Wednesday,
June 20, 2007
A View of
The
ANNOTICO Report
This
commentator tries to explain to us, why the US who Views itself as the Greatest
Advocate of Humanitarianism and Democracy around the Globe, is in
fact Socially Not very good to it
Now
don
Keep
in mind, that
The
Lonely American
By Gaither Stewart
Online
Journal Contributing Writer
June
19, 2007
Each day I watch
the TV news images of American soldiers on the streets of
Each day I feel a
deep sympathy for the infinite loneliness of the American soldier in
Iraq... standing alone at a Baghdad checkpoint, an empty look on his face
(though he is terrified and wonders how he got into this chaos), surrounded by
a world he does not understand, by people speaking a language he does not
understand, in the middle of a war he does not understand...
Because I am an
American, I watch this soldier sadly. I think that there stands the emblem of
Beyond politics,
beyond the questions of war and peace, I wonder about Americans in general, so
lonely in the universe. A kind of vacancy. What
is it that other people have and we Americans do not? Or what do Americans have
that others do not? Why are Americans different? I do
not believe it was always that way. But it is today. And it is a mystery.
Recently I
began asking friends in
Italians say that
Americans are spoiled; they have it too good; they havent suffered enough.
Europeans often think of Americans as children, difficult children, with a
childlike air of impregnability about them, whom real life has not yet touched.
But there is no
clear answer. Europeans do not understand my questions. I think my questions
are not clear.
Few Europeans admit
that they consider Americans fundamentally different from other human beings.
Few admit to anti-Americanism. For most people in the world we all belong to
the same species. We are all just men. We all must aspire to feeling a oneness with the world.
Still, old friends
in
Now, some Americans might believe my answers to such
questions are obvious: that of course I as a progressive favor
a national health service for
Still, that is not
my point, either. I believe Europeans really want to ask what is wrong with
What is missing in
Americans? For example, what do Mexican people have that Americans lack?
When I settled in
Europe in the sixties, Americans were still broadly well received throughout
the continent; America still had a lot of credit for its help in World War II
and for the Marshall Plan, although already then admiration was mixed with envy
and resentment at American success and arrogance. Here I should say straight
away that Americans were then well received except by part of the skeptical European Left that, as it turned out, was right
in its suspicions.
The pre-Vietnam years were
still good years for Americans.
Though as a rule
most governments lie to the governed, it was precisely the great Cold War lie
that poisoned
The most virulent
anti-Communist propaganda filled the eighties: nuclear warfare scares,
statistics and testimony showing that Communisms conquest of the world was
imminent; Soviet military-economic power was a terrible thing. What a surprise
then for the Soviet experts that at the end of that same decade the Berlin Wall
fell and overnight the whole shebang collapsed. It was a paper tiger.
Yet, by then more
Europeans had begun doubting the state of American democracy. The category
of skeptics broadened. Vietnam and American
support of dictatorships from Chile to Nicaragua, from Iran to the Philippines,
eroded doubts among many Europeans in whose minds
In Europe today, it
is no longer a question of what reactionary
Though most
Americans believe in the myth of their democracy, European polls show an
Some Americans
reductively think anti-Americanism is a question of hate and envy of
The truth is
Europeans see
Nor is it true, as
many Americans might like to think, that Europeans want to be like them.
Italian emigration to the
Perhaps never have
the differences between Americans and Europeans been greater. But why? What is it? Who is at fault? Why this gulf?
Politics and
economics and peace and war apart, I believe it is a question of Americans
uncertain place in the human race....
Many will be surprised -- though they shouldnt be -- to hear that they are regarded in some
of Europe in the same way they are among the ghettos of blacks and browns in LA
or Miami or New York City.
And their government is largely at fault.
Their government, their society, and
their lonely culture.
American tourists
today cut pitiful figures traipsing curiously around Europe, seeing only
quaintness and cuteness and condescendingly trying to imitate. They make countless
digital snapshots but never quite get the real picture. As if
living a year in a Tuscan village were bridging the gap. The local
people will drink wine with you. They will reach out to you. They will try to
love you. They want to be able to feel
the real you. To feel that you are like them.
But, I fear, they
will never understand you or even grasp why you are there. For Americans are a
people of many emotions and sensations
but embarrassed by feelings.
Even
more. Such false relationships are symbolic of the more profound differences,
the chasm separating Americans from the rest of the world....
Or, the average
European wonders, how can a majority of voters in the land of freedom support
a system dedicated to crushing freedom? How can citizens of the land of
democracy vote for a government that sponsors dictatorships around the world
and calls them democracy? How can a democratic nation exist in a political
system of two parties, which though they have different points of departure and
programs, in power are so similar as to form a one-party system? How can a
people ready to go to war to export democracy sacrifice its own democracy in
the process?
The mystery is why
a majority of Americans who bother to vote sustain a government that fears
and hates democracy and its own Constitution as ours does? Why are
Americans as chained to their leaders as convicts are chained to their guards?....
Which leads
inevitably to the danger of the gradual but inevitable degeneration of an
enduring ideology based on anti-Communism, anti-Socialism, anti-terrorism, all
of course with Gods special blessing and protection, straight into
Fascism.
One could think
that Americans are retiring from the world. That they have
forgotten the rest of the human species. That they no
longer even have the same weaknesses and strengths of other people. That
they stand outside even themselves. Outside, and alone.
People from the
prison of the former
I have not answered
my question. I still do not know if I have posed the question correctly. We
Americans want brief and concise answers to clear questions....
Yet, Americans are
different. In a negative sense. My gut feeling is that
it is due to a lack of real connections with the rest. No wonder the national
paranoia. No wonder
Hopefully,
Americans will begin to search for their lost kinship with the rest. For it
will always be true as the English poet John Donne wrote, No man is an
island, apart from the main.
Gaither
Stewart grew up in
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