Decline And Fall
Went to a party with A and P on Saturday. My heart told me to beg off and stay home, but I didn’t want to be rude to the hostess, whom I’d promised to come. Should have stayed at the flat. There was a terribly anti-American cokehead Englishman neighbor at the party, who picked relentlessly at me. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasted time arguing with him. Ladies, you know the type—the skinny, twitchy, balding loudmouth who begins every sentence with “Well, women blah blah blah…”, and then shouts down his girlfriend when she tries to argue. Even though he’d never heard of William Blake (an English poet), he still told me he’d “tried to challenge me on my level, but was afraid I’d failed”, apparently because I haven’t yet read Milton. When I got irritable with him, he said in a chiding tone of voice, “now you’re acting a bit American”. Does it surprise anyone that he’d never been to the States?
I’ve been in Europe seven months, I’ve had challenges thrown at me about my country’s politics; and each time, the person seemed genuinely interested in my answers. French people, Mexican people, Scottish people, German people, they all pick, but then they all listen. Because guess what? Everyone seems to want to understand what the hell is going on in the world right now. We all do need to talk about it. Regular Americans and regular people from other countries need to discuss their perceptions, so that we can all realize that it isn’t “America vs. Whoever”, it’s “shitty government vs. shitty government, with regular people everywhere left holding the bag”.
Most people, I think, suspect this, and are glad to have it confirmed that plenty of Americans are resisting this slide towards evil fascism. People here in Europe don’t know about AMERICAblog, they don’t know the names Russ Feingold or Howard Dean; their ostensibly unbiased and comprehensive media has been less-than-reliable when it comes to reporting on the American people’s fight against their own government. But everywhere else that I’ve gone, people seem to want to believe in that resistance. Everywhere but here.
Why not England? Has it been too long since they’ve had a revolution? Are they too used to thinking of themselves as the center of the civilized world, and whatever anyone else is doing, it is automatically less than what they’d do in the circumstances? Americans are less politically apathetic than the English I’ve met so far. Do I need to remind anyone that Tony Blair—the man that dragged his country into the Iraq war with less cause even than Bush—is still in power, and nobody here in London appears to be rallying in the street about that fact?
England used to rule the world. Now they sit by and drink tea while their government gets bullied by mine. Of course they need a scapegoat, and why not some random American traveler? That’s a lot less dangerous than actually fighting Blair and Bush.
Look, some things are inescapable. If Bush is affecting the whole world, then he’s the whole world’s problem, not just America’s. It’s embarrassingly disingenuous to say, “Damn, your president is ruining the world, better get a different one, American,” and then fold you newspaper over and read about Man Utd. You get off your ass and help me, fellow human being. Join the mutiny, or go down with the fucking ship.
Obviously, not every English person feels like that one drunk does. I remember the huge protests here against the war. But is the war “all Bush’s fault”? I sense an aura of victimization vibes swirling around the English public. And I’m afraid for them. If they fall into a spiteful blaming of Americans for everything, with themselves as the poor bullied civilized gentlemen, that’ll be just as bigoted and impotent as Americans buying French wine and pouring it into the gutter.
And god knows, they don’t want to be like us, do they?
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