Tom Kando
I have witnessed the growing alienation taking place between Americans and Europeans. But the situation is even more complicated than that: Criticism of trends in the United States is not limited to overseas. By the end of the Bush presidency, a majority of Americans themselves already knew that their country was on the wrong track. You didn’t have to be a European to feel that way.
I certainly share this view myself. I had opposed the Iraq war and the weapons-of-mass-destruction charade from day one. I had been sending and publishing editorial articles for months, in defense of the French and of their opposition to the Iraq war, or criticizing the moronic jingoism displayed by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh (whom I had found amusing fifteen years earlier). Renaming “french fries” as “freedom fries.” Give me a break!
But the ill-conceived Iraq adventure was only one of a much larger number of reasons why I became increasingly despondent about my country of choice, the country which I had grown to love so much. Many other problems were piling up on the country which earlier had seemed to be blessed above all other nations. The administration of George W. Bush was just one of these.
America’s problems, both at home and overseas, seemed to become increasingly intractable. Or, put it differently, the country’s political leadership seemed to be increasingly inept. To be sure, Obama’s election in 2008 was a bright new light. However, few people could have predicted at that time how the country’s (and the world’s) problems would become even more complex in the coming fifteen years.
With regard to US foreign policy, it was becoming clear that America’s hegemony was unsustainable, that American exceptionalism was coming to an end. In 1988, the British historian Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which he identified the problem of imperial overstretch. His argument was that the US was already in decline because it was overextending itself in its effort to police the world. It was likely to follow in the footsteps of earlier empires, for example Spain (Kennedy’s example).
In my opinion, the Pax Americana has served the world well since 1945. The Left has always preferred to see this as simple American imperialism, as America attempting to run the world for its own profit, like all earlier empires. But in my view American imperialism was different from old-fashioned imperialism. It has been an ‘imperialism’ which has raised the rest of the world’s standard of living, doing so to some extent at America’s own expense. Assuming responsibility for the maintenance of the world order became quite costly to America, as did the globalization of the world economy. It has resulted in the country’s de-industrialization, the outsourcing of a vast number of jobs and a terribly negative balance of trade, as America became the world’s primary consumer. At the same time, becoming the world’s sole superpower and the ultimate guarantor of the world order went to America’s head and the country came to choke on it.
With regard to the US’s domestic problems, it all begins with the economy, of course. It is not that America is poor. To the contrary, the country’s aggregate wealth remains enormous. Its resources, its economic and social capital are still huge. The country’s economic prospects are certainly no worse than Europe’s. But the basic problem is that the country is evolving into a plutocracy. Inequality, poverty and homelessness are rising sharply. The ruling class is selfish. It is hellbent on starving the public sector. There is an obscene accumulation of unproductive wealth in the pockets of the plutocracy. Today, the country is in need of another New Deal, but nothing like it is even on the horizon.
Things are getting tougher for the American working class. In his study of the African Ik The Mountain People, Colin Turnbull showed that a people can become mean and evil when it suffers great duress. I am wondering whether the same analysis will apply to this country. Are Americans losing the generosity, hospitality, kindness and courage which were their traditional hallmarks? Are they, under duress, becoming more mean-spirited, egotistical and xenophobic, like the French I experienced as a child in the 1950s?
One of America’s most glaring deficiencies, compared to other advanced social democracies, is its terribly underdeveloped public services sector. Americans seem to be unwilling to spend the necessary public funds to improve their own quality of life - infrastructure, public health, public safety, education, transportation, the housing stock, etc. Instead, the public sector is squandering its resources on ill-conceived wars and on the largest criminal justice system in the world, which does little to improve public safety. Meanwhile, other countries are building high-speed trains. California Republicans wanted to re-allocate the bullet-train budget to building additional prisons instead!
I incessantly compare the US and Europe, including their histories. There is, for example, the facile analogy between America and ancient Rome: A worn-out cliché? Or more compelling than ever? America is Rome, Europe is Greece. Like the Greeks vis-a-vis the Romans two thousand years ago, the Europeans are cultured, sophisticated, mature, smart. That’s excellent. Europe is gorgeous. To be in Europe is to be happy, to absorb beauty, to enjoy culinary and cultural delights and a rich social life. Unfortunately, Americans do not enjoy these things to the same extent. Americans work more; they are driven to consume ever fancier products. They have little time. Why can’t Americans stop, or at least slow down and smell the roses?
In the US, money is very, very important; not for its own sake, but because without it, you are in trouble. In the US you have to be strong and you have to rely more on yourself than on Big Brother. To be sure, the difference with Europe is merely one of degree, and it is fading. The Europeans are also quite materialistic. But Europeans are from Venus and Americans are from Mars. Are Europeans lazy? Let’s just say that they are more bon vivants. They take longer vacations, longer lunch hours. They can afford to do so as a result of a less individualistic and less competitive ethos, and because of their more generous welfare state.
So there are flaws in our culture, and there is ugliness in American politics. Do the Europeans have the solutions? Well, they like to pontificate and they often sound like holier-than-thou moralists. Many of them, especially among the intelligentsia, suffer from an irrational cultural prejudice against American society. But when it comes to social legislation for the welfare of the people, the US has a great deal to learn from Europe.
Thus, my attitude towards my adoptive country is one of ambivalence. I am a marginal man - a man bridging different cultures. Sociologists claim that marginality is stressful and uncomfortable. True, on a rare occasion I have felt a bit of an outsider. However, this has hardly ever been a problem - not in America. By the early twenty-first century, there were thirty-five million foreign-born people in the US - nearly one out of nine. This country has always been the society for everybody. No, I cannot say that I have suffered from the plight of the marginal man, even though I am one. Instead, I am proud to be a citizen of the world, or at least of the transatlantic world. I feel at home in the US, but also in France, in Holland and in Hungary.
In her book Retour New York-Amsterdam, Sacha De Boer interviewed sixteen artists, half of whom were Dutch artists residing in New York, and the other half American artists who lived in Amsterdam. There are many comparisons made between life in the two cities, and by extension comparisons between Europe and America. Based on my own experience, I find many of these people’s judgments compelling.
Comparing life on the two sides of the Atlantic, these artists identify some of the strengths and weaknesses on both sides. For example, Europeans are more judgmental, indolent, less ambitious, less ready to fight - over oil, ideology or a traffic altercation. More pacifistic and therefore less brave, at least in a primeval physical sense. Life in Europe is easier and, yes, in many ways more pleasurable.
America is liberating. It is vast and anonymous. There is an I-don’t-give-a-damn-who-you-are-attitude. Live and let live - or die. It can be frighteningly cruel, but it has all the possibilities, it leaves you alone, it lets you do things.
I have loved both America and Europe. As I aged, I came to appreciate the more relaxed European Weltanschauung. I came to realize that one’s job should not be one’s be-all and end-all.
America gave me what I was looking for: the freedom and space to do what I wanted to do. But Americans should look at Europe, learn from Europe, admire Europe and its past. Europe remains a powerful, resourceful continent with a responsibility to provide leadership and help to the rest of the world. A fine pair they make. They complement each other.
Obama’s election was a marvelous turning point. However, was the brilliant and charismatic leader able to move the mountains obstructing the road to progress?
Back during the George W. Bush years, I had no inkling of developments during the subsequent fifteen years. As Niels Bohr said, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. The Obama years were followed by the Tea Party and the Trump years; the country’s awful polarization between traditional liberals and increasingly rabid Republicans; Covid; the out-of-control epidemic of gun ownership and mass murders; the Ukrainian war threatening to escalate into nuclear Armageddon.
By now, the first decade of the twenty-first century seems to have been more benign than what followed. Interestingly, there is now less free-floating anti-Americanism. Maybe seeing America just plodding along, as do most countries, people have less of a need to blame our country for most of the world’s ills.
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