Heartbreak Hotel

“They’ll be no more FDRs”

Steve Earle, ‘Christmas in Washington’

The attempt to explain a place as large, diverse, and maddeningly energetic as the United States of America to a global audience is a daunting prospect. It’s even harder when the nation itself is betraying its core values, abandoning its most honourable traditions, and acting in bad faith on so many fronts.

There are heartbreaks everywhere in the world today. But the United States offers a special kind. Before 2000 it was very close to reaching its great potential as a democratic republic. It was leading by example – flawed, as always, but just good enough to cheer. Just four years later it seems so far from realising the goals of universal dignity for its citizens, enlightened leadership from its officials, and transparency in its deliberations, that one might be tempted to give up hope.

Throughout 2004, openDemocracy has sought to explain the United States and the world to each other. Among the highlights:

• My America: Letters to Americans – with contributions from Shirin Ebadi, Richard Rorty, Wei Jingsheng, Asma Jahangir, John Dower, and many more
• Columns from Todd Gitlin, Dave Belden, John Hulsman, and Siva Vaidhyanathan; regular articles from Charles Peña
• American power & the world – with articles from Anatol Lieven on American nationalism, Stephen Howe on empire, and Tom Nairn on the free world’s end
• Election 2004 – from pro-Bush Arabs to Democratic strategists, analysis and response to a global election

If you share openDemocracy’s concern with illuminating the relationship between the United States and the world, please consider subscribing for just £25 / $40 / €40. You’ll gain access to easy–to–read PDFs of all these articles and debates

That would be a grand mistake. When I started writing this column in the spring of 2004, I did so with the full understanding that most of openDemocracy’s readers were disinclined to love the United States as much as I do. They would discount any professions of ideals, any hint of patriotism, or any boastful optimism about America’s “mission” to spread hope and justice throughout the world.

Good times, bad times

As a result, very little of that stuff – all of which I feel and believe – made it into my “Remote Control” columns. I now regret such omissions. In every American child there is hope. In every American school there is talent. In every American family there is love. And when times get easier, when Americans stand at ease once again, America will be good and great.

I have to force myself to remember these hopes. I have been so angry at my (formerly unelected; now over-elected) president and his party of liars, thieves, and torturers that I let the urgency of the 2004 election distract me from my own mission: exploring America’s uniquely disengaged engagement with the rest of the globe.

I had hoped to present in this space a multidimensional view of America’s cultural politics, its stunning topography and fascinating geography, its breadth and depth. I fear I have failed. The bitter election spoiled the taste of everything else.

As I flew over the Grand Canyon in April, I could only think about western water policy and federal land policy, and how the government is betraying our commitment to preserve this gorgeous place. As I crossed from Vancouver into Seattle in May, I could only reflect on the cold paranoia that both sides of the border demonstrate, instead of the glorious pluralism that Canada and the United States share. When I went diving among the coral reefs off the Florida Keys, I could only see the coral heads dying from pollution and global warming, not the reef ecosystem that remained brilliant and alive. These things used to take my breath away. Now they furrow my brow.

The week after the election of 2004 I immersed myself in conversations about possibilities that the election was “stolen” by untrustworthy voting machines. I find myself unconvinced that the three-and-a-half-million-vote gap between George W Bush and John Kerry was the result of nefarious technology. Some votes were certainly corrupted. But I am sad to report that the will of just more than 50% of American voters will be appropriately reflected when Bush takes his oath again in January 2005, his right hand on a book he has read so many times yet fails to understand.

When he stands in chilly Washington to deliver his address, Bush will expound on how he interprets my country’s mission in the world. He will use words that spoken by almost anyone else would generate a sense of respect and hope throughout America. But Bush has credibility in few quarters of the world beyond that 51% of the electorate. His words will hurt, not heal.

So let me do what he can’t do. Let me tell you what America can and should do for the world and for itself.

The least we can do

First and foremost, America should accept responsibility for its citizens and for its actions in global affairs. If Bush has mutated anything about the American political tradition, he has managed to divorce any sense that actions and policies are attached to any particular official whom we should hold accountable. The man who advised Bush that torture could be legal and that the Geneva Conventions are “quaint”, Alberto Gonzales, will be the next attorney-general of the United States.

The man who is currently losing control of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, will retain his job as secretary of defense in a second term. Bush himself is responsible for a medical program its subscribers abhor and an economy teetering on the verge of collapse. No one seems to be holding these incompetent leaders accountable for their failures.

Yet Bush seems intent on shaming such noble public servants as UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohammad ElBaradei, both of whom have been proven right about the imaginary harms that Saddam Hussein could have unleashed on the rest of the world. The responsible suffer and the irresponsible prosper.

Enough about Bush. What about us?

Domestically, there are promises we have vowed to keep as Americans that reflect the broad values of millions of citizens. These are commitments we made to the betterment of the nation and the species.

In the 1930s, we promised our parents we would ensure they would have a constant (if modest) income in their later years, paid for by the able-bodied workers of today. We can keep this minimal promise by celebrating its genius and defending President Roosevelt’s social security system from foolish attempts to privatise it.

In the 1950s, we promised that children could get a decent education at public expense. In the 1970s and 1980s we promised young people that we would not send them recklessly into combat without a clear set of achievable ends and unambiguous evidence for the need to intervene. In the 1990s we pledged to the world that we would respect international law and forge broad alliances when executing military actions.

In the 1970s we promised generations to come that our air and water would be clean, that we would seek more sustainable ways to keep our lights burning, and that we would hold those who poison children accountable for cleaning up their messes.

No more couch-potato politics

We can no longer simply blame an unelected president as we systematically renege on these promises. Those of us who voted for him must answer future generations when they ask why their rivers are poisoned and their schools crumbling.

Those of us who worked against Bush will have to realise that we have yet to articulate a lucid enough case for the need to remain responsible and accountable – that government should be a place for grownups. We didn’t speak firmly enough to sway the two million or so voters who would have made the difference. We are as much to blame as any candidate, consultant, or system.

I called this column “Remote Control” because that phrase, and the device to which it refers, represents how I see America’s relationship with the world. We push buttons and watch the colours change. But we never seem to feel the effects of our choices. We never take stock of the costs or credit for the benefits of our actions. But perhaps the false comforts of “remote control” are gone. It’s getting harder to ignore our effects on the world (and the world on us) as Iraq grows darker and bloodier, and as America grows angrier, more frightened, and less open.

I had hoped to walk through the issues that concerned me in this column with a light and lyrical voice, employing humour and irony where I could. I failed. I’m too young to espouse the grizzled, cynical comic detachment of a Mark Twain. I’m too old and bitter to assume the spiritual wilful naïveté of a Walt Whitman. The times I inhabit are not as brutal or absurd as the times Whitman and Twain witnessed. But I lack the ears, eyes, and voice required to do the job right. For that, and for many other things, I can only offer the rest of the world heartfelt apologies on behalf of myself, and 49% of my country.