Western Europeans as elite Americans

"Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry is a big hit in Europe. But as the summer wears on, fairly or unfairly, this force-multiplier of her husband's Europeanism is beginning to grate like some character out of a Henry James novel* -- reflecting our own unease with the predictable mixture of acquired fortune, haute culture and aristocratic disdain" writes VDH. Nuanced Photoshop portrait of Madame Kerry as Henry James heroine draws on elements from Merchant Ivory films The Europeans and The Bostonians,

"Never has Europe been so emotionally involved in an American election -- and never to their peril have they read us so wrong," writes Victor Davis Hanson in today's Wall Street Journal (available to subscribers only -- Update: Accessible here, thanks to Rob A of Fine? Why Fine):

Michael Moore is offered up as proof of grassroots American unhappiness with the president. Was he not perched in an exalted seat at the Democratic convention? Completely lost on Europeans is that Mr. Moore, for all his notoriety, is still a cult figure. An icon among the Moveon.org crowd, and when used gingerly a good weapon of the Democratic Party, he is still otherwise a polarizing figure disliked by the majority of America that votes. As the list of cinematic distortions in his recent film grows, "Fahrenheit 9/11" increasingly will be relegated to the genre of crass propaganda once mastered by the far more gifted Leni Riefenstahl in her similarly slanted "political documentary," "Triumph of Will."

More serious Europeans point out that the anger of our seasoned ex-diplomats and retired generals is further evidence that Americans are tired of Mr. Bush's unilateralism. Of course, out-of-work diplomats are keen to find fault with their successors. And few American administrations have proved as controversial in refashioning American foreign policy as have the blunt-speaking George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. All are fat targets after radically altering America's prior relationships with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Libya, dividing Europe into Old and New, questioning the role of American troops in NATO and in South Korea, and parting with Yasser Arafat. Yet all these sensationalized developments were long overdue, and precisely for that reason they may well become institutionalized, so much so that even a Kerry victory can do little to overturn them.

The well-meaning, but entirely impotent European efforts at curbing genocide in the Sudan or the nuclearization of Iran make one doubt the vaunted new efficacy of "soft power" -- triangulation always predicated on the threat of real American hard force in the shadows.

For a bewildered American, the key in squaring the anti-American rhetoric with the Valley Girl reality is simply to understand Western Europeans as elite Americans. Their upscale leisured culture is not much different from Malibu, Austin and Dupont Circle, that likewise excuse their crass submission to popular American tastes through the de rigueur slurs about the "corporations," "Bush-Cheney," and "Halliburton." Perhaps this notion that Europe itself has become a cultural appendage of the U.S. explains why it views our upcoming election as a referendum on its own future as well.

*The Europeans is "the story of an encounter between a family of pre-Civil War New Englanders and their European relations whose alien, sophisticated ways dazzle some family members and scandalize others," explains the website of Merchant Ivory Productions' first Henry James adaptation:

The resulting conflicts and complications in the Wentworth and Acton houses come to play out James's vision of America trying to maintain her innocence by fending off European influences.

The characters must somehow forge relationships and identities somewhere between the grave sobriety of Puritan acseticism, its "thousand different ways to be dreary," and the perceived amoral or outright immoral decadence of the Continent.

Comments

[goomp]

The elites of Europe and the US are great at tearing down and preventing building up, but not very good at defending against lethal enemies. Let us hope the voters of this country are not led down the path to destruction by our mortal enemies.

[Rob A.]

Sissy the full article for free is here.

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/6363

[Sissy Willis]

Thanks, darling for the link.