Thoughts of a US-hater

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By Zafar Masud

uncle_sam_blackwater.jpgAT 67, André de la Roche stands ramrod straight and a full head taller than one’s idea of an averagely tall person.

Hard labour here at his ancestral vineyards by the Loire river in central France has imparted this mild-mannered Parisian intellectual a lean, muscled physique.

The descendant of an old aristocratic family, André now refuses to return to the capital which he says is being taken over by the Americans, as is the rest of the world for that matter. A surprising conclusion, given today’s weak dollar, you’d say!

Can he be described as an America-hater?

Caressing a plant on which shiny, translucent grains are forming already, André turns back to look at the sky, deeply browned fingers shading his eyes and the winegrower’s worry written large across his bronzed forehead. Will the blazing midsummer sun turn his fine white Sauvignon grapes too sweet by harvest time end September? Then he shakes his head and smiles.

“You know, it makes me sad to think I admired America once. But that was the Gary Cooper America, the ‘yep ‘and ‘nope’ America where action took precedence over glibness of the tongue and solitary adventure and creativity, whether intellectual, artistic or scientific, held sway; as do today vulgar video clips, inarticulate Internet blogs and clowning on TV.

“That America is gone forever. Its putrefaction began with an organised campaign of guilt and self-flagellation in the sixties and the process was complete by the end of the decade. Nietzsche held great civilisations did not go down the drain because of foreign invasions; it was inner rot that made them fall apart, like an over-ripened fruit. That is exactly what happened to America, the Big Country, Aaron Copland America!

“Promoting peace through free trade was President Woodrow Wilson’s proud dream, the essence of his triad. That was globalisation without self-righteousness thrown in. But the core of today’s Yankee onslaught is hypocritical pseudo-moralising that is very, very dangerous for world cultures. For, what are human societies without the gift of atavistic memory, without traditional values?

“Look at what is happening in France, once the most refined place on earth. Our kids spit out four-letter words inspired by hoodlums of American suburbs, a culture propagated in rap songs on MTV. Children today dress in baggy jeans with seats dragging on the floor and in T-shirts with profanities proudly emblazoned on them - bought at thousands of American franchise shops that litter every neighbourhood of every European city.

“The earliest McDonald’s joints in Europe opened two decades ago with Bach and Mozart playing in the background. Once confident of selling their trash to our young, they hastily abandoned classical music. Today remote European cities have American-style supermarkets with Snoopy Doggy-dog blaring on the loudspeakers.

“Added to the cultural terrorism, there is also the semantic terrorism. As college students, I remember, we used to discuss our social, political issues entire days, often entire nights. If someone disagreed with the others he had to explain why and everyone tried to grasp his line of thinking.

“Today the greatest American gift, not just to Europe but to the world, is political correctness. A single PC edict can grind an entire philosophical argument in its tracks, a steel shutter falling over an enlightened dialogue! Once you are branded a ‘reactionary’, a ‘sexist’, a ‘homophobe’ you better shut up or risk exclusion.

“When the Americans say they are trying to bring democracy to the people of Iraq or Afghanistan, don’t fall for that. There is no such thing as ‘people’ in the American mindset. We are all consumers. Youthful consumers of videogames, iPods and hamburgers. Female consumers of single-mom literature and television garbage such as ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Sex & the City’. Baby-boomer consumers of Viagra. You name it.

“I have lived in Morocco and Egypt and have travelled to countries like Algeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I know in what high regard a woman is held in a Muslim household, what means respect for the elders and how hospitable and generous to a total stranger can be a Bedouin or a Pathan. My heart bleeds every time I learn of a bombing in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. People are paying a heavy price to keep the Madonna-Microsoft-McIntosh-McDonald’s monster at bay!

“You perhaps wonder why I include Microsoft and McIntosh in the list. After all, they are only technologies. Yes, technologies pushing people around the world into consuming more and more American poison.”

By this time we are heading towards André’s house, our bicycles rolling effortlessly downhill. On our right the tiny figure of a Scottish collie describes lightening circles around a herd of brown goats, expertly urging them to continue their climb up the steep green pasture. In the valley below to our left, shimmer in the sun the Sancerrois vineyards in inexhaustible patterns like an arrangement of carpets, their green harmony broken here and there by dark clusters of oaks and poplars and red-tiled roofs of ancient farmhouses.

Our destination, a sturdy 15th century brownstone mansion, suddenly comes into view at the turn of a winding path under a row of lilac bushes. At the sight of a woman in a straw hat, wrestling with a huge white canopy that she is trying to set over a lunch table in the cobbled, sunwashed frontyard, André smiles: “That doesn’t mean I hate all Americans.”

Noticing us, Jenny gives up her struggle and says in her American-accented French we better wash up if we want some refreshment and lunch. She asks her husband if he would prefer to eat in the sun.

De la Roche has nothing of a Rhett Butler about him. Should a cinematic reference be indispensable, with his jutting chin and close-cropped, steel-grey hair he looks a bit like Georges Marchal, the French actor famous for his performances as Roman emperors, gladiators and generals in the Italian extravaganzas of the 1960s.

As he heads toward the hand-pump, André stops and looks back, offering his wife a chiselled, three-quarter profile. “Frankly speaking my dear,” he rumbles in heavily-accented English, “I don’t give a damn!”

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Thoughts of a US-hater”

  1. Steve on August 26th, 2008 5:11 am

    I am an American patriot but yeah, the America you described is the America I hate.

    But that is the America that Obama represents.

    There is an another America though. The America of Reagan. The America that I hope rises again after the ugly Obama years.

  2. Craig on August 26th, 2008 6:41 pm

    Don’t blame us for the actions of the multinationals. Sure they might have originated in America but they have made it perfectly clear that they have forsaken all loyalty to us so why should I be loyal to them.

    They have become forces unto themselves unfettered from ties of nationalism.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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