupt whose main electoral platform is whatever is good for big business, the constituency that paid for their election, they’ve created from 9/11 a sense of constant emergency that sort of forces decent people to agree with astonishing acts of arbitrary aggression and violence that they wouldn’t stand for if it took place anywhere near a location or people they cared about. The main problem I have with the american “People” is their apparent inability to see how their government looks to everyone else. They’ve made 9/11 into some sort of divinely ordained victimhood that allows them morally to do whatever they want to, and everyone that stands in their way is some sort of “terrorist”, as if their government had never sanctioned “terrorism” itself.
I think what gets me is the hypocrisy more than anything else. The failure to live up to the rhetoric that is spouted.
Talking of Coastal Urbanities, Felix, your reference to “Middle America,” a construct which exists more in geographic metaphor than in fact, betrays, perhaps, your own membership of that club. People make political decisions for all kinds of reasons and simply because they don’t agree doesn’t make those choices simple-minded or misguided.
Wait, stop the presses! I live in New York, which is, um, urban, and it’s, wait for it, — on the coast! So guess what? I’m a coastal urbanite! Whatever that is, and I’m pretty sure it’s about as meaningful or meaningless as “Middle American”. Oh, Mr Matthew “Navel Gazing” Rose is DEFINITELY a Coastal Urbanite, too. And if anybody could translate his final sentence into English for me, I’d be much obliged.
Worth pointing out a very intelligent post from Mr Ben here, too. Not sure what he’s doing slumming with we flame warriors, I think he belongs at a higher level here, but I agree with everything he says.
How come you never say that about me?
John:
familiarity breeds contempt.
Felix:
we’ve never met but I appreciate anyone who holds stefan’s feet to the fire.
So Ben, sorry to interrupt your kisses and cuddles with Felix, but what you’re saying is that everyone who knows me hates me, or at best feels disdain and contempt for me?
I think that’s not true and urge everyone who likes me and thinks I “belong at a higher level” too to NOT comment below to show it. I think you’ll find the response will be demonstrative.
Much anti-Americanism stems from American hypocracy. Secular Arab intellectuals, the natural allies of the US, have over the past several years turned hostile because they sense that America’s actions run counter to the values that permeate its rhetoric. Such people bought into the ideals of liberty, freedom and economic advancement that the US stands for. But they also see the US supporting the very governments that oppress them. The United States built a global system of economic, trading and political institutions that had a semblence of running on commonly accepted rules. It then ignores these rules – itself hardly unique – but sometimes does so in a crude way, almost with sheer delight. And Americans are oblivious to the impact this has. (I don’t think even neo-cons are deliberately mean-spirited toward the world, just obtuse.)
This may be part and parcel of American culture, and there are underlying reasons for it which are positive. Certainly America’s tone-deafness toward the outside world stretches back through our history. But surely this becomes a problem when America occupies such a preeminent space in the world. It is not enough to shrug and say, “Well, that’s how the Yanks are.” Rudyard Kipling warned us a hundred years ago of the burdens a new colonial power would face – of the obligations and thankless tasks that go along with world power. I think educating ourselves to world events is one of those obligations. The entire country is not meant to enroll in SAIS, of course. But having an educational system that did a better job of instilling habits such as reading newspapers would help; more crucially so would fostering a television media that is free to ask hard questions. September 11th caught America by complete surprise; shame on us if another shock does too.
Coastal Urbanites, a phrase coined by Ben “Higher Plane” Neaderland, if I recall correctly, isn’t so much a geographical marker; more a frame of mind. For example, not being able to imagine associating with anyone who shops in Wal-Mart, or believing that the group opinions expressed by the Tuesday night crowd at B-Bar is indicative of the nation at large. Me, I own two guns and possess enough bloodlust to happily shoot (small and ugly) defenceless animals given half a chance. As for naval gazing, you should know by now not to believe anything you read in the New York Times.
Oh, and Eurof, I’m confused by your instructions. If I say how much love and respect I have for you, I fear that means I actually disdain and feel contempt for you. What if I actually do feel disdain and contempt? Normally, I’d show it by simply ignoring you but you’ve cut off that option. And by commenting at all, I’d hate for people to think I spend this much time worrying about how you imagine I think of you, not that I’m sure you care a jot (in public, at any rate). Perhaps you could rethink and provide us with a point-based grading system.
John:
That is not what I meant at all. What I meant was that if I wrote in as often as the rest of you do, Felix would have nothing nice to say to me either.
Matthew: While the Tuesday night crowd at B-Bar might be INCREDIBLY excited over the latest Hedi Slimane menswear collection at Christian Dior, I don’t think ANYBODY would extrapolate from that to thinking that the nation at large holds similar opinions. (And trust me, that’s the kind of thing upon which the Tuesday night crowd at B Bar might have a general opinion.)
And I’m not so pompous as to think that there are more than a handful of people in New York who can’t imagine associating with Wal-Mart shoppers. A more interesting question is this: can you imagine associating with someone who claims not to know a single homosexual? Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anybody I know who would make that claim, but some huge percentage of the national population apparently says they know not one gay person.
Oh, and Eurof, the only “higher level” you belong at is… oh, never mind. I’m too big for ad hominem attacks, especially when my heart isn’t in it.
Ah, but what about those who don’t care one way or the other whether they know anyone who is/not gay? I’d put myself in that category. I don’t know any former slaves either but that doesn’t necessarily make me pro-slavery.
This is a disaster. Look how many people have commented. Ben is right: clearly everyone hates me. In the past I noticed that every time I post a comment it seems to end the comment string so I was cleverly trying to turn that to my advantage by pretending that it meant everyone liked me.
And Matthew, of course I care how I imagine you think of me (?), much more than a jot. Ben, don’t worry I was only joking, as you should know.
As it is, over here we don’t get the impression there’s much of a split in opinion between beret-wearing coastal urbanites and wal-mart shopping okies on the substantive issues Stefan was discussing. I think Felix was right (see above)when he says many Americans seem content with conflating 9/11 with events in Eye-raq to the effect that pretty bad stuff going down (shootings of innocent people by paranoid US marines, the whole guantanamo bay blight on the constitution) doesn’t get blinked at, simply because as one soldier put it to the Evening Standard yesterday “I don’t want to say it’s payback time, but it’s payback time”. Let’s call a spade a spade here, and admit the American people insofar as that entity exists is responsible of a great sin of ommission in tolerating and sanctioning this.
Matthew, whether or not you care about the knowing-a-gay-person thing is neither here nor there. And as for your snarky “/not”, I can think of one person off the top of my head about whom it can surely be said that you certainly care that she’s not gay. Besides, I never said that people who claim not to know any gay people are homophobic, as you seem to imply. But they certainly live in a different world to we Coastal Urbanites: that was my point. Can you imagine anybody over the age of about 15 in Manhattan who doesn’t know a gay person? I can’t.
I can.
Eurof, you might want to take a look at this (http://www.memefirst.com/article.php?story=20030403192642555) which sort of explains why your comments tend to end conversations. Just replace Nazi with, say, telecommunications.