Rekindling love for the USA

Lately I’ve been a bit down on the USA. Of course, the main reason has been the current president, and the depressing thought that 60 million voted for him and 30 million of those still idolize him. But I wonder if I’ve started denigrating the wider US unreasonably, like you do in one of those stale relationships where you start to only see flaws. So I thought I’d do some thinking and research to find some love – think of it as relationship self-counselling.

Like many, I think, I fell in love with the US as a child. Movies like The Graduate or Manhattan showed a place of unlikely affluence, huge houses and large yards, massive skyscrapers and psychoanalysts and sophistication. Remember that back then Europe was only a generation removed from destructive war and many Brits lived in two-up two-down terraces and had only recently discovered cars (stick shift ones) and TV’s.

Slowly, the infatuation declined once I became politically active and read The Guardian. I learned that these easy lives were not so sophisticated to the eyes of an adult, and that much of the wealth was generated at the expense of civil rights and equity. Still, I craved to visit, so the child in me was still in love. I also keenly remember a trip to New York in 1997, where my daughter of 17 demonstrated naïve love, snapping limos and neon with undisguised joy.

It was in that era that I started working with Americans and visiting on business, usually to Houston. I was also reading The Economist more regularly, and that paper constantly harped on about the economic benefits of America's free markets. These experiences confuse me, because in Shell US I saw as complacent and protected a corporate beast that I could imagine. But the beautiful neighbourhoods still made me envious.

That was the background to jumping at the chance to come to live in New York in 2012, especially since it seemed perfect timing for a change of scene and I felt (correctly, as it turned out) that NYC would benefit our rather timid kids.

And New York still holds me in awe. Mainly it is the scale and magnificence of what humanity has constructed here. Even now, whenever I view Manhattan from the RFK Bridge or Gawanus, or look up the length of one of its avenues, my spirits rise. Most New Yorkers hate and avoid Times Square, but I seek it out and sit there to suck in its scale, tacky or not.

We Europeans also tend to be snotty about US culture, often equating age to value. We are wrong. Visit St John Divine or The Cloisters or Grand Central Station, they may not be 500 years old but they are lovely. Don’t forget also that US museums house much of the best artworks, including the European ones.

And we may think of Americans as uncultured, but the culture in NYC is tremendous. You can find a great place to enjoy any niche you are into. I have a fine choice of early music choirs to join or listen to, a privilege not many world cities could offer me.

So I am still up on New York and New Yorkers, despite the noise and filth and potholes and cost of living. But what about the USA and Americans? I turned to the web and their ubiquitous lists to see if I could improve my mood towards the land I am living in.

The first lesson from my research was a reinforcement of one of the things to hate. Even these lists have become politicised and polarised. One rather dodgy list came from a guy who had written a book called “How Nazis infiltrated the left”, or something like that. So I quickly learned to filter the lists to select from. I’ll quote from a couple of them.

One list of eight started with nice, friendly people. They are certainly open and optimistic, but I’m not convinced. I’ve been rather sceptical about all the news reports about Americans helping fellow Americans after the recent hurricanes. I don’t doubt the veracity, but in my experience any people round the world would react the same way, and the reports are rather a desperate attempt to cling to a unity that is no longer there. I’ve met nice friendly people everywhere, each with a few quirks to get used to, and I don’t buy that Americans are different. Reflecting on how they arrived, it may be that they are more optimistic and have more energy to progress, but that may be dissipating over time as well.

Next on the list came jobs, which hardly seems true nowadays especially if quality of job is part of the consideration. After that came travel. True, the land is large and beautiful and accessible, but so is everywhere else by now. Next came diversity. I buy this one, especially in Queens and NYC, human diversity is a wonderful asset. After that came the climate, which I’ll try to remember next January while shovelling snow or next August while hugging the aircon. Kid friendly came next, which feels pretty desperate given the US placing on surveys of the best places to bring up kids and of kids mortality (look it up – it comes behind everywhere in Europe). Then you get convenience and lifestyle. I can partly accept these, but it does seem to depend a lot on where you live and what you earn, and I really don’t think I’ll ever love shopping malls.

Another list had most of these and added a few more. Free speech was near the top. That is fair enough, but hardly a differentiator with Europe, and not necessarily commensurate with the prison population, nor with the president’s remarks about sports this past weekend. This list also included emergency health care, healthy food and street signage, which made me wonder if the author had ever travelled outside the US at all.

If I had looked up things to hate about the US (I didn’t) I guess I would have bought into more items. Guns are everywhere and plain dumb. Politics is toxic. Public healthcare and schooling is iniquitous and broken. Safety nets are pitiful. The ignorance of a wider world is widespread, military arrogance unforgivable.

So I don’t really know where this leaves me. I love New York, which still has a lead over most other cities. But the lead might be narrowing as European and even Asian cities catch up. The same might be true of America itself. Perhaps I fell in love with it because it progressed most quickly after World War II in terms of easy, modern living. But this lead has narrowed even more, and as my taste has moved on from big houses and shopping malls, perhaps even disappeared altogether.

So America doesn’t have much of a lead any more. Then add in Americans and it becomes even harder to rekindle love. Most of the arguments on the lists strike me as out of date or ill informed or even desperate. Which might define the country itself in its current turmoil. And, with thirty million souls stubbornly supporting an unworthy regime, trends are not promising.

So I will count my blessings. I’ll continue to feel awe at this wonderful city, and to respect, with caveats, the US for leading the world admirably from 1945. I’ll continue to admire the diversity of people who have moved here to make their lives better and show drive and optimism.

But this exercise, valuable as it was, didn’t reveal any great reasons to fall in love with the place again, and plenty of reasons to be sceptical about its future and critical of its present. There is not so much about this land that is exceptional any more. And a significant minority seems to be doing all it can to reduce what advantages remain.