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The Ugly American
European Opinion in the Wake of Bush’s Re-election
By Dwight Longenecker
On my first visit to England as a fresh faced eighteen year old I had a flare up with an English war veteran. I had been brought up in a conservative, moderately patriotic American home in Pennsylvania, and for the first time in my life I was confronted with anti-Americanism.
The old soldier grumbled about Americans getting in everywhere. It was the old complaint of Americans being ‘over paid, over sexed and over here.’ I countered by saying, ‘But we bailed you guys out not just once, but in two world wars.’ That’s when the volcano exploded. I got a lecture about the iniquity of an America who, ‘only came into the war at the last minute after American businessmen had made a fortune selling arms to both sides of the conflict.’
This first encounter with anti-Americanism opened my eyes to a different viewpoint on America and her domination of the modern world. I began to pay attention to the negative comments and tried to analyse them objectively. There was plenty of uninformed opinion, a good dose of old fashioned English snobbery mixed up with a bit of jealousy and a cultural snootiness that assumed that all America was as violent as the gangster and cowboy movies or as hokey as The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.
However, other English political and cultural criticisms were cautious, objective and well thought out. As an American abroad I listened and realised that over the years, American business and political manoeuvrings have not always been lily white. There are good grounds for criticising some aspects of American foreign policy, the operation of American business abroad and American military involvement over the years. I learned that it is possible to be critical of America while still being a loyal American. True patriotism is realistic, and critical in a constructive way. If we love a country, a family member or a religion, we criticise it not because we think it’s not good, but because we believe it could be even better.
Carping or Constructive Criticism?
The United States can’t be immune to all criticism from abroad. Constructive criticism from those outside the United States is important because it gives Americans a new perspective on their attitudes and actions. Sometimes we’re blind to our problems because we’re too close to them.
I sense that in the present climate some Americans are reacting to criticism by bolstering the defense works and coming out strongly against any hint of criticism from foreigners. We may not be fond of the French, but ‘freedom fries’ and a wholesale condemnation of ‘Old Europe’ actually confirms the European suspicion that Americans are ignorant, isolationist and arrogant.
As much as it grates, Americans need to listen to criticisms that come across the Atlantic. Americans may well be scolded for not listening to sensitive and intelligent criticism from Europe, but unfortunately too much of the criticism from Europe is anything but sensitive, intelligent and open minded.
The causes of European anti-Americanism are fascinating and complex. They reach back into our shared, turbulent and colourful history. They are rooted not just in historical wars, but in culture wars that stretch back for centuries. It is clear that Europe and America have increasingly clashing cultures. They seemed to be closely aligned, but like lines that were once together, but began to diverge, they are getting further and further apart.
Nevertheless, two different cultures (especially two cultures with a shared history) should complement and inform one another. It’s a shame therefore, to see how so much of the present European anti-Americanism is narrow minded, snobbish and uninformed.
Yankee Go Home!
Americans might be more willing to accept criticism from Europe if it were balanced, positive and genuinely interested in discovering the real America. Sadly, the intelligentsia, liberal press and politicians here in Europe too often relax into uninformed bigotry
Bigotry expresses itself not in rational discussion, examination of facts or sensible argument. Instead it deals in hyperbole, propaganda and loaded language. Writing in The Nation, Eric Alterman comments on British anti-Americanism, pointing out that, ‘mainstream papers like The Mirror announce in large headlines, "The USA Is Now the World's Leading Rogue State." Meanwhile The Guardian announced that the United States is an "unrepentant outlaw" nation. In Britain a mainstream television poll said the country that Britons regard as the biggest threat to peace today is not Iraq or North Korea -- it is the United States.
In the British House of Commons, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn said about the Iraq war, ‘The mass of British public opinion is deeply sceptical if not completely hostile to this war, believe it's been fought in the interests of the Americans and nothing else," When the British defence minister announced more support for the war in Iraq, Labour politician Dennis Skinner asked him to “confirm that this is all in aid to satisfy the whims of this tinpot American president?"
It’s not just the British. A CNN report says that ‘After two generations of guilt, young Germans demonstrating against the United States and against war now feel good about themselves because it is the United States, not Germany, that is seen by many as the aggressive warmonger.’ This anti-Americanism is believed to be much worse than what has gone before. Analysts warn that a whole generation of America-haters is being created, a European generation which they say believes Americans deliberately bomb civilians and kill Arab babies.
The anti-American spirit is especially strong in France. Alterman reports, ‘Walk into a French bookstore and you will find titles like, Who Is Killing France?, American Totalitarianism, No Thanks Uncle Sam, A Strange Dictatorship’. French newspapers are filled with blistering criticism of the US role in the world. Le Monde, for instance, pulled no punches when it recently termed Bush's Middle East policies "extraordinary, unjust and arrogant."
Bigotry also deals in fear, sentimentality and ad hominem attacks. The latest wave of European anti-Americanism is focussed on the person of George W. Bush. Reporting Bush’s recent electoral victory, the liberal British press slanted things all along by portraying Kerry as being a potential winner.
When Bush won, their shock and horror knew no bounds. As an example of ‘balanced, intelligent’ comment one would expect from a seasoned journalist, Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror put Bush’s victory down to, ‘The self-righteous, gun totin’, military-lovin’, sister-marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport-ownin’ rednecks’ The cover of the same paper the day after the election featured a picture of Bush with the caption, ‘How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB? The Guardian’s special edition cover was simply a black page with the tiny caption in the middle reading, ‘Oh, God.’
Bush the Dummy
The English intelligentsia promotes the simplistic idea that Geoge W. Bush is simply stupid. The English intelligentsia assume this because, (ever so proud of their language) they believe that intellectual capability is always determined by how articulate a person is.
I have been trying to explain to my English friends that they are entitled to dislike George Bush. They may disagree with his policies. They may have intelligent reasons for criticising the man and his principles, but they mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that he is stupid.
Bush and his advisors have simply understood their electorate. They know that Americans don’t like elitists. In last year’s election John Kerry came across as a wealthy, east coast intellectual with a snooty billionaire wife. His attempts to correct that by hunting geese in Ohio were as laughable as Bill Clinton’s spell of Bible clutching church attendance in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Even though he went to the same schools as Kerry, and comes from the same well-heeled, East coast establishment background, Bush came across as an ordinary rancher from Texas who married the local librarian who helped him with his drink problem. ‘Aw shucks!’ he seems to smile, ‘I didn’t even want to be Governor or President much. It just sorta happened.’
When Bush said, ‘I’m glad that Slobodan Milosevic has gone. That’s one more tricky Eastern European name I don’t have to pronounce.’ It may not have sold well in Paris, Berlin and London, but it sure hit the right buttons in Topeka, Akron and Indianapolis. Bush understood his electorate and appealed to their values, their beliefs and their emotions. It may be corny. It may be embarrassing to the intelligentsia, but it’s not stupid.
Dismissing not only the world’s most powerful man, but the world’s most powerful country as ‘stupid’ is, in itself, extremely stupid. It is the lazy and weak person who dismisses or underestimates his enemy. It is the wise, diligent and strong person who takes the trouble to understand what he does not appreciate.
Arrogance and Ignorance
Europeans perceive Bush’s America as being not only stupid, but arrogant. Dominque Moisi of the French Institute of International relations asserts, ‘Today's anti-Americanism in Europe is a combination of what America is doing -- going to war in Iraq -- and what America is: the country of the death penalty, the country -- in European eyes -- of arrogance."
Manfred Guttamacher of Potsdam University in Germany says, "We are on the brink of a fundamental rift between the United States and Europe which goes much deeper than the rifts that came up in the course of anti-American sentiments in the '60s or early '80s."
The European mainstream like to portray middle America as self-righteous, ignorant and arrogant, but don’t they have any mirrors? When they say it was only rednecks who voted for Bush who is being self righteous, arrogant and ignorant? As Mark Steyn, writing in London’s Sunday Telegraph observed, it wasn’t all nose pickin’, gay bashin’, rednecks who voted for Bush. 45% of Hispanics voted for Bush; so did 25% of Jews and 23% of homosexuals, and this proportion of the voting public expanded the republican share of the vote this time around. The facts are that a wide proportion of the American public from all walks of life voted for Bush.
The snooty European intellectual simply doesn’t understand Middle America. He has never attempted to understand what makes most Americans tick. He doesn’t understand that America is the land of the common man. Americans don’t like snobs. They distrust elitism. They like down to earth ordinary people. The European intellectual has values that are exactly the reverse. He likes elitism and either ignores or despises the common man. When the ‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ left Europe he was glad to see them go, and he’s annoyed that so many of them have made good.
The Middle class European has his own world view, and from his perspective the Middle American is a vulgar and ignorant boor. The European never imagines that the Middle American, (from his own perspective) considers the European to be a rude boor because of his snobbery and patronising ways. The American expects to be looked down on by the European, but the European expects to be admired by the American. Which attitude is arrogant?
The Guardian of Clark County
The best example of this culture clash was the attempt by London’s Guardian newspaper to interfere in the American presidential election. The story illustrates the patronising arrogance of the typical European intellectual.
On 13 October The Guardian published a condescending article by Oliver Burkeman which explained how Clark County, Ohio was a crucial county in that most crucial of states. Burkeman explained American electoral rules in a patronising way and told Guardian readers how they could send letters and emails to the citizens of Clark County telling them how important the election was to people outside the United States and encouraging them to vote for Kerry.
Arrogance was written into the genes of this scheme. First of all the newspaper assumed that the people of Clark County were interested in what Guardian readers thought. Secondly, they assumed that the citizens of Clark County would appreciate their kind and sincere interest in the US presidential election. Thirdly, they arrogantly assumed that the poor ignorant folk of Clark County just might be grateful for such profound wisdom and take their advice.
In just over a week the Guardian called an embarrassed halt to the debacle. Guardian editor Ian Katz acknowledged that a large number of Democrats, among them Sharon Manitta, the spokesman in Britain for Democrats Abroad, had warned them saying, "This will certainly garner more votes for George Bush." Reaction in Clark County ranged from indifference, amusement and anger. Local headlines said, ‘Butt Out Brits’ and ‘Trashing Letter Campaign’. Not to be intimidated, the residents of Clark County wrote back to the interfering Brits. If you’re not scared of some forthright language from some down home Americans you can check out their responses on the Guardian’s webpage: HYPERLINK "http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0%2C13918%2C1329858%2C00.html" http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0%2C13918%2C1329858%2C00.html
Adolph or Vladimir?
Americans should listen to comments and criticisms that are intelligent, informed and consistent, but current European criticism of America is about as consistent as a teenager. It’s clear that the European intelligentsia are frustrated and angry with America, but they don’t know why. They pick away at superficial political analyses, but come up with opposite answers.
Some critics liken Bush’s America extreme right wing dictatorships while others compare it to left-wing totalitarian states. So Erik Alterman observes that Will Hutton, a former editor of Britain’s Observer, wrote a book portraying the United States as being in "the extraordinary grip of Christian fundamentalism"; He said that American democracy is "an offense to democratic ideals." He worried about a "dominant conservatism” which is “very ideological, almost Leninist," and is bolstered by "tenacious endemic racism," with an economy that "rests on an enormous confidence trick," and in which, incidentally, "citizens routinely shoot each other."
Hutton thinks America’s conservatism is “almost Leninist”. While a clinical psychologist called Oliver James, said to the Guardian newspaper the morning after Bush’s re-election, ‘I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s and thought, “Why doesn’t anyone see where this is leading?”’
Is America drifting into Leninism or Nazism? It can’t be both. Easy European opinion of Bush’s America is that of grim faced religious fanatics marching in lock step around their little cowboy leader from Texas. The English intelligentsia like to imagine scary crowds of cookie baking moms allied with Ku Klux Klan members singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers marching as to war.’ They like to think that America is full of bucketheads who are out to kill ‘all them sand niggers and turn Iraq into a parking lot.’ The American election for them is the voice of such people writ large. But what if the American election were simply the voice of modern democracy while a different type of fascism is on the rise in Europe?
Mark Steyn’s brilliant analysis in London’s Sunday Telegraph shows another side to this debate. He points out that when eleven American states voted to affirm traditional marriage they were simply claiming the people’s rights to decide rather than allowing a few activist mayors or four Massachusetts judges to re-define what marriage is. In contrast, in Europe when a Catholic politician named Rocco Buttiglione stood up for traditional marriage he was hounded out of his European Commission post by a cadre of politically correct, un elected officials. Which system is more democratic? The American. Which is more totalitarian? The European.
Steyn points out that while Americans were exercising their democratic right to vote on gay marriage, legalising marijuana, and electing everyone from the president to the dog catcher, some Dutch police had destroyed a wall mural painted to protest the murder by Islamic extremists of someone who had dared to criticise Islam. The mural was next to a mosque and simply showed an angel with the caption, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. The Muslims complained that it was racist so the Dutch police swept in, destroyed the mural, arrested the TV journalists filming their work and wiped their tape. This is the Dutch version of democracy. Free speech or a police state?
Socialism and Democracy
Most European political criticism of America falls flat because America functions as a democracy better than any other nation in the world. European political assessment is usually superficial and lacking in an understanding of how integral democracy is to every American from a PTA member to the presidential cabinet. Democracy works in America because Americans value the common man. In Europe it is forced.
Socialism seems to be the politics of the ordinary man, but ironically it is the norm in Europe because Socialism assumes that there will be a ruling class and a class that is ruled. This has always been the way in Europe. From feudalism to the land barons and the industrialists, and now the nanny state, someone here has always done the looking after while others have been looked after.
This assumption that individuals need to be looked after will always lend itself to some form of totalitarianism while the individualism and appreciation of the common man in the USA will always contribute to an integral and practical democracy. This different attitude is something foreign to Europeans, so they find it difficult to really understand the politics of America because they find it difficult to understand the mindset of the typical American.
Religion and Responsibility
This lack of real understanding of the American mindset is nowhere more apparent than the subject of religion. There is no other subject that European pundits more easily criticise and more easily misunderstand.
Secular Europeans like to portray Americans as religious Pharisees par excellence. Their religion is represented by sweating, weeping evangelists, who have wives with big hair and false eyelashes to die for. The English like to think of middle America as overweight, pickup-drivin’ hallelujah hicks. These are Bible thumpin’ creationist snake handlers who are all the more dangerous because their finger is on the nuclear button, and because (like the Blues Brothers) they believe they’re on a mission from God.
Time and again my English friends will express dismay and confusion about the religious dimension in the USA. On the one hand they admire the separation of Church and State, but then they cannot understand how every president ends his speech with ‘God Bless America’ and how every candidate appeals to the morals and religious beliefs of Americans. They can’t believe that in November’s election 51% of Americans said they chose their president on moral issues.
This is the deepest divide between the American and European mentality. Put simply, America is a religious country. It was founded by deeply religious people who sacrificed everything to build a new society based on their deeply held beliefs. Europeans, on the other hand, have forgotten that their society was also founded by like minded people two thousand years ago. Christianity and European’s Christian roots have been forgotten, and where they are remembered forces are at work to extirpate the memory for good. Witness the total absence of the Christian religion from any mention in the new constitution of the European Community.
It is the religious faith of America that the European intellectual finds most bewildering and annoying. Like the democrat lady in New York City who said, I can’t believe Bush won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.’ The English intelligentsia simply can’t understand the morality and religious views of American voters. How could they? They live in a different universe—a universe that is materialistic and agnostic through and through.
The Bush presidency is a watershed. It has put these two world views into sharp contrast. The battle lines are drawn not so much between the issues or pressure groups, but between two basic belief systems.
Truth and Consequences
The underlying reason for European anti-Americanism is simple. It has little to do with politics or economics. It has little to do with education or lack of it. As G.K.Chesterton observed, ‘All arguments are theological arguments.’ Beneath it all, the growing divide between Europe and America is a divide between theism and atheism. This simple divide is cosmic in its importance. The two views are simple and affect simply everything.
One is the view that there is a God, and therefore there is meaning and morality. The second view is that there is no God, no meaning and no morality.
They are simple views and they lead to a simple question. Which view leads to civilisation, and which leads to chaos? Which is the culture of life and which is the culture of death? Which one, like communism, will ultimately wither, crumble and die, and which one will prosper and thrive?
The God fearing middle American may appear stupid to the sophisticated European. He may appear to be a blindly obedient fundamentalist, but the European intellectual must realise that he too follows a belief system, and it is all the more pervasive because it is subconscious. The European intellectual prides himself on being critical and analytical, but he hasn’t been nearly critical enough because he has not criticised himself or the secular, materialistic, downward-spiralling creed he accepts without question.
At least the good Baptist farmer from Iowa, the dour Lutheran from Minnesota or the rosary clutching Hispanic Catholic in Florida knows they have a religion, but lest he too drift into complacency and self righteousness the religious American must always remember that one of the basic tenets of his religion is to be self aware and self critical. He’s called to be humble and examine whether he’s living up to his calling or not. The Christian is called to love God and love his neighbour, and that simple dictum must inform not only his reaction to the man next door, but also to the person and the nation on the other side of the globe.
As it has done from the beginning, it is the Christian religion which will continue to be the foundation of a just, cultured and thoughtful civilisation. The United States, for all its faults and hypocrisies, is the natural homeland and bulwark of that religion. Christian leadership of the world in this new century will come from the USA, and Americans must bear that responsibility with a sense of proportion, a respect for others, humility and a good dash of humour. In a true Christian sense, they must disarm their critics with charm, diplomacy and good will.
As Philip Jenkins has predicted in his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Christianity will prevail. Atheists the world over may dispute this prediction and secularists may rage against the dominant trend, but it is an impotent rage because all the statistics from Bush’s election to the demographics in the developing world confirm that the future belongs to the believers. But then, the future has to belong to the believers because believers are the only ones who believe in the future.
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