Walden: Don’t Write Off America

At the British magazine Standpoint , George Walden is fed up with his fellow Europeans’ incoherent and illogical anti-Americanism:

There is something neurotic in Europe’s view of the US, something perpetually out of kilter. Think of the crush on Bill Clinton felt by many women, the demonising of Bush and now Obamamania. We seem unable to get a cool, factual grip on the country, one that is free of fashion, inchoate historical resentments or delusions of superiority. Neurotic too - in the sense of arbitrary and unstable - is our view of American culture and society. It is possible to say anything and its opposite about the US and still command instant agreement. They are pinched Puritans and simultaneously sexually depraved, religious maniacs sold out to hedonism and materialism. America is a country of individualist greed and self-seeking, a place where egotism has reached the point where philanthropists publicly vie with one another to throw billions at museums, the arts, medical research, charities and international aid. Its popular culture is crass and degenerate except when it is black or radical. And its tendency towards obesity is as imbecilic as its dedication to the gym. So mesmerised are we by this monstrous accumulation of contradictions that we can’t tear our eyes from it, whether it is TV shows like The Wire or The Simpsons , the works of John Updike or of the magisterial science writer E.O. Wilson.

Anti-Americanism made more sense in Cold War days. Then it had a logic, as a kind of rational aberration: the liberal Left wanted a weaker US, because they believed the Soviet way of life had much to offer and might one day triumph. But the anti-Americanism we see today, in which no serious alternative system of production, social organisation or international order is advanced, makes no sense at all. The only logic to wanting to see America humbled is that of the cutting off of noses and the spiting of faces. Never mind if Europe is once again exposed to easterly winds or whether the gas is on or off, never mind if Iranian theocrats develop a warhead with a delivery system that can carry it to Paris, Berlin or London . . . .

The attempt to write off democracy in America, one of the greatest achievements of humankind (what other country is capable of mounting an election campaign like the one we have just witnessed?) as a self-evident failure, in contrast to the vibrant new protectionist Europe to come, and to obliterate American successes in science and technology, could be dismissed as so extreme as to be irrelevant to the debate.

But that would be to forget that, as the current crisis warps political sanity, we may be entering a phase where rationality could follow the global economy into recession . . . .