German Joys

Onward Christian Leaders

You can bitch about German political chat-show hosts like Sandra Maischberger or Anne Will all you want.  But trust me, people -- they look like geniuses next to the oaf who shapes American political discourse, Tim Russert.  Here's how he moderates a Democratic Presidential debate:

"There's been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values.* I want to ask you a simple question. Senator Obama, what is your favorite Bible verse?"

When Obama finished his answer, Russert said to the other candidates, "I want to give everyone a chance in this. You just take 10 seconds." Predictable banality ensued. A foreign visitor unfamiliar with our presidential campaigns might have scratched her head and said, "This is how you decide who will lead your country?"

Alas, it is.  If only I were a famous journalist, I'd ask them for their favorite verse from the Bhagavad Gita.**

---

* This "discussion" refers to the suspicion that Democrats (who are by and large anything-but-radical, mainstream church-going bourgeois reformists) do not openly discuss God and the Bible and their faith enough, and therefore may not be as devout as Republican politicians (claim to be).  For reasons that have always mystified me, this issue is considered important by many American voters. 

** An American presidential candidate who could actually name a verse from the Gita would, of course, be doomed.  By the way, my favorite Bible verse is Leviticus 14:14 -- as if you had to ask!

Why They Don't Fancy Us Part XXI

I'm linking a bit late, but better late than never. Here's Slate's Fred Kaplan writing in May on the roots of contemporary anti-Americanism:

"Misunderstanding of American values is not the principal source of anti-Americanism," [a 2004 RAND Corporation report (pdf)] concluded. Many foreigners understand us just fine; they simply don't like what they see. It's "some U.S. policies [that] have been, are, and will continue to be major sources of anti-Americanism." (Italics are in the original.)

One crucial aspect of this problem antedates George W. Bush's presidency. It goes back to the mid-1990s, when Jesse Helms, then the xenophobic Republican chairman of the Senate foreign-relations committee, gutted the U.S. Information Agency and swept its tattered remnants into a dark, dank corner of the State Department.

In its Cold War heyday, the USIA had been a fairly independent agency mandated with blaring the principles of American culture and democracy across the world. It sponsored jazz concerts and radio broadcasts, speaking tours, public libraries filled with classic political documents. The operation was so independent from policy-makers that, during the 1960s and early '70s, some American scholars sent out on USIA-sponsored speaking tours openly opposed the Vietnam War. The agency's relative independence—and its staff's attunement to foreign cultures and languages—conveyed an attractive image of America. But it was also what annoyed Sen. Helms, and so he dismantled the whole operation.

[Retired American diplomat] Price Floyd traces the decline of America's standing in the world to this moment. "Back then, the USIA transmitted American values—and this was separate from selling American policy," he said. "The two aren't separated now. There's no entity that makes it possible to separate them. So, if you disagree with our policy, which is easy to do now, then you hate America, too."

Official Announcement of Theme End

Another Pew survey shows world opinion of the United States in the toilet.  "In Germany, traditionally one of the closest U.S. allies, only 30 percent now have a positive view, down from 78 percent before Bush took office in January 2001."

A German Joys policy change: to avoid beating this dead horse any further, I will cease any and all commentary on polls about America's standing until they show an uptick.  Goodbye theme, see you in 2009!*

* Unless Americans elect Fred Thompson, which, heaven forfend, there's a decent chance they'll do, the yutzes.

German Joys Review: America Right or Wrong

A few days ago, I posted some thoughts on American parochialism. Anatol Lieven, a Cambridge-educated historian and foreign-affairs expert, has a few, too, as he shows in his 2004 book America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. (ARW) Lieven's target is not so much America's the insularity itself; he knows there are good excuses for it. His point is that this insularity is dangerous in a country that throws its weight around as much as the U.S. does.

Lieven begins ARW with a 1989 conversation he had with a U.S. diplomat then stationed in Pakistan. Lieven had recently ventured into the countryside to speak to the Afghan warlords the U.S was funding. He found they were "a serious threat to peace and progress in Afghanistan [and] pathologically anti-Western." Lieven and a colleague asked the diplomat whether he agreed with the U.S. government's policy of funding these men.

The diplomat responded that with a long, indignant speech: he was sure the Afghan resistance was going to build a "successful free market democracy." "This diatribe," writes Lieven, "reflected a messianism rooted in the American creed but was accompanied by a total ignorance of Afghan history, society, tradition, or reality in general." As early as page 3, we see, Lieven is not going to pull any punches. In his view, a similar worldview has driven American policy ever since, and helped determined the United States' response to September 11:

This book seeks to help explain why a country which after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had the chance to create a concert of all the world's major States -- including Muslim ones -- against Islamist revolutionary terrorism chose instead to pursue policies which divided the West, further alienated the Muslim world and exposed America itself to greatly increased danger.

Lieven underpins this bracing critique of American nationalism and insularity with formidable research and anecdotes from his years as a reporter. He also builds a convincing case that defects in American public discourse contributed directly to the foreign-policy blunders that have dominated recent headlines.

A few days ago, I posted some thoughts on American parochialism. Anatol Lieven, a Cambridge-educated historian and foreign-affairs expert, has a few, too, as he shows in his 2004 book America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. (ARW) Lieven's target is not so much America's the insularity itself; he knows there are good excuses for it. His point is that this insularity is dangerous in a country that throws its weight around as much as the U.S. does.

Lieven begins ARW with a 1989 conversation he had with a U.S. diplomat then stationed in Pakistan. Lieven had recently ventured into the countryside to speak to the Afghan warlords the U.S was funding. He found they were "a serious threat to peace and progress in Afghanistan [and] pathologically anti-Western." Lieven and a colleague asked the diplomat whether he agreed with the U.S. government's policy of funding these men.

The diplomat responded that with a long, indignant speech: he was sure the Afghan resistance was going to build a "successful free market democracy." "This diatribe," writes Lieven, "reflected a messianism rooted in the American creed but was accompanied by a total ignorance of Afghan history, society, tradition, or reality in general." As early as page 3, we see, Lieven is not going to pull any punches. In his view, a similar worldview has driven American policy ever since, and helped determined the United States' response to September 11:

This book seeks to help explain why a country which after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had the chance to create a concert of all the world's major States -- including Muslim ones -- against Islamist revolutionary terrorism chose instead to pursue policies which divided the West, further alienated the Muslim world and exposed America itself to greatly increased danger.

Lieven underpins this bracing critique of American nationalism and insularity with formidable research and anecdotes from his years as a reporter. He also builds a convincing case that defects in American public discourse contributed directly to the foreign-policy blunders that have dominated recent headlines.

Err, what's a 'Billion' again?

Another link in the shining chain of ignorance, from the article I linked to in the last post:

It is telling that according to a 2002 National Geographic survey, 30 percent of Americans believed the population of America to be between 1 and 2 billion people.

3% estimated the population of the U.S. as 'about one zillion.'

Just kidding.

Yanqui Hijo de Puta, Fuera del Mundo!

'Why does the rest of the world hate us?' Americans ask, with large, moist, puppy-dog eyes. (Well, it's really more distrust and suspicion than hate).

Many Americans prefer to blame it solely on resentment and anti-American manipulation. There's some of that around, of course, but that's not the whole story. I recently read Anatol Lieven's blistering, largely on-target America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, which details plenty of rational reasons why non-Americans might distrust or resent the United States (hint: it's the policies and the hypocrisy, stupid!).

Before I get to that, thought, I thought I'd address a more mundane reason why people don't fancy Americans: Americans are renowned worldwide as being unusually ignorant and judgmental of other cultures. We don't understand other cultures, and what's more, we don't want to understand them, and what's even more, we show that openly. When we encounter some cultural practice that is different from what's done in the United States, we tend to immediately call attention to it -- and often by suggesting, more or less openly, that it be scrapped and replaced with the "right" American way of doing things.

Americans climb into our cultural (or rather, acultural) Hummers, you could say, and blithely drive them through other nations' minefields, completely oblivious to the explosions we cause along the way. A recent example: During a recent dinner I attended, an American new to Germany blurted out to a German guest "Hey, you're a German, maybe you can answer this. What the hell was Hitler thinking?!"

Trust me, it's one of just dozens of indiscretions I've either observed or committed. You could defend this tendency to openly criticize other cultures as refreshing frankness, but people from other nations have much less complimentary words for it. Let me quote from a fine little book called Americans at Work: A Guide to the Can-Do People, written by intercultural consultant Craig Storti. Storti himself is from the Unites States, but has spent over two decades working all over the world:

"[N]ot believing in culture [in the sense of ingrained, traditional ways of doing things] means that Americans have a hard time accepting that there is any legitimate reason -- any "excuse" for the odd way foreigners sometimes behave, and they conclude, therefore, that all such behavior is simply arbitrary. The strange things foreigners do may be deliberate or accidental, conscious or unconscious, but the point is they don't have to act that way...

Americans are much more likely than other nationalities to be unprepared for and therefore to have a strong reaction to "different" behavior, more likely, in other words, to be surprised, confused, or irritated by some of the "odd" things you [i.e., a non-American] may do. They may also be less able to see things from your point of view and less willing, as a result, to listen to your explanation of things or to understand why you don't agree with them. They are more likely than colleagues from other countries to see you as stubborn and unreasonable.

I can't exempt myself from this accusation. Although I like to think I've become much more polished in the meantime, I still have episodes in which foreign habits and practices strike me as "wrong." Now let me say that some things -- like honor killings, puking all over the city center, or mixing beer with cola -- are wrong, in some cosmic, transcendental sense. But among many Americans I know who live abroad, there is embarrassingly little curiosity about foreign cultures, and much superficial, chauvinistic criticism. I know this because I occasionally hang around with expatriates, whose primary form of recreation seems to be bitching endlessly about their host countries whenever they can be sure no natives are around (and sometimes, when natives are around). My experience has taught me there really is a difference -- the difference Storti identifies -- between Americans and people from other nations.

Why Does Rufus Wainwright Hate Freedom?

Rufus Wainwright enters Clash territory, but with an operatic twist:

...which could be explained by the fact that Rufus' current boyfriend is Jörn Weisbrodt, who Wiki describes as a "German concert manager for the Berlin State Opera."

Guns and Lectures About Guns

The shootings at Virginia Tech University first provoked a welter of condescending lectures from European media outlets ('USA's gun-mad culture reaps what it sows' and the like); then a counter-reaction of outraged letters to the editor from Americans. Der Spiegel does us a service -- possibly -- by reprinting samples of both here (G). Neither side covers itself in glory, which is why I try to stay out of these debates.

Nevertheless, I thought I'd weigh in with a few points. First, this massacre has no implications for policy. Spree killings like this one are an frightening, but extremely rare, occurrence in modern societies, including Germany. They probably cannot be prevented altogether. The amount of media coverage they attract, while understandable, is wildly disproportionate to their real importance.

America's 'gun culture' takes a lot of flak from Europeans, because it plays into the treasured stereotype of trigger-happy Americans. All cultural condescension aside, though, the evidence shows that the widespread distribution of portable firearms in the United States is the most significant factor driving the difference in murder rates between the U.S. and Europe.

Anyone who would like to go into the issue further might want to read Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins' 1997 book Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America. After establishing a basis for comparisng crime rates between the U.S. and Europe, they come to some conclusions that might surprise some people. Europe is actually just about as crime-ridden and violent as the U.S., in general. Crime also follows very similar patterns in the U.S. as in Europe: it's concentrated in urban areas and among ethnic minority populations. This means the much larger ethnic minority populations in the U.S. are an important explanatory factor in the difference in crime rates.

The U.S. does have a dramatically higher murder rate than Europe, however. And about half of this higher murder rate is explained by guns. Especially pistols, which are much more dangerous than rifles or shotguns, because they are portable, easy to conceal, and lethal. (This is why all those stories of how many Swiss own rifles are red herrings). An example: The homicide rate in the U.S. by all means (shooting, poisoning, stabbing, etc.) is about 3.4 times higher than the homicide rate in England in Wales. The homicide rate by firearm, however, is 175 times higher in the U.S. Drawing on this staggering difference, Zimring and Hawkins conclude that about half of the difference between European and U.S. homicide rates is explained by the prevalence of firearms, especially portable ones. (pp. 109-110).

The chance of any given citizen being killed by a mass-murdering fanatic are practically nil. That person's chance of being killed by an enraged ex-spouse; angry drug supplier or gang competitor; opponent in a drunken brawl; or armed robber (together, these categories account for something like 85% of all murders), vary greatly depending on whether the attacker uses a gun, as opposed to something much less lethal, like a knife, club, or his fists.

So the lesson is: if you're not in any of these categories I just mentioned, your chances of being murdered, both in the U.S. and in Europe, are virtually non-existent. Great news, isn't it? However, they will be slightly higher in the U.S., because there are lots of pistols in circulation over there. One reason I like living in Europe is that I never worry, for a single second, about getting shot here. Sure, I might get mugged, or somebody might take a swing at me in a bar (although this has never happened to me), but the chance I will be shot for some reason is so small I can safely ignore it, along with the possibility I might be hit by a radioactive meteorite, or selected to win the lottery even though I didn't buy a ticket.

Quote of the Day

Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, Prince Karel Schwarzenberg, on the different level (G) of anti-Americanism in Western Europe and the former Eastern bloc: "Here, you don't see the kind of virulent anti-Americanism that dominates Western Europe. After all, our nations weren't nourished back to health on American Marshall Plan funds, and we therefore have less occasion to cultivate our prejudices."

P.S. I could tell he was Central European royalty just by the moustache, couldn't you?

Review of Uncouth Nation by Markovits

I just finished Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America by Andrei Markovits. I have less and less interest in debates about anti-Americanism, because they get acrid fairly quickly. I wanted to read Markovits, though, partially because of who he is.

That is, first of all, the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. His title, though, is less important than his background. His family emigrated from Romania, arriving in the U.S. in 1960. In between, he studied in Vienna, and thus reads and speaks good German. He is also familiar with many other Continental languages, and follows the European media closely. Finally, he identifies himself as having a "life-long affinity with the democratic left in Europe and the United States" and for the project of Europe. (xiii). To let you know where he's coming from, he lists his positions on various issues, from the death penalty (against) to unions (for).

Markovits' background makes him conscious of three pitfalls of anti-anti-Americanism:

1. Defensive denial/Complete identification. The anti-anti-American becomes so fed up with the supercilious tone of European anti-Americanism (or so afraid of "giving the other side ammunition") that he defends U.S. policy even against spot-on critiques.
2. Tit-for-tat. For every flaw identified by the anti-American, the anti-anti strikes back with an analogous shortcoming of modern European societies. Don't get me wrong; a bit of tit-for-tat is satisfying, and sometimes administers a needed corrective. But it rarely illuminates causes and nature of anti-Americanism, and often destroys dialogue.
3. Contempt. Just as many European anti-Americans are do not care to remedy the defects they mock in American society, many anti-anti-Americans are motivated by a mirror-image of contempt for Europe. On both sides, these critics don't want to understand; they want merely to score points and bolster fragile egos. Mark Steyn, for instance, could be put into this category.

A Foretaste of Markovits

On the strength of the essay I linked to a few weeks ago, I ordered Andrei Markovits' Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America.

I did not know that before Markovits published this book in English, he published Amerika, dich hasst's sich besser (G) in German (the title, roughly, "America, Hating You's Much Better" is a pun on Goethe's "America, You Have it Better." An amusing essay of the same name as Markovits' book is here (G)).

I will try to consume Markovits' book in the next few days and post thoughts, but here's a quotation to whet your appetite:

If anti-Americanism has been part of the condition humaine in Europe for at least two centuries, it has been since 9/11 tht the rise of a hitherto unprecedented, wholly voluntary, and uncoordinated conformity in Western European public opinion regarding America and American politics occurred. I would go so far as to characterize the public voice and mood in these countries as gleichgeschaltet, comprising a rare but powerful discursive and emotive congruence and conformity among all actors in state and society. What rendered this Gleichschaltung so different from those that accompany most dictatorships was its completely voluntary, thus democratic, nature. . . .

Here, in short, is the book's overall argument: Ambivalence, antipathy, and resentment toward and about the United States have comprised an important component of European culture since the American Revolution at the latest, thus way before America became the world's "Mr. Big"--the proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla--and a credible rival to Europe's main powers, particularly Britain and France. In recent years, following the end of the Cold War and particularly after 9/11, ambivalence in some quarters has given way to outright antipathy and unambiguous hostility. Animosity toward the United States migrated from the periphery and disrespected fringes of European politics and became a respectable part of the European mainstream. These negative sentiments and views have been driven not only--or even primarily--by what the United States does, but rather by an animus against what Europeans have believed America is.

Markovits promises to investigate the extent to which anti-Americanism plays a part in an otherwise commendable "discourse that favors the weak" later in the book.

This, to me, is an often-overlooked contextual factor. If you track Europe's media, you will notice that they're more adventurous and worldly than the mainstream American media. One day of watching or listening a week or two ago brought me stories about from genital mutilation in Nigeria, the Naga peoples of northwest India, and Japanese Shinto rituals. Of course, you can find plenty of reporting like this in the United States, but almost none of it in the mainstream news sources that most Americans get their world-view from.

The crusading European reporter delivers the perspective of the weak, the oppressed, the marginalized, and the outsider. Many also highlight outsiders in their own societies, as the innumerable documentaries about German heroin addicts, welfare recipients, immigrants, prisoners, and mentally ill people I've seen demonstrate. If you conceive of your mission as a reporter as highlighting underdogs and outsiders who would otherwise struggle and die in obscurity, then you may very well take exactly the converse attitude towards an "overdog." That, in my view, helps explain the shape of media coverage of the U.S., which in turn is an important factor driving anti-Americanism.

That's what I think. What Markovits thinks, I promise to report toute de suite.

A Daily Dose of America-Bashing

Brought to you by a Polish friend of mine. Some smart-alecky guy from New Zealand (I think they're called New Zealots) wanders around Middle America, asking ordinary citizens unfairly complicated questions such as "Where is the Berlin Wall?" and "How many Eiffel Towers are there in Paris?"

If you're so angry at the United States that you'd like to see American military officers being subjected to pain, go here, to the website of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program website. You can watch testing videos for the Active Denial System, an invisible laser-like "pain beam" that makes you feel as if your skin is on fire, but which does no lasting damage to the person it's aimed at. Watch colonels and members of the press getting zapped!

For something nice about the United States, go here, where Matthey Yglesias points out that a program spearheaded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's two- decade campaign against the African parasite Guinea Worm and the diease it causes has brought us to the point where it "is expected to be eradicated worldwide within the next five years. It will be the first ailment to be eliminated since smallpox in 1977."

And how can you not like a cute li'l country that can produce campaign advertising like this? As a soundtrack to pictures of Nixon with Brezhnev and Mao, we hear "Reachin' outacross the sea/makin' friends, where foes used to be"

Nothing to See Here, Folks, Move Along

As I've noted before, the 9/11 conspiracy-theory movement is alive and well in Europe, and one meets plenty of seemingly rational people over here who are much too sophisticated to be suckered in by the "official version" of 9/11. (Not that they have any particularly convincing "unofficial" version to counter it with, see below).

The headquarters of the movement is in the USA, but Germany boasts its fair share of these folks, whether they're the LIHOP or MIHOP variety. Matt Taibbi met one of the most colorful of them, Nico Haupt, recently:

Over a month after I first wrote a column slamming the 9/11 Truth movement, I continue to get hate mail in massive quantities. A group of Truthers even picketed my office, and I'm still picking food particles out of my scarf after an incident in which the movement's house lunatic, a wild-eyed German blogger named Nico Haupt, tried to goad me into slugging him in a West Side diner.

"Go ahead, heet me, then I haf beeg story!" he roared, scream-spitting half-digested detritus in my face.

Lipset on American Exceptionalism

American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset died on January 4 at the age of 84. One of his principal themes was American exceptionalism: the idea that the history of the United States is qualitiatively different from the history of almost all all other nations. One of the most obvious and intriguing proofs of this exceptionalism is that the United States' political system, unlike all other developed countries and many less-developed ones, has never given rise to a mainstream mass socialist party.

Although he moved rightward during his life, he avoided patriotic chest-beating; his interest lay in explaining America, not exulting in it. I've often thought that every foreign journalist who writes about the United States should be required to read Lipset's 1996 work American Exceptionalism: The Double-Edged Sword. The book would teach them that they are entering a country whose culture differs from Europe's culture, and which does not want to, and will never, become Europe. This lesson, in turn, might reduce the number of tiresome opinion pieces European journalists write which scold the United States for flagrantly, obstinately failing to be Europe.

Here are a paragraphs that convey the flavor of Lipset's work:

America continues to be qualitatively different. To reiterate, exceptionalism is a two-edged phenomenon; it does not mean better. This country is an outlier. It is the most religious, optimistic, patriotic, rights-oriented, and individualistic. With respect to crime, it still has the highest rates; with respect to incarceration, it has the most people locked up in jail; with respect to litigiousness, it has the most lawyers per capita of any country in the world, with high tort and malpractice rates. It also has close to the lowest percentage of the eligible electorate voting, but the highest rate of participation in voluntary organizations. The country remains the wealthiest in real income terms, the most productive as reflected in worker output, the highest in proportions of people who graduate from or enroll in higher education (postgrade 12) and in postgraduate work (post-grade 16). It is the leader in upward mobility into professional and other high-status and elite occupations, close to the top in terms of commitment to work rather than leisure, but the least egalitarian among developed nations with respect to income distribution, at the bottom as a provider of welfare benefits, the lowest in savings, and the least taxed. And as I elaborate in the chapters that follow, the positive and the negative are frequently opposite sides of the same coin.

My Take on Markovits

Looks like my link to the Markovits essay has become one of the most-commented posts this blog has ever seen. I've gone through them with interest. Of all the views posted, I guess my take is the most similar to Koch's. Koch doesn't seem to be American, so perhaps Germans are more free with their comments to him than they would be with someone whom they know to be an American. In any case, because I criticize the policies of the Bush Administration (and was doing so before 60+% of the American public started doing the same thing), I often get an "unvarnished" view as well.

I have seen not only an increase in anti-Americanism recently, but what I would call a shift in its basic nature. Anti-Americanism of one form or another has, as we all know, been around since long before the U.S. was even founded as a nation.

However, it's now characterized by certain overtones that were much more rare before 2003. Now, I am not talking about what prominent German politicians and business leaders say. As Markovits points out, they will always call for better U.S.-German relations, and will often make claims about the state of those relations that look rather unrealistic from the ground. Here are the overtones I hear in conversations with ordinary Germans:

1. We don't really care what the state of U.S.-Europe relations is. If they're bad, it's not because of anything we did. And if they're bad; so be it.
2. The number of areas of profound disagreement has increased to the point where we can say that many of our basic values are different from Americans'.
3. This situation is not an exceptional situation that will be remedied by a return to the "norm" of close U.S.-Europe relations anytime soon, if ever. Nothing in particular needs to be done about it (see #1).

As Koch points out, 2003 was a very bad year, but in some respects, 2004, when a slim majority of the American people returned George W. Bush to office, was dramatically worse. That's when "the American People" seemed, to Europeans, to declare their ownership and approval of Bush's policies. The anger and resentment seemed to quadruple overnight. In 2003, the U.S. and Europe were going through a rough patch in their "marriage." Now, they have separated and are headed for an amicable divorce. When the kids (reporters, the public) are around, of course, they'll still try to put a brave face on things.

Otherwise things are icy. Markovits help explain why this is so by pointing out another important dynamic: from a European perspective, anti-Americanism is now both much more practicable than it was, say, 20 years ago. It's even desirable and useful from a European perspective.

Andrei Markovits on Anti-Americanism

I don't have a long enough historical perspective to judge whether European anti-Americanism has increased recently, but Andrei Markovits, a Romanian who has commuted back and forth between the United States and Europe since 1960, definitely does.

In a fine essay that you should go read, he says that anti-Americanism has increased dramatically and appears to have become a permanent feature of European cultual life:

Any trip to Europe confirms what surveys have been finding: The aversion to America is becoming greater, louder, more determined. It is unifying Western Europeans more than any other political emotion — with the exception of a common hostility toward Israel. Indeed, the virulence in Western Europe's antipathy to Israel cannot be understood without the presence of anti-Americanism and hostility to the United States. Those two closely related resentments are now considered proper etiquette. They are present in polite company and acceptable in the discourse of the political classes....

There can be no doubt that many disastrous and irresponsible policies by members of the Bush administration, as well as their haughty demeanor and arrogant tone, have contributed massively to this unprecedented vocal animosity on the part of Europeans toward Americans and America. Indeed, they bear responsibility for having created a situation in which anti-Americanism has mutated into a sort of global antinomy, a mutually shared language of opposition to and resistance against the real and perceived ills of modernity that are now inextricably identified with America. I have been traveling back and forth with considerable frequency between the United States and Europe since 1960, and I cannot recall a time like the present, when such a vehement aversion to everything American has been articulated in Europe. No Western European country is exempt from this phenomenon — not a single social class, no age group or profession, nor either gender. But the aversion reaches much deeper and wider than the frequently evoked "anti-Bushism." I perceive this virulent, Europewide, and global "anti-Bushism" as the glaring tip of a massive anti-American iceberg.

Three recent shifts have transformed anti-Americanism from a fringe phenomenon to a defining aspect of European culture. First, the Bush Administration's policies have driven anti-Americanism into "overdrive." Second, the demise of the Soviet Union and America's increasing power and arrogance have seriously weakened neutral or pro-American sentiment, which formerly acted as a counterweight to anti-Americanism. Third, the sheer number of reasons to be angry at the U.S.A. has reached critical mass, furnishing grudges for every European social group:

America [is accused] of being retrograde on three levels: moral (America's being the purveyor of the death penalty and of religious fundamentalism, as opposed to Europe's having abolished the death penalty and adhering to an enlightened secularism); social (America's being the bastion of unbridled "predatory capitalism," to use the words of former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and of punishment, as opposed to Europe as the home of the considerate welfare state and of rehabilitation); and cultural (America the commodified, Europe the refined; America the prudish and prurient, Europe the savvy and wise).

Conservative or communist, Arab immigrant or nationalist dock worker, Green party member or factory owner, Europeans from all classes and backgrounds can agree on their disgust with one or another quality they associate with the United States.

Drawing from diverse areas of discourse such as sports and university reform, Markovits shows how America is presumed to have almost unlimited power to force "Americanization" into all the corners of European life, and highlights the incoherence of much anti-American reasoning:

All of these "Americanizations" bemoan an alleged loss of purity and authenticity for Europeans at the hands of a threatening and unwelcome intruder who — to make matters worse — exhibits a flaring cultural inferiority. America is resented for everything and its opposite: It is at once too prurient and too puritanical; too elitist, yet also too egalitarian; too chaotic, but also too rigid; too secular and too religious; too radical and too conservative. Again, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Anti-Americanism, Markovits notes, has desirable side-effects: it provides contrasts which help form a common European cultural identity. Markovits also disagrees with those who maintain that anti-Americanism is an irrational phenomenon, and that Europe will soon "come to its senses" and realize the need to return to a strong trans-Atlantic bond. Anti-Americanism is here to stay, he insists, because "[f]ar from harming Europe and its interests, anti-Americanism has helped Europeans gain respect, affection, and — most important — political clout in the rest of the world."

It's a balanced and thoughtful piece, devoid of hysteria or defensiveness, and laden with plenty of specific examples. It's worth a careful read.

Why Do They Hate Us? Rap or Iraq?

Martha Bayles, who is now a visiting fellow at the Aspen Institute Berlin, recently gave a speech at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. The subject was America's rapidly-declining reputation in the rest of the world.

Her conclusion? It's our sick, degraded popular culture:

When people, especially young people, in rapidly modernizing societies look at America through the lens of our no-holds-barred popular culture, what they see most glaringly is a passion for personal liberation from tradition, religion, family, and restraint of all kinds.

She harks back to a time when the U.S. State Department could partner with Hollywood to officially screen American films at foreign embassies, because these movies presented a positive and clean-cut image of American life. Nowadays, she claims, the world is horrified by our "coarse, violent, and obnoxious" rap music, video games, and "'date movies'" (Date movies?). She also singles out internationally popular television series such as Sex and the City, Oprah, South Park, and Seinfeld (Yes, even Seinfeld!) for critique.

I can't agree. To be fair, she does cite studies that show about a third of people polled in various countries dislike American popular culture, so she has a bit of empirical proof. But having lived abroad for years, and having talked to more people than I can count about attitudes towards the United States, I think she's off the mark in two big ways.

No. 1. It's the invasion of Iraq, stupid.

[Note: This is a paraphrase of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan, not an insult.]

My Accountant ♥ Me

Unlike most countries, the good old U.S. and A insists on making its citizens pay American taxes on every single penny they earn, from any source whatsoever, no matter where they live, for ever and eternity, amen.

Rather than go into the mind-breaking complexities this policy causes to someone who, like me, has income both from the United States and Germany, I will just tell you one thing: My German accountant just sent me a Christmas card.

Germany Copies America, Restricts Indoor Smoking

As a non-smoker for going on four months now, I'm pleased to see that the Grand Coalition running Germany has agreed on a smoking ban for almost all public places:

Smoking in smoking in theatres, cinemas, hospitals and schools will be banned in a drive to toughen some of the most lax smoking rules in western Europe. It will also be banned in all forms of public transport.

...

Health Minister Ulla Schmidt called the compromise a step in the right direction. "This is an enormous advance for the protection of non-smokers and for health protection in Germany," she said, adding that she hoped the coalition parties' broader parliamentary groups would accept the deal.

Nearly a third of all German adults smoke regularly and close to 140,000 die every year from tobacco-related illnesses -- far more than from traffic accidents, alcohol, drugs and AIDS combined.

The ban doesn't apply to bars and pubs, and apparently restaurants will be allowed to maintain separate smoking areas. I don't have a problem with somebody smoking in my presence, so long as there's a little air circulation. But ay, there's the rub: in Germany, "a little air circulation" is called a "draft," and, to quote Spiegel English: "A lot of Germans don't like drafts. Some even seem to have an irrational fear of moving air, believing it can cause pneumonia, flu, colds, clogged arteries and just about every malady imaginable." Thus, go into an average bar here during the winter and you'll see visible, choking clouds of second-hand smoke that have been resting in the motionless air for hours (if not years). Sometimes I have to wash my clothes twice to get the stinging, acrid tang of used tobacco out of them.

So, as far as this goes, it's probably a good idea, and I congratulate the Grosse Koalition.

But now, if you don't mind, I'd like to rant at German journalists for a few short moments. One of the most tiresome stereotypes around is of those "puritanical" Americans who passed laws banning smoking in public places. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s -- that is, before European governments began to ban indoor smoking themselves -- lazy German journalists, on slow news days, ridiculed America every time some city or state in the U.S. moved to restrict smoking. As this Tagesspiegel article put it (G) two years ago, "for years, Europans mocked the American example. But now, the old continent is following the New World...in ever-faster steps." Now, of course, these journalists sometimes quoted the odd German doctor saying: "Hey, this is actually not such a bad idea." But that was rare; the snide putdowns, if placed end-to-end, would reach to Saturn and back.

Suddenly, it turns out that banning smoking in enclosed public spaces was not some ludicrous paroxysm of American puritanism, but rather a sensible policy that has saved thousands of lives and millions of dollars in medical expenses. Something Europe, perhaps, should have started doing decades ago. All this time, snide journalists did a disservice to their readers by treating the smoking ban as nothing more than an occasion to mock America, rather than explore potentially sound public-policy idea. (Especially for a country like Germany, which has to reform its health system every few years to keep it financially viable.)

Therefore, to every European journalist who trotted out this lazy cliché all these years: you condescending snobs are hereby invited to come to Düsseldorf and kiss my big fat American ass.

There, I'm glad I got that out of my system. Now it's back to thoughtful commentary.

It's Time for More American Policies

Ed's posts got me thinking. From them, we learn that Germans are still required to include a photograph with their job applications, and that German employers freely admit to choosing new employees based in part on their physical attractiveness. Based, of course, on the picture.

My prediction: this will be rare in Germany in 10 years. Why? Because it's now unheard-of and (essentially) illegal in the United States.

Marx, cheekily amending Hegel, once said that all facts and personages of history appear twice; the time first as tragedy, next as farce. Let me adapt this quotation to fit American public-policy initiatives: they appear in the European media first as farce, then as policy. Fifteen years ago, most Europeans were snorting with patronizing glee over those pleasure-hating American puritans who were banning cigarettes in public gathering places. Now, most of them live in countries with identical laws.

The same thing is true of racial discrimination. Europe is years behind North America in taking strong government action against discrimination and fostering public stigma against overt racial discrimination and stereotyping. Here's a recent post to a forum for English-speaking expats in Germany that reflects how an someone of Asian descent sees the situation in Germany:

I am Asian living in a small city in provincial southern Germany...  All over Germany...I have encountered a lot of stereotyping, good and bad, and it  gets tiring. For example, "all Chinese, Japanese, oh and Koreans study so hard and therefore you have learned German so quickly and well" -- a lot of comments which make my American PC sensibilities cringe and roll my eyes. This comes from mostly university-educated people too. I do get tired of it and of playing the educator/ambassador role because I can't always just accept that stereotypes, even if they are "positive" are good. You have to have a tough skin, take it in stride and know that it's part of your intercultural/study abroad experience. Having come from the US and London, I would say that attitudes here are generally about 25 years behind. I see this in general attitudes towards other foreigners especially towards the Turkish, for instance, which again, I find shocking because of the overt generalising and stereotyping.

This woman sees Germany as lagging behind North America here not because Germany's swarming with racists, but because old-fashioned attitudes still prevail, and discrimination is still not seen as a major public-policy issue.

This last point's important: the task of eliminating open racial discrimination and stereotyping from society is still seen by many Germans as either (1) not worth undertaking (either because discrimination doesn't exist or, much more rarely, because it's actually a good thing); or (2) some special concern of left-wingers. The mere fact that you take exception to racist jokes or discrimination in hiring, or that they listen to non-Western music, is considered enough to place you on the left wing of the political spectrum, among the "Greens" and "multi-kultis."

Another example: I once gave a presentation on American anti-discrimination law to which a few German lawyers showed up -- all white, all male. They were somewhat shocked by how extensive U.S. anti-discrimination law was. They were all of the opinion that Germany did not need similar laws, for one reason: there was no racial discrimination in Germany. Ever diplomatic (note the irony), I bit my tongue and refrained from asking them whether they'd ever asked someone of Turkish descent whether he thought there was discrimination in Germany. Nor did I ask them how they might feel about an age-discrimination law if they knew they would be fired after they reached age 55 (unemployment is 20% in this age group). These lawyers were at the very first, "crude" stage of conservative opposition to anti-discrimination laws -- the stage in which they hadn't even thought of these obvious criticisms of their position. (Here is a more sophisticated argument.)

Nein, George W. Bush is not a Nazi

Godwin's Law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." Fatih Akin, the German director of the rather grueling but not uninteresting Gegen die Wand (English title: Head-On), which won the Berlin Film Festival in 2004, is a walking illustration of Godwin's law.

He had a T-shirt printed up that replaces the 'S' in Bush's name with a swastika, and has been wearing it during a film shoot in Hamburg. It is illegal to display the swastika in any context in Germany, so Hamburg prosecutors are investigating (G). Akin defends his T-shirt in the most recent Spiegel magazine: "Bush's policies are comparable with those of the Third Reich. I believe that in Hollywood, under Bush, certain films have been directed on behalf of the Pentagon, in order to normalize things like torture and Guantanamo. The Bush Administration is gunning for a third world war, I'm convinced of that. In my opinion, these people are fascists."

I don't have much interest in addressing rhetoric like this, because it's poking a stick into a nest filled with dumb and angry wasps. But the "Bush is a Nazi" meme comes up enough that it seems to merit a closer look. The federal Justice Minister under the former German coalition government, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, had to step down after comparing (G) Bush to Hitler in September of 2002. At a conference I recently attended, an American professor from a big, mainstream American university earnestly tried to convince German colleagues that George W. Bush was "worse than Hitler." Germans then tried to convince this American (!) that the comparison was inappropriate, a pretty amusing spectacle.

Two points: (1) The Germans are right: the comparison of George W. Bush with Hitler, or the claim that the Bush Administration's policies are "comparable to the Third Reich," is unfathomably stupid; (2) The claim also plays into some unsavory tendencies in revisionist discourse, a fact which may not be obvious to non-Europeans.

Not Amused about the United States

I've blogged about the damage America's image has taken in Europe in recent years. But then again, you sort of expect that from the Euros; they've been regarding the U.S. with a mixture of horror and fascination for centuries.

But Britain -- host of the famous "special relationship" -- still has a soft spot for their callow, yet enterprising, former colonial subjects, right?

Wrong, says a poll recently released by the Daily Telegraph:

A majority of Britons think American culture and the actions of the present American administration are making the world a worse place to live in, and almost no one believes America is now, if it ever was, a beacon to the world. Well over half of those interviewed regard the US as an imperial power bent on dominating the world by one means or another. President George W Bush's standing in this country could scarcely be lower. More than three quarters of Britons believe the current president is a "poor" or even "terrible" world leader and almost as many believe that his rhetoric about promoting the cause of democracy in the world is merely a cover for his promotion of American national interests.

Josef Joffe on Anti-Americanism

Josef Joffe, co-publisher of Die Zeit, attempts here to draw the line between "rabid and the reasonable" criticism of the United States. Joffe's allegiances are clear; he is currently a fellow at a conservative American think-tank and is pro-American and pro-Israel by European standards. However, Joffe does occasionally criticize (G) American policy; so it's unfair to describe him as a toady.

The piece has its flaws. He doesn't tell us where he gets many of his quotations. Also, he tries to maintain a firm distinction between fair criticism of the U.S. and anti-Americanism, but doesn't provide any examples of the former to let us police the fairness of his thinking. Plus, the piece goes on a bit.

However, Joffe makes some good points, which I'll summarize. Joffe first looks at the nasty generalizations and stereotypes that plague European discourse about U.S. policy. Accusations of the "illegality" of some American action "may be true or false; they are not ipso facto anti-American. But to attribute American behavior to inbred imperialism ("look what they did to the Indians"), to American capitalism ("blood for oil"), or to religious bigotry ("they claim divine guidance") transcends policy criticism."

So is singling out the United States or Americans for criticism, while ignoring other nations' essentially identical actions (I highlight a recent example here). Another press filter singles out Americans who "serve as witnesses against their own government and nation," regardless of their actual importance on the political and cultural landscape of the U.S. The usual suspects: Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Susan Sontag. I'd add Morris Berman, who is virtually unknown in the United States outside of leftist circles, but whose books (G) (with telling titles such as "Dark Times for American: End of an Imperialist Era" and "Culture on the Brink of Collapse: America Shows the Way") are instantly translated into German, available in every bookstore, and please left-wing German critics (G) no end.

Blame Canada!

Recently, a European sent me an email petition about the Pascua Lama mining project in Chile and Argentina. If you want to read a fuller version of the petition, a link is here. The petition deals with a gold mining project called the Pascua Lama project, in a remote region near the border of Argentina and Chile.

A mining company wants to tear apart the mountains to retrieve huge stores of gold. To get at the gold, the petition assures us, "it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make two huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip." Gad! Sounds horrible, doesn't it? I can already hear the ominous string music in the background. But it just gets worse. The mine

will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process.

Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

Gadzooks! Where's Bono when you need him? Assuming all of these assertions -- for which no proof at all is delivered -- are true, the next question is: Who could possibly be behind this nightmare? The petition says only the following: "The company is called Barrick Gold. The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is George Bush Senior." Aha! American capitalist locusts. If "George Bush Senior" (otherwise known as George H.W. Bush) is somehow involved in it, it's just got to be evil. Sounds like it's time to get into our vans, strap on our armbands, and protest in front of Barrick Gold's headquarters.

But, hmm, where exactly are those headquarters? How strange that the petition does not tell us, even thought it's desperately eager to let us know that "George Bush Senior" is involved. Barrick Gold's headquarters are actually in...Toronto. Barrick Gold is a Canadian mining giant. Yes, Canada, that U.N. supporting, Iraq-war criticizing, Kyoto-protocol-signing model of good world citizenship. How could they?

Getting What You Need, Part I

Well, I'm off to Hamburg on a super-secret mission, so let me give you a nice long post for the weekend.

A while ago I posted a few thoughts on Anglo-American perspectives on Europe. There's really is a gap -- an unbridgeable one, I think -- between how Europeans and Americans understand their own, and the other societies. Americans and Britons who visit Europe almost universally condemn European economic policy for denying the talented what they want, and prophesy that this critical social failing spells doom. Europeans who visit the U.S. almost universally condemn American society for denying the poor what they need and -- naturally -- also prophesy that this critical social failing spells doom.  I meandered on about the American --> Europe side a few weeks ago, now it's time for Part I of the Europe --> America side.

You'll see more extensive and balanced coverage of poor and working-class Americans on German and French television in one month than you'll see in years of watching American TV. Just a few weeks ago, for instance, I turned on arte (G) (an arts & documentaries channel co-produced by France and Germany) and watch a French film team travel along the Mississippi delta, visiting black churches, welfare offices, liquor stores, and veterans' hospitals.  At one point, they followed a road until it dead-ended deep in the woods.  A few ramshackle houses ringed the cul-de-sac.

A Wave of Self-Righteous Moral Outrage Sweeps Europe! Again!

Below is a link to an Talking Points Memo post about the case of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, but before that, I thought I'd deliver a little background.  Once again, let me make it clear at the outset: I oppose the death penalty, and so I certainly would have been happy to see Williams get clemency.  But the European outrage on this subject overblown.  I was reading an article by Bianca Jagger about the Williams case yesterday in the left-wing taz newspaper, andI literally burst out laughing several times at her pompous self-importance.

Williams' execution was controversial in the United States, but not very.  Let me explain why.  Most people, including those on the moderate left, considered the decision whether to grant Williams clemency to be within Gov. Schwarzenegger's scope of judgment.  The arguments Schwarzenegger used to deny clemency were accepted by most observers, because they're not irrational.  Read them carefully.  Plenty of Europeans (this example is an editorial in German) believe they can read Schwarzenegger's mind, and now explain that he denied clemency only out of 'cowardice' or 'political pressure.'  Like all attempts at mind-reading, these are pure speculation. Schwarzenegger explains why he denied clemency in the memo I linked to above.  I would have given Williams clemency, but Schwarzenegger had his reasons. Schwarzenegger's main point was that Williams committed four horrifying murders of innocent victims (including three fellow racial minorities), and his claim of redemption rang hollow, given that he would not confess his guilt.

Of course, this puts Williams in the uncomfortable position of having to either acknowledge his guilt (which might have affected his legal appeals) or maintain his innocence, in which case he would reduce his chances of clemency.  But this seems to be a cruel dilemma only if Williams actually was innocent.  If he committed the murders, it's hardly unfair to expect him to confess that fact if we are going to take his claims of redemption seriously.

Does Saturn have Weapons of Mass Destruction?

During the recent German election campaign, I noticed that the most successful applause lines in former Chancellor Schroeder's speeches were asides like "The conseratives want to introduce American-style worker relations into German workplaces, and I'll never let that happen" or "The other side accuses us of driving seniors into poverty.  But I'll tell you, if you want to see real poverty among seniors, you should look at America!" or "During our last summit meeting, George W. Bush went to the bathroom and didn't wash his hands afterward."  OK, I made that last one up.  But the others were real, and were invariably greeted by loud applause.

But according to this story, former Canadian defense minister Paul Hellyer is onto a much more dire threat emanating from the USA.  Hellyer first observed that "UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."  Don't worry, though -- the UFOs are full of nice "ethical" extraterrestrials who just want to help us.  Problem is, the Bush Administration wants to put weapons into space.  The friendly cosmic beings could misinterpret this as a threat.  They would have no choice.  More in sorrow than in anger, wiping a tear of regret at the tragic senselessness of it all from their retractable eye-stalks, they would be forced to vaporize the earth.  The Americans must be stopped; otherwise, according to Hellyer, "they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning."

The response to this Comrade-Esposito-esque* call to arms?  A "standing ovation."