A letter to America? If I said that to almost anyone in the world they would say, “Oh really? What part? Canada?” It is only in the United States that we have the gall to claim all of two continents for our own. People in Canada and Peru, not to mention Cuba and Nicaragua, have as much right to be called Americans as we do. But then we have always been a very egocentric people. We have never really been able to see ourselves from anyone else’s perspective. That is one reason why I chose to live in London, England, for a year—to both experience another culture and to see how that culture viewed our American culture. I think the experience permanently colored my vision because since I have been back I have not been able to see things the way I used to see them. I think I learned some very important things and that is why I would like to share them with you in this letter.
Historically, we are a very new people—an amalgamation of many peoples assimilated into one. It is difficult to identify the origins of the American culture. It seems it was as much a product of the new land itself as it was a product of the heritage that we imported with the people who emigrated to the new land. Whatever, it is certainly today a unique culture, just like the culture of every people around the world. It would seem today that regional differences are becoming more and more subdued as economic forces drive people from one side of the continent to the other and back again. But even as regional differences subside, there are those differences which have always been a part of us: old vs. new, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, those who have vs. those who want to have. The differences vary in intensity with time but they have always been a part of us and I believe they always will.
What, if anything, could be called a common thread which ties all Americans together? Certainly most Americans are very proud to be Americans and most people in the world are fascinated by the aspect of America, even while some of them are vilifying her. Certainly there is glamor, wealth, freedom. But more than these actual things, America represents the ideal of these things. Whether our streets were or weren’t paved with gold, America represented a chance to make a new start, to have a chance at making something of yourself. I think that ideal still holds today and is why America is so attractive to so many.
However, I must say at the same time that America’s greatest problems and greatest vilification come when we do not live up to our ideal. The conflict between our ideal and our reality has caused our greatest crises. Primarily and foremost I think of the Civil War. Whether one believed in states’ rights, slavery, keeping “niggers” in their place or not, it was clear that our ideal represented freedom and one day we would have to come to grips with it. Our problem was that we did not know how. To this day we still do not know how.
Even today we are going through a national crisis because of our inability to learn from the past or to do anything about it anyway. The similarities between the crisis in the Reagan government and that of Watergate are striking. They both started with something which happens every day in politics. Whether it’s political dirty tricks or secret deals, it’s all politics. What causes these things to sometimes blow up in their faces? It’s because they do not represent our ideal. And America goes through cycles where we puke up things that do not represent our ideal. The rest of the time we are much more pragmatic and tend to look the other way. We are not a stupid people.
So what are the ideals that both Nixon and Reagan have downtrodden just one too many times? I could say honesty, but I have never seen a politician yet who was honest, and I think people are used to that. No, I would say the ideal stepped on was that they have both been arrogant. They have taken the American people for granted and there is nothing more American than bringing the big guy down. We love to destroy our heroes who become arrogant. It is an American tradition.
But at the same time I would like to point out something to Americans that they do not seem to see. The thing which most people around the world universally despise about America is its arrogance, the same arrogance which claims all of North and South America for its own. It is perhaps funny that the thing we most can despise in one of our own is one thing that we hated eve more to hear pointed out as a characteristic of ourselves. We have indeed moved far from our humble origins.
One example which is very clear to me is the events surrounding the bombing of Libya. I was still living in England when this affair started and returned to the United States shortly thereafter. It was very fresh in my mind when I returned and, like most Europeans, my reactions were very negative. The news I had been hearing was very negative but my attitude had been very tempered to more worldly, European flavor over the year anyway. And, like most Europeans, I could not believe the news we were hearing from America (or maybe it was just me who could not believe it). I saw absolutely no dissension, nothing less than full and absolute support from everybody—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike. Maybe I had become accustomed to the British tradition of constantly badgering the party in power (which I had come to disdain and considered very stupid—a very American attitude). But it seemed when I left the United States there were people who disagreed with Reagan and offered alternatives. Not according to the British news service.
I really wanted to go home to find out what people felt firsthand. And, when I did, I was shocked to discover that there was no dissension. Nothing. Reagan was God’s gift to mankind. And they just couldn’t understand why the Europeans could see for themselves. I tried to explain but nobody would believe me. They thought I had just been away too long and I would be my normal self in a few days. But I was not for I had been permanently changed by my experience. I tried to explain that because of the American action the Thatcher government would probably not be reelected and the Labour government that would replace it was pledged to remove all American bases from British soil. Whether or not they would actually do it, including as part of their program was significant step in reducing American influence in European affairs. Maybe we had saved a fingernail but we cut off our own neck. Unfortunately none of these warnings fazed my American audience. They did not understand Europe and they did not want to understand Europe. They just wanted Europe to do what it was told and could not understand why they did not. Didn’t they remember how we saved their butts in WWI and WWII, the Marshall plan?
Even the fact that the Syrians were later implicated and the Libyans were never involved in the discotheque bombing which was the reason for the retaliatory bombing in the first place did not affect Americans. The Libyans just got what they deserved. International justice be damned! I wonder why Americans cannot see why they would be despised for this attitude. It is the same one Americans would despise in other people. But unfortunately the answer is simple. It’s the same one we had trouble with before the Civil War. To admit to being wrong is to admit you are an evil people and have murdered innocent men, women and children. It would not match our Christian ideal which is very much part of ourselves, even if we are very bad Christians.
Unfortunately, I believe this is also very characteristic of the Americans. We can blame one person, or a group of people, for not living up to our ideals and then proceed to destroy them, but we can never blame or even criticize ourselves. The North perpetuated much evil in the Civil War for an ideal but they would never try to understand what they had really done. The Southern people deserved it because they had offended an ideal. The South just wanted to be left alone with their evil just like the Europeans and their terrorism but we would not leave them alone.
This characteristic takes another more perfidious form in the “behind the scenes” everyday American life and which every American has been a party to. And that is the characteristic of destroying those people who try to remind us of our ideas and make us live up to them. There is nothing more uniting in American life than the will to destroy the foreigner, the agitator, the misfit who tries to enter our lives and try to make it better. I know for I’ve been party to this several times and have read numerous books by people who have suffered the same fate. The unfortunate thing about ideas is that they sometimes produce idealistic people such as myself who don’t understand why people don’t live up to their ideals. When mothers teach their children honesty, they don’t understand why children point out the hypocrisy in what mothers call “manners” or “kindness for people’s feelings.” Fortunately for us, most children learn obedience in the belt and learn that to get what you want in life you better keep your mouth shut and do what you are told. And they grow up to be adults who teach the same to their children and try to destroy outsiders who try to upset this well-balanced system.
So why am I writing this letter, making another futile attempt to upset the system? Unfortunately I’m an idealist who has an uncanny ability to survive. I guess I’m just lucky, because I’ve been able to get away with it. I guess I also don’t think life is worth living unless you strive to achieve your ideals. But that’s just me. I don’t want to do anything earth-shattering because I don’t think much good comes out of that. Rather maybe I canbe a part of some slowly developing change in attitudes like the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s which even today is continuing to help improve relations between blacks and whites (at least compared to the 1950s). Or at least it seems so.
My goal is to encourage communication and honesty between people so that they can come to understand each other better. This comes through education and experience. But first must come the desire to want to make the effort. Without this there can be no progress. Whether it’s Northerner and Southerner, black and white, American and European, America and Libyan, America and the world can only only be better if people can come to truly understand each other.
So far I see no such effort. Every time somebody proposes to understand the Russians we say we can never trust the Russians and should make no effort to try to understand them because they have insidious ways to brainwash us. Ignorance is bliss! I have never believed ignorance is bliss but I understand why people feel that way. It’s because a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. It’s enough to get you in trouble but not enough to help you get out. There seems only two alternatives: total ignorance or total knowledge. And since total knowledge is impossible, total ignorance is recommended. Learning is also a lot of hard work. Unfortunately I think the problem with this is people refuse to acknowledge their ignorance and proceed to act as if they did know. The word would be much better if people would accept their ignorance and try to learn what they could, helping each other to learn. It seems to that exposure to other peoples and a little common sense can go a long way. At least it has for me in my world travels. There are many similarities among the people of the world and yet they are all distinctly different. Perhaps if we tried to understand these, the world would be a better place,
Finally, this is the point where I should say how great it is to live in America and how it’s the greatest country in the world. But I don’t feel I can honestly say that. It’s not that I can see a country that is greater because I think there are problems in every country. Perhaps it’s that I don’t think in terms of country much. I know I can only be an American but that can be as much a curse as a gift. I honestly don’t think I will feel much hope for America until people start talking to me about the things I have written in this letter. And right now I don’t think people have learned to be honest enough, honest with other people or with themselves, to really communicate with me. But I can’t stop believing that such is possible.