A Letter to My American Friends

Two tragedies in such a short time: 9/11 and Katrina. Naturally we all feel the mix of emotions that come with such events: shock, loss, a determination to overcome, and, perhaps, anger. They all flow in their various ways to the surface. Each of us feels a different combination determined, I think, by our respective backgrounds or perspectives. I know you all are feeling these things and more.

My loss is a little different: I have lost America itself. Perhaps not forever, but certainly at the moment: the America I came to live in nearly thirty years ago no longer exists. The America I live in now seems to have abandoned many of its founding ideals, dare I say its liberal roots, and replaced them with a selfish, fearful, introspective brooding. The youthful ‘can do’ has been overwhelmed by a middle-aged ‘can’t do’. Kennedy’s charge to serve the country has been replaced by Reagan’s charge to ignore the country. Government has been turned from ‘we the people’ into ‘them the problem’. I can understand that a country will grow tired of idealistic programs if they do not seem to solve the problems they were intended to, but is that a reason to ignore the problem? Maybe 1960’s style idealism failed: it is surely reasonable to discuss that, but America has chosen to abandon its poor altogether. It has chosen simply to ignore its problems and hide in a Hollywood style make-believe world where poor people are poor because they want to be. And where it is not for the government [a.k.a. we the people] to solve social problems; instead it is for them [a.k.a. you the poor] either to figure it out for themselves or sink out of sight so the rest of us can imagine that they are not there.

Coming from ‘Old Europe’ I am accustomed to the arrogance of aristocracy as they fumble to mix with us regular people in times of crisis, so when Barbara Bush says that the evacuees are better off now than they were before, I can relate to her view: it is the view of a woman who is so steeped in privilege that she cannot comprehend the appalling callous condescension of her words. Someone said: ‘let them eat cake’ long ago and has been excoriated ever since as a stereotype of aristocratic cruelty. I cannot believe that I heard this here. Or heard it now, long after such attitudes have been reduced to harmlessness in ‘Old Europe’. I rebelled against the dead hand of privilege when I was young, that rebellion led me to America. Now I face it here. It sickens and saddens me. In this modern America privilege clearly holds sway.

This comes on top of the disillusionment with American democracy, which I now realize, along with much of the external world, is severely flawed: the Electoral College is a throwback compromise with slave states, the Senate provides over-representation to small states, and the Supreme Court intrudes into the legislative agenda. We dignify much of this by saying it protects minority states rights, or it provides balance, but we cannot hide from its true origins: it exists because the Constitutional Convention would have failed were it not for the willingness of the so called non-slave states to accept a virtual veto on Federalism. As a consequence the United States of America is united only when it represents itself abroad. This is why it can respond forcefully to crises outside it own territory, but fumbles with red tape and inter-state rivalries when faced with similar crises internally. The coalition of sovereign states is as fragile now as it was when John Adams feared that it might not survive its infancy. Indeed, when challenged by crises at home the fragility is amplified by the divisions of race and economics that threatened it at its inception and which forced the Framers to ignore slavery and democracy in the Constitution. They compromised then, and the result has been a festering division that at least once has threatened to tear the Union apart.

Americans, it seems, do not want a strong central government, they are afraid of the centralization of power, a quaint relic of the struggle with Georgian Britain, but that fear has led to a debilitating stripping out of governmental capability. A debilitation that has accelerated since Reagan launched his ‘government is bad’ attacks. As a result, Congress sees no oddity in passing the largest, most pork barrel laden transportation bill in the country’s history [which included millions of dollars for an Alaskan bridge to an uninhabited island] while at the same time ignoring pleas for Federal funds to reinforce New Orleans levees. The twin crises of 9/11 and Katrina have shown definitively that the states are not large enough, most of them, to respond sufficiently or even effectively to modern era disruptions. Katrina, in particular, has shown that our patchwork of independent states is a dangerous, even life threatening, illusion in the face of such a disaster.

The only Federal effort that seems at all effective is defense, and this too is now open to enormous criticism. America spends twice as much on defense as the rest of the world added up. Why? Is that not an openly aggressive posture? Were this 1930’s Germany would that level of spending not be perceived as an overt threat to world peace? So why must the world be quiet when America continues to develop and deploy weapon systems that go way beyond the capability, decaying capability, of any potential enemy? This is not defense spending, it is offense spending, as Iraq has shown. I have never criticized defense spending, and throughout the Cold War I think it was legitimate for America to maintain a world dominating force, but now the threat is different. 9/11 taught us that. Terrorism is the immediate issue. What have Star Wars or the various Pentagon projects that consume so much money got to do with that? Above all else what has Iraq to do with it? The hypocrisy with which America now treats the world, essentially: ‘do as I say, not as I do’, is alarming. Furthermore the world sees through it, America’s moral leadership, so vital in the Cold War, and so inspiring to the post-war generations abroad has been tragically undermined by shallow fear based opportunism. America has been stripped naked of its moral leadership: the Emperor is what he is, and the world is lesser for the loss.

Lastly, the twin crises have pulled away the drapes over the unabashed materialism of America. Everything is for sale. Everything is about money. The unfortunate mistrust of Americans in their government is balanced by a blind, and equally unfortunate trust in private enterprise. The mythology of market efficacy has so dominated American thought that the evident failure of private enterprise to deliver an effective health care system has been completely ignored. America spends more on health care than any other country, more than twice as much per capita than anyone else, and yet it suffers from bad and worsening infant mortality rates, that would not be tolerated anywhere else. A baby born in Washington D.C. has more than twice the chance of dying before it reaches its first birthday compared with a baby born in Beijing. Its health care failure means America has developing-nation statistics in its basic health care. Across a whole range of basic statistics America ranks poorly and way behind those much maligned and reputedly inept socialized systems of ‘Old Europe’. Why do Americans tolerate this lack of basic medicine? Is it that the worst care goes to the poor? Is it that we are blinded by the glitzy new surgery that the wealthy laud, and secure for themselves? Or is it that we simply do not care? Why is it that we are prepared to have approximately one fifth of our fellow citizens uninsured? Are they not our neighbors? Why is it that sophisticated cosmetic surgery is available for the few while basic inoculations are beyond the reach of so many of our children? Privatization cannot deliver basic service to everyone because it contradicts the profit goal. Privatization has failed, yet the average American clings defiantly to the notion that anything American is best.

Perhaps it took the twin crises for me to start thinking about these things. But now that I have I feel a sense of loss. America is just not what I thought it was. Or at least it no longer is. For twenty years or so it has drifted away from the idealism of the post war years, an idealism that was, itself, rooted in the New Deal era when the underpinnings of the current middle class was created. The New Deal was the most successful social experiment in history, yet now America seems intent on ripping it down in order to entertain a new experiment: a return to the survivalist frontier mentality that is being sold as the original intent of the Framers. The middle class is not innocent: they ignore the poor in order to grasp at meager tax cuts; they support program cuts that devastate the poor, yet cling hypocritically to their own programs; they support wars and wonder why the world hates them; they support the contravention of international agreements and then wonder why others just don’t go along; they debilitate their government and then they wonder why it was that New Orleans drowned before their eyes; they spend money they don’t have, and then expect the world to finance their expensive habits; they believe fictional budgets, and then wonder why they are in debt; they tolerate mediocrity and then wonder why there are so many scandals; they won’t help their neighbors, and then they are scandalized when their neighbors won’t help them.

The America I now live in is a sham, not just for me, but for the Americans themselves who have been taken in by the endless Hollywood happy endings and the marketing spin fed to them by its elites. It has been let down and now is letting itself down further. I do not know if this is irreversible, but I do know that I have lost something I admired very much. That saddens me deeply. I know that this is just the way I feel and that these thoughts may seem incoherent to you all. But I value friendships and I valued America. I mourn the loss of the latter and treasure the continuance of the former.