One of the main assertions of my new manuscript, The You of My Song: Notes from a Voluntary Exile, is that there are aspects of American society which can be seen better from abroad than from “under the American bell jar.” What we outsiders can see clearly–while wondering why the Americans themselves have so much trouble discerning the same phenomena– is how the United States interacts both with other countries around the world, as well as with their domestic minorities. From abroad we see cynicism, manipulation, lies, pre-emptive warfare, economic abuses, and torture. Inside of the United States we see a troubled and truculent populace armed to the teeth, the world’s largest prison population, and the loathsome death penalty. I’m sorry. That’s what we see in the media, both domestic and foreign, online and offline, along with the unending attempts by the U.S. establishment to cover it all up or simply deny it.
It is equally true, however, that there are aspects of American society which cannot be detected from abroad, but which the Americans themselves discern clearly. I’m referring to the millions of daily interactions of private America, which include instances of sincere random kindness and senseless acts of beauty, tolerance, and generosity. This is what the most of the American people like to see and to dwell upon. This is how they want to see themselves. Why can’t they see the other, unsavory side of the American coin? One reason is that the United States establishment is constantly generating powerful smoke screens which prevent them from perceiving anything very clearly. There’s fear smoke, patriotic smoke, war-on-terror smoke, self-interest smoke, consumerism smoke, pop-culture smoke, profit smoke, and the sweet narcotic smoke of plain vanilla lies. The ingenuous majority of Americans can almost be forgiven for not noticing the more unsavory elements in their national agenda.
But neither can we outsiders be blamed for detecting the lurid glow of American sordidness both inside and outside of their frontiers. Does this make us anti American? Not necessarily. What it does is to give us a strong distaste for sordidness, wherever it may emanate from.
Filed under: United States, books | Tagged: Mike Booth, random kindness, see ourselves as others see us, see yourselves as others see you, seeing the U.S. from abroad, senseless acts of beauty, sordidness, the American bell jar, The You of My Song: Notes from a Voluntary Exile
