Everybody likes to be liked. But 2005 dawns on a world unfriendly to America, with this nation and its people viewed primarily with distaste, distrust and dismay by the international community.In four short years, the Bush administration has turned a century of history on its head, transforming Uncle Sam from the open-hearted savior of democracy to a close-minded bully intent on forcing his values on the rest of the world at the point of a gun. The 2004 election results showed the world that a majority of Americans consciously chose this new, darker, and scarier America. As a result, America’s friends now are few and far between.
America’s values, and the nation’s place in world opinion, are very dear to me, for this country has been my adopted home for 22 years. I never intended to stay this long, but while teaching as a British Council scholar at the University of Arkansas in the early 1980s, I met a bewitching woman who lured me into staying Stateside longer. To maintain this relationship, and to broaden my education, I obtained a teaching job at Mississippi State University, but when my torrid interstate romance cooled after a few years, I was ready to return to England and pick up my architectural practice. But at that critical juncture, in 1986, a beautiful, talented artist — also living in Arkansas — swept me off my feet and we’ve been inseparable ever since.
Love changes everything, and I abandoned thoughts of returning home to England, and continued to learn the customs and manners of my adopted homeland. For the first few years, it was easy. I was so deeply in love that the injustices of Reaganomics and the scandals of the Iran-Contra debacle didn’t impinge much on my consciousness. My wife and I were living and teaching in Oklahoma as a stopgap measure on the way to somewhere else — we didn’t know where — and we weren’t concerned about putting down roots in that barren land.
Coming to Charlotte in 1990 transformed our footloose lifestyle, and during the heady Clinton years we settled into Charlotte’s developing worlds of art and design, working hard for smarter growth in many Carolinas communities. I felt connected to America’s ethos embodied by Clinton’s forward-looking and reformist policies. In true Euro tradition, I was quite prepared to forgive Bill’s sexual shenanigans and leave his chastisement to Hillary, and relished instead the efforts of an intelligent, moderate President to fashion a progressive nation on the cusp of the millennium. In short, I felt at home away from home.
By contrast, the last four years have been difficult, and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. I read a range of foreign newspapers every week to stay in touch with world opinion, and have been depressed by the steep decline in America’s international standing. As America’s bellicose posturing expands — on Iraq, the environment, world trade, international justice — respect for this nation amongst its First World partners plummets to new lows.
This decline matches my growing realization that large numbers of Americans don’t really grasp what’s going on in the world beyond their borders, and even worse, they don’t care. It’s hard to get straightforward, unbiased information in the States these days; most people prefer the predigested pabulum that masquerades as “news,” broadcast daily by America’s major media corporations. I’d like to think Charlotteans listen avidly to the BBC World News in droves every weekday evening on WFAE, but I doubt that’s so.
Growing criticism of American policies abroad leads to more aggressive reactions against foreign opinion by Americans at home. Insults against “Old Europe” are commonplace, and the transatlantic divide between the two continents is growing wider. To European eyes, the USA is turning into a jingoistic theocracy where Americans now believe they are God’s chosen people. A Gallup poll in November 2004 showed that only 35 percent of Americans believe in evolution compared to 45 percent who believe the mumbo-jumbo of creationism. Back home in England, creationists are relegated to the lunatic fringes of society inhabited by people who still believe the Earth is flat and Martians built Stonehenge.
My humanist European heritage is challenged by America’s embrace of scary religious dogma, partnered with aggressive militarism and the supercilious rejection of international treaties and institutions. This new America believes it is above the law. I yearn instead for the America of my youth, the bold, brave, generous nation that helped put Europe back on its feet after World War II, not from any sense of moral superiority, but through basic decency and deep economic and cultural connections.
I hope this old America isn’t gone for good. I really want to like America again, but at present I truly feel like a stranger in a strange land.
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2005.
