Atkins and America

For the past month, I’ve been on the Atkins diet.

Intellectually, I mean.

I’ve cut out all stodgy carbohydrate, and nourished my mind solely on choice-cut protein.

Be honest, does it show?

My friends tell me I’ve lost ten years of knowledge. My mind sags less than it used to. My thinking is less wrinkled. They say I’ve ironed out the creases.

But the best thing is the leanness. I’ve lost all that blubber, so unattractive when exposed to public display, like at a party last month when I started waxing lyrical about public sector reform in Europe without the faintest clue what I was talking about. My intellectual cellulite left me feeling ashamed and embarrassed – two emotions I can do without, thank you very much.

My thought was an intellectual stew. Now it’s just a stew – with no dumplings.

I feel like a new man. Last week I impressed some colleagues by expressing a distaste for Brazilian microeconomics. They asked me what I knew about Brazilian microeconomics. Nothing, I said. It just stinks.

Clear thinking.

In fact, so transformed am I by this revolutionary mental diet that I’m starting to think it can work wonders on a global scale, not just the bathroom scales.

Take America. The country’s gone Atkins crazy. American citizens are being fed the diet every day, often without knowing it. From Manhattan to San Francisco Bay, right-thinking freedom-loving families are huddled together in their yards shouting “No more American pie! No more American pie!”

Atkins has entered the giant acidic gut of American public consciousness. And America is a big place, with big people, home to some seriously flabby thinking.

That’s not to knock the place. As regular readers of this column will know, I love America. “Oh, so you’re the one,” President Bush said to me on his last visit to Europe.

There are various reasons for my being an Americophile, all of which I will go into many other times. Honestly, it’s not just the All You Can Eat thing, although that has a lot to do with it. No, I love America because it’s a tough, no-nonsense kind of place. The kind of place that quasi-elects Dubya as president. A nation that’s proud to say they’ve got a pseudo-cowboy with a phoney degree and an intellectually-challenged knowledge of world affairs in the White House, munching pretzels as he lounges in a calfskin leather chair, alligator boots up on the desk, grinning to himself as he surveys the most powerful office on the planet and thinks, “How’d I ever end up here?”.

A place that says to the world, “Hey, we’re so egalitarian we elected this bozo as prez. And if you don’t like it, you can stick it!”

Of course, I’m not saying the president of the United States is a bozo. I’m with the school of non-thought that says Dubya is just “folksy”. A man’s man. A guy’s guy.

I’ve got to admit: I like the bozo.

I’ll tell you why. It’s not just because he throws a mean fastball (could FDR have done that? I don’t think so!). It’s not just because he’s funny (and so charming). It’s because I like the way he acts like he don’t give a damn.

Most people find this insulting. But I’m a sucker for indifference, for swagger and shoulder-shrugging ineptitude peppered with a few gags to fill-in for ignorance (this will not be news to my regular readers).

I’ve got a certain respect for a man who cuts through the ice of international law and diplomacy with the line “Fuck Saddam, I’m taking him out”.

To my mind, this is all-Atkins.

See, the Atkins diet, for those of you still not convinced, is a macho diet. In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s the first diet designed to help women lose weight that is also man-ly.

It’s a moot point, but in recent years, men have been by far the lesser sex. Men are losing their manliness, under pressure to go organic, to get in touch with their feelings and feminine sides, to be metrosexual, to stop driving their cars, smoking their cigars, eating their red meat, bringing home the bacon.

But us men are not ashamed to say we’ve gone Atkins. Atkins has none of that veggie-liberal-save-the-planet mush about it. Atkins is for the man who rejects the facial, who shuns the fin haircut. Atkins says to hell with the sautéed potatoes, get some bloody meat down you.

Yes, Atkins is raw, red-blooded. Atkins is a man’s diet for a man’s world. It cuts the crap and gets down to business. It is not observed in the United Nations canteen.

Most diets are different. Most diets just increase the crap. The cabbage diet, for instance. Most diets are observed in the United Nations canteen.

Fuelled on Atkins, America has got much stronger in recent years, much leaner, quicker, much less weighed down by intellectual flab.

Don’t pretend you hadn’t noticed.

Whether it’s Dubya or Arnie, America has gone macho. America is high on protein, low on carbs.

America is meatier, rawer, totally no-nonsense. Europe still has all its éclairs, its goulashes, its filo pastries, its meringues, pavlovas, its fancy haute cuisine with its rich, complex sauces.

Europe needs to go on a diet.

Still not convinced? Then take a look at Germany. Unlike France, Germany appears ready to make up with Uncle Sam, to forget about the Iraq spat and suck out the poison from its damaged relations with the world’s lone superpower. Maybe it’s all that no-nonsense fleisch, bockwurst, and bier – all that notably macho food.

Maybe Germany is man enough.

Time to cowboy-up, Europe. Atkins is the only show in town.