Tom McTague: The Decline of the American World
It is hard to escape the feeling that this is a uniquely humiliating moment for America. As citizens of the world the United States created, we are accustomed to listening to those who loathe America, admire America, and fear America (sometimes all at the same time). But feeling pity for America? That one is new, even if the schadenfreude is painfully myopic. If it’s the aesthetic that matters, the U.S. today simply doesn’t look like the country that the rest of us should aspire to, envy, or replicate.
“He hated America very deeply,” John le Carré wrote of his fictional Soviet mole, Bill Haydon, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Haydon had just been unmasked as a double agent at the heart of Britain’s secret service, one whose treachery was motivated by animus, not so much to England but to America. “It’s an aesthetic judgment as much as anything,” Haydon explained, before hastily adding: “Partly a moral one, of course.”
For the United States... cultural
dominance is both an enormous strength and a subtle weakness. It draws in
talented outsiders to study, build businesses, and rejuvenate itself, molding
and dragging the world with it as it does, influencing and distorting those
unable to escape its pull. Yet this dominance comes with a cost: The world can
see into America, but America cannot look back. And today, the ugliness that is
on display is amplified, not calmed, by the American president.
“He hated America very deeply,” John le Carré wrote of his fictional Soviet mole, Bill Haydon, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Haydon had just been unmasked as a double agent at the heart of Britain’s secret service, one whose treachery was motivated by animus, not so much to England but to America. “It’s an aesthetic judgment as much as anything,” Haydon explained, before hastily adding: “Partly a moral one, of course.”
I thought of this as I
watched the scenes of protest and violence over the killing of George Floyd
spread across the United States and then here in Europe and beyond. The whole
thing looked so ugly at first—so full of hate, and violence, and raw, undiluted
prejudice against the protesters. The beauty of America seemed to have gone,
the optimism and charm and easy informality that entrances so many of us from
abroad. At one level,
the ugliness of the moment seems a trite observation to make.
And yet it gets to the core of the complicated relationship the rest of the
world has with America. In Tinker Tailor, Haydon at first attempts
to justify his betrayal with a long political apologia, but, in the end, as he
and le Carré’s hero, the master spy George Smiley, both know, the politics are
just the shell.
The real motivation lies underneath: the aesthetic, the
instinct. Haydon - upper class, educated, cultured, European - just
could not stand the sight of America. For Haydon and many others like him in
the real world, this visceral loathing proved so great that it blinded them to
the horrors of the Soviet Union, ones that went far beyond the aesthetic...
America
isn't breaking. It was already broken. By Andrew Gawthorpe // Why This Time Is
Different. By Dahlia Lithwick
Martin Luther King on Mahatma Gandhi: "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence", September 1958
Martin Luther King on Mahatma Gandhi: "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence", September 1958
