uncle SAM

The animus that the United States seems to engender among my colleagues, friends and acquaintances never ceases to amaze me. So many people I know are stirred to oratory flourishes when it comes to badmouthing the United States. Many of them carefully add that they really only dislike the U.S. government, some don't even bother with that small qualification, boldly stating that all Americans are idiots.

This has bothered me for decades now. I simply don't get it. No other country - as far as I've been able to observe - is on the receiving end of so many worldwide protests. Not China, with its inhumane repression of basic freedoms, not Australia with its tough, no-nonsense treatment of refugees, not France which deals with its African "problems" in a far more brutal way than the U.S. has ever done. All these countries may merit an occasional demonstration but nothing as sustained and venomous as the United States receives for every infraction, real or percieved.

I have grappled with this problem ever since I was ten years old and saw posters all over Prague: "Cuba si, Yankee no" and the more juicy: "Yankees, get your imperialist hands off Cuba" Echoes of the same sentiment are now to be found in demonstrations from Sydney to Ottawa, where the world "imperialism" often figures promptly on placards, carried by screaming students, foaming at lip-pierced mouths.

I dug up my Oxford dictionary (didn't want to use Webster's for fear of it being contaminated by imperialist U.S. propaganda) and looked up the word "imperialism". Here is the definition:
"a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means"

Within the above definition, the U.S. has certainly exerted military force (though not much colonization) on other countries. But my question is - why is the United States singled out for so much protest when in fact it is far less imperialistic than powers such as France (in Africa), China (in Tibet), Indonesia, Russia, Turkey and many others - in fact, any country with a powerful military and geopolitical claims or ambitions. And unlike all the above mentioned countries - France excepted, sort of - the U.S. is a vibrant, robust democracy, extending its imperial reach in the name of freedom rather than ONLY for strategic ends (emphasis on ONLY - simply because every government on earth has strategic aims)

There must be something else at play here. There is something about the U.S. that just bugs the heck out of the rest of the world. My answer is old and maybe even cliched but I believe it's the only correct one: it's envy.

Simply stated, people everywhere vote with their feet. Ten of thousands in Mexico may demonstrate against the evil of U.S. expansionism but hundreds of thousands are lining up for U.S. visas or crossing the border illegally. The same is true for most other countries outside of Western Europe. The United States remains an incredibly powerful magnet for people the world over. The lip-pierced crowds and the elites and the artistes and the intelligentsia and the nattering classes may gather for demonstrations in icy Ottawa or sun-scorched Sydney, while millions try to get a piece of the American Pie.

The American Dream is real - it is the object of desire for millions and object of envy for millions of others. They heap scorn on it, they mock it, they deride its loudness and brashness and McDonalds and Hollywood movies but they see all around them that the world cannot get enough of it. That we all want to be a part of it. Because America is huge - not just physically but spiritually, too. It's a huge dream of becoming someone new, of a fresh start, of creating a new life, of carving a niche impossible anywhere else. Yes, it is crass and loud, sure, maybe even corrupt at times, certainly crime-ridden in many places but it still remains the shining beacon it was two hundred years ago. And the demonstrating elites and so many of the people I know just instinctively get their backs up and protest it. They want to find fault, they want to gloat with "shadenfreunde", they want to point out to our virtues as compared to American vices. But trust me, given half a chance of a decent paying job in Florida or Nevada - they're gone!

When I was a little kid in Prague, we used to play a game called "My uncle came from America..." A kid would say the sentence: "My uncle came from America and he brought me a motorcycle" Or a pair of jeans, or skates, or a box of bubble gum - whatever. And the other kids had to embelish the story and carry it further. The point was that "America" was the horn of plenty. America was everything we could never be: not just rich and free but also the land of dreams that could actually be fullfilled.

As long as that dream lives on (and for me and millions of others it does), I will never understand the slandering and the badmouthing and the small-minded insults hurled at America. The music I love came from America. America has always been there when the world was hurting (true, not always as speedily as it might have been; nevertheless it DID get there when needed) To pretend that the U.S. does not have its own political and strategic goals would be crazy. Of course it does! But above all, its main goal is to be the symbol and the beacon of freedom and possibility. Don't take my word for it - just see how many people the world over vote with their feet and run to the place that all those angry demonstrators spit on and condemn.