July 22, 2017--Europhiles

I know many progressives who are again saying they are giving serous thought to moving to Canada if Donald Trump is elected.

I say "again" because many of these same people said this when Nixon was elected and then when Ronald Reagan became president and even while contemplating a George W. Bush presidency.

But as far as I know, these friends remain comfortably in America though they are still grousing.

The grousing is not situational--it does not emerge only every four years like some locusts.

Not so between the lines, they disparage America no matter who is in office.

They see us as culturally, intellectually, and governmentally inferior not just to Canadians but, more pervasively, to Europeans.

These frankly anti-American liberals have such an elevated opinion of themselves that they turn to Europeans for special forms of friendship, appreciation, and emulation. They see the Brits and French and Germans, particularly, to be more nuanced in their thinking and how they conduct themselves in a globalizing world.

They like the books they read and the movies they make.

In sum--those who live in these countries are civilized; we are not.

If we were civilized, they wonder, how could Donald Trump be running nearly neck-and-neck with Hillary Clinton. The best explanation--most Americans know nothing about history, world affairs, or social policy. In fact, there is a longstanding, deep strain of anti-intellectdualism and paranoia pervasive in American culture. And above all else, these of my friends are horrified that perhaps 30-40 percent of the American population is fully anti-science and directed in their personal and political lives by their  religious beliefs.

Some of this is true and helps explain why many accomplished Americans look across the Atlantic for a more enlightened approach to life in the 21st century.

Yesterday I wrote satirically about socialist French President Francois Hollande and his capitalist $10,000-a-month hairstylist.

Today, I refer you to Great Britain's new Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, former mayor of London and principal proponent of England's exit from the European Union. He is the one, in case you missed this news of his appointment, with a version of Donald Trump's signature hairdo.

On Wednesday he held a joint press conference with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Previously, Johnson had said very disparaging things about President Obama and Hillary Clinton and so this was an awkward moment for Kerry, who somehow managed to maintain a stiff upper lip.

Johnson recently called Obama a "part Kenyan" with an "ancestral dislike of the British Empire." A few years ago, he compared Hillary Clinton to Lady MacBeth, writing that she's "got dyed blond hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital."

He didn't say anything about how he knows so much about what nurses look like in mental institutions.

That's not all. Boris compared Vladimir Putin to Dobby the Horse Elf from Harry Potter, and, more outrageously and riotously, claimed that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had sex with a goat.

Again, we do not need to know how Foreign Secretary Johnson knows about that.

And then there is Germany, where the far-right . . .

So, I say to my Europhile friends, before emigrating to Canada or Western Europe, take a close look at what is really going on in your favorite country. By comparison, America might not look all that bad. Which, I suppose, is why no one I know has expatriated.

Boris Johnson

October 9, 2013--Virgins in Paradise

This must be the week for passing along quotes from my reading. 

Monday, from Woodrow Wilson, I shared A. Scott Berg's description of the leaders of the Four Powers, victors in the First World War, literally redrawing the map of the world while on their hands and knees on the floor of the president's office in Paris.

Today I offer one from Jess Walter's powerful 2006 novel, The Zero, set in the days right after the destruction of the World Trade Center at what became Ground Zero. Largely through the eyes of a policeman who was there that day, Walter takes readers on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of that devastating terrorist attack.

His hero cop, Brian Remy moves through the dreamscape narrative in a state of heightened awareness and simultaneous dislocation, encountering "The Boss" (a slightly fictionalized version of Mayor Giuliani), first responders, government agents who inhabit an Kafkaesque world of mystery and half-truths, and U.S. and foreign nationals living double and and at times metaphoric lives.

One of the most vivid characters is peripheral to the main events--Walter calls him "the old Middle Eastern man"--but is an important truth-teller. At one point, he says to Remy--

"The way people here mock a religion that promises virgins for martyrs in the world after this one. Your own culture would seem to indicate that there is nothing more profound than sex, nothing more humbling or graceful or suggestive of the mystery of creation. And yet the idea of virgins in paradise somehow seems to draw your greatest scorn. Do you honestly imagine yours is a sexless heaven? What kind of paradise is it that has harps and angels but no orgasms?  

". . . You're always convincing yourselves that the world isn't what it is, that no one's reality matters except your own. That's why you make such poor victims. You truly can't know suffering if you know nothing about rage. And you can't feel genuine rage if you won't acknowledge loss. 

"That's what happens when a nation becomes a public relations firm. You forget the truth. Everything is the Alamo. You claim victory in every loss, life in every death. Declare war when there is no war, and when you are at war, pretend you aren't. The rest of the world wails and vows revenge and buries its dead and you turn on the television. Go to the cinema. 

". . .  Entertainment is the singular thing you produce now. And it is just another propaganda, the most insidious, greatest propaganda ever devised, and this is your only export now--your coffee and tobacco, your gunpowder and your wheat. And while people elsewhere die questioning the propaganda of tyrants and royals, you crave yours. You demand the propaganda of distraction and triviality, and it has become your religion, your national faith. In this faith you are grave and backward fundamentalists, not so different from the grave and backward fundamentalists you presume to battle. If there are barbarians knocking on the gates with stories of beautiful virgins in the afterlife, then aren't you barbarians too, wrapping the world in cables full of happy-ever-after stories of fleshy blondes and animated fish and talking cars?"