Representation

[tinyjo]

Listening to the news over the last few weeks and months I've been musing about how different America and Americans seem in the news than it does from meeting and talking to actual Americans. Not just a little bit more laid back, a little bit more accepting but hugely fundamentally different. From it's government, it's public face, America seems to me to be smug and self-satisfied. Insualar. Selfish. Puritianical. Greedy. And yet from meeting and talking to Americans, I know that that's not the only story. Still it's hard not to come away with an impression of the States as a schitzophrenic nation, torn between two very different personalities.

It certainly helps me to understand why many people in the world dislike America - I have had the opportunity to dilute the public face with the private through my access to the net and the fact that we speak a common language but not many do get that opportunity. I think that if I only saw the public face I too would heartily dislike and distrust America. It also makes me wonder what the public face of Britain is like these days. I find it hard to imagine that we come out well to an outsider watching.

When I think about it, I worry about my tendancy (and I'm sure it's not just me) to treat a whole society in this way. It seems to be somehow inbuilt, a short cut based on the fact that they do act together and it does seem that you can know what to expect from a government as a personality but it's dangerous because the temptation is to let it colour interactions with individuals, which unless they are members of the government is rather unreasonable. After all, I live in a representative democracy but I'd hate people to think that David Blunkett represented me. And yet, I do have to watch myself. The instinct, not helped by the language used in the media all the time is to say not "I dislike the American government" but "I dislike America". Luckily I have my friends list to remind me that you're not all like George Bush (or in fact, any of you - I obviously only ever meet one half of the split personality).

Comments

[eudaimonia-nz.livejournal.com]

I think the American people are badly served by propoganda devices used by their leaders. Faced with a criticism of American (usually foriegn) policy, the American establishment will reject the criticism as 'anti-americanism', and not answering the substance of the issue.

I have been thinking along similar lines to you in the last couple of days. I came to the conclusion that many Americans are genuinely embarassed about Bush. Unfortunately American elections have among the lowest turnout in the democratic world. So as long as Americans vote, the world will cheer when the Americans piss on the bushes!

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately American elections have among the lowest turnout in the democratic world.

I'll be interested to see what effect the very close result of last time has on voter turnout, especially in Florida. Hopefully it will encourage increased turnout because people will feel that their vote really does have the potential to make a difference, although I suspect that the electoral college thing will mean that for many people it still won't.

[eudaimonia-nz.livejournal.com]

Dare I say it but your suspicion could well be right. As for voting making a difference, Kerry could be his own worst enemy there. He wants to send more troops to Iraq, and he apparently supports the latest criminal policies of Sharon.

The current system of college voting makes the US a 'weak' unrepresentative democracy. Its really a plutocracy. I would personally would like the US left (Nader, Kusmitch) to say to Kerry they will only support him if he undertakes electral reform, even moderate changes would be good, such as evening up the college votes that create a instituional conservative bias (big rural states with more college votes than their population should allow).

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

*neil pauses to try & work out how Joe knows Jo and whether it's all part of some terrifying small-world conspiracy*

[eudaimonia-nz.livejournal.com]

hehe. friends of friends must be good friends and all that. I was luckly to come accross tinyjo's journal via badasstronaut friends list. badasstronaut was in the same geek/goth/roleplayer social group I was in (in christchurch, nz). Small world indeed!

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

friends of friends must be good friends

very true! & cool (I was at uni with tinyjo)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

You know eudamonia_nz? How? We just met more or less randomly (although, I now realise from the preceding comment, not as randomly as I had thought).

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

he went out with a girl I know through a friend from school amongst a bunch of people I've made friends with in Egham (before he disappeared back off half-way round the world, of course)

[diffrentcolours]

I doubt that the Americans you meet online are a representative sample of the population, however, since Internet users tend to be more lefty and liberal than not. I'm sure if you went to Buttfuck, Alabama and took a look around you'd find something closer to the public face of America. At least, that's what my lefty liberal Internet-using friends from Buttfuck say ;)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Probably true. It's an interesting demographic because they vary in things like income vastly but they nearly all fall on the liberal side politically. I wonder whether liberals are more likely to be interested in the internet, and particuarly in services like LJ, which is where I met most of my American friends, or whether being on the internet and on LJ encourages people to shift to a more liberal outlook...

[diffrentcolours]

The Internet is full of homosexuals, paedophiles and terrorists. No Republican would be seen dead there, but they're secretly hoping that all the pinko liberals will get dragged off to Guantenamo for having a 'net connection.

[pinata23.livejournal.com]

Depends where you go on the net.
American football websites that have a political forum tend to have their fair share of neo-cons and free-market fundamentalists. ;-)

[diffrentcolours]

And, curiously, fetish sites. I've seen a few of them with fora full of right-wingers. You'd think they'd be pinko lefties too, but I guess it fits the old Tory MP self-asphyxiating in lingerie stereotype.

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I agree. There are a lot of places in America where people think very differently from the way most of the Americans you meet on LiveJournal think.

And of course, our electoral system gives people in states with a lower population, who are more likely to agree with Bush, higher representation both in presidential politics and in congress than a system based purely on population would. That, not the vote-counting scandal in Florida, is the main reason why Bush won in our last presidential election. Gore had 51 million popular votes, compared with Bush's 50.5 million, but Bush got 271 electoral college votes, compared with 266 for Gore.

Well, speakin' "for my Peeps"...

[applez.livejournal.com]

0. Firstly, I have a weird perspective, so take that into account with my opinions ... I accept I am in many ways American, but I still fundamentally do not understand this country or its people...in large part because I didn't grow up in the US.

Now to the substance...

1. US society is schizoid ... and I think this mental break between what is said and what is done derives from several sources...

1a. The Revolution of the colonies was to make every material aspect (the press, the government, the local ordinances, the laws, the courts) the 'cup' of all of society's political disagreements. It deliberately distorts a given debate and accelerates divisions to reach a swifter conclusion.

1b. From the very beginning, there has been a crucial division between the rhetoric of the Revolution and its new government, and the reality of how people lived. Whether that is found in such conveniently-ignored inconsistencies like slavery, or in the strong anti-federalist efforts such as the Whiskey Rebellion.

1c. There is a habit in the US to orchestrate or otherwise wait for a situation to develop that regardless of political philosophy, the realities of a large continental country with vested interests forces a sole-choice action. I think Kerry's involvement and erstwhile support for efforts in Iraq, plus the Bush Team's arguments that dismay over going into Iraq at this point are all moot - exemplify this.

1d. All these structures promote monolithic/bloc thinking - and whilst one could get away with such laziness as recently as 1990, it is completely obsolete and dangerous to rely on that in today's world, especially by a remainder superpower like the US. Side-stepping the conspiratorial possibilities of this point for now, but ... Americans generally are busy or are kept busy to such a degree that simplified information is what they mostly seek. The market complies in supplying precisely that. Again, I think this is dangerous for a country as powerful as the US is.

1e. I would therefore suggest that simple universal values and an earnest quest for complex applications has to be the mad dance accepted and worked with - this isn't the case. Especially with the Bush Team.

2. For all the rhetoric of the Revolutionary leader whose going to bust things up and make things better ... Americans are actually more conservative than that. Most are doing well enough that there is no desire for radicals. In this regard, Bush is riding a very dangerous line, and is betraying many core Republican principles.

3. re: Kerry - Given that he's been in government all these years, he certainly cannot play the part of 'rebel outsider' - so naturally he is going to offer rhetorical support for the war in Iraq and other policies. I would translate this into a positive, since he is a known Washington commodity who can play with all the other babies in the sandbox.

4. Classic rule for understanding American politics: don't go by what is said, go by what is done - and follow the money trail. Money really does dominate action, whilst fear dominates the rhetoric.

Sorry for my bolding error

[applez.livejournal.com]

eeek!

Re: Well, speakin' "for my Peeps"...

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I can't remember where I first saw it, but the classic rule of politics is "where's the money?". It leads you to be very cynical, but it's yet to lead me to be overly cynical unfortunatly.

...what the public face of Britain is like these days...

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

In Lebanon a month ago, it turned out everyone had seen video of the enormous anti-war demos in the UK, and so there was no need to have any discussion about, well, how it wasn't *your* bright idea to go invading places. People were very understanding.

A year before that, in the US, the guy at the Alamo desk thanked us for Tony Blair. It was about 2am UK time by then, so we just grunted and grabbed the keys. He meant well, and he was pretty young - it seemed a bit mean to say, "well you can jolly well have him, then!". Tempting though!

I guess people see what they want to see. But it's hard to take against the US as an entity on the grounds of its foreign policy without reflecting on the fact that Mrs T, Section 28 et al was the public face of Britain for over a decade.

PS I hear you have an iRiver iHP. How did you find the user interface?

Re: ...what the public face of Britain is like these days...

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

it's hard to take against the US as an entity on the grounds of its foreign policy without reflecting on the fact that Mrs T, Section 28 et al was the public face of Britain for over a decade.

Yeah - that's one of the thing which keeps me rigourously correcting myself when I want to say "Americans!" at the radio in exasperation and subsitituing "American politicians!"

I hear you have an iRiver iHP. How did you find the user interface?

Pretty good actually. I still have to refer to the manual when I want to do recording, but I don't do that very often which is partly why I haven't really picked it up. It probably only took me about 20 mins to get the hang off, it's just not quite as sexy as the iPod.