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July 17, 2004

The Beautiful American

For some time now I have been thinking about a notion I like to call "The Beautiful American". I came back to it when I came across this article:

The Empire of Fear: The American Political Psyche and the Culture of Paranoia

from the online journal of Psycho-Social Studies. (via Orgdyne)

A quote to give you the flavour:

"The point about all this is that this very idealisation of America by Americans, its self-identification with virtue, contributes enormously both to its innocence and to its arrogance. There is often a real generosity of spirit and a friendly naivete which strikes the non-American (at least the English ones) when encountering an American citizen. One thinks of the countless jokes about the American as an `innocent abroad

We have heard a lot about "The Ugly American" in the prisoner abuse scandal in Abu Graid. But Clarke and Hoggett's article, encapsulted to some extent the quote above, shows that the "Ugly" and the "Beautiful" Americans are two sides of the same coin. All of us in the West who have been exposed to American culture at all (and that is the vast majority of us) have been exposed to "The Beautiful American". The American who is generous, friendly, polite, thoughtful, considerate and well versed in internal American and World affairs. Walter Cronkite comes to mind.

This psyche is born of the humbling awareness of the privilege of being born in such a great land. It is the greatness and the successes that American society has experienced that leads also to the arrogance. The belief that American society is "the end of history". It is the ultimate expression of western liberal democracy to which all other peoples on the earth would, given sufficient knowledge, naturally aspire.

Many of us in the West outside America struggle to contain both sides of the coin. At one time we see the ugly and think all America is ugly. At other times we see the beauty and are overwhelmed by it.

I wonder if America could recognise its "ugliness" just a little bit more, that the rest of the world would be more able to see its "beauty".

Posted by chriscurnow at July 17, 2004 6:51 PM

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