America - Where Did You Go?

There was a moment some time in the recent past when America started to lose its confidence. Years ago it was its friends like me who saw its superficial excellence and thought it great. Americans seemed taller; the girls were blonder, figures more perfect, and eyes bluer, their teeth whiter and straighter. American roads were straighter, longer and wider, the buildings taller, the universities more plentiful and better and more widely accessible to a bigger percentage of the population.

The rest of the world bought into this image and sought to imitate it. As a child my parents rented out half of our small house in London’s West Acton to a U.S. Army Sergeant and his family who were stationed in England. I have always idolized black Americans in uniform, like my kind friend and mentor. The special magic of the man was that he worked in the PX, which was actually the forerunner of American style supermarket culture. These Aladdin’s caves of plenty ushered forth unimagined luxuries for a small boy borne when rationing still prevailed. This tall smiling demigod neighbor supplied me with different flavors of chewing gum that I can still taste. Exotic fruits like pineapple and pomegranates passed my eager lips. I thought America was somewhere to the West of England, but on a higher plane, nearer to heaven.

My uncle Eddie was living in Los Angeles and he would send me more multi flavored gum which I chewed as I avoided the cracks in the sidewalk, dreaming of America as I walked to school. The dominant films the television and the modern music were all pouring out from that shining light across the big shining ocean. We wanted to dress, eat, talk and even walk like Americans.

This started to dissipate when America and the world perceived the Vietnam War to be a mistake. Not many remember the now reviled Domino Theory in which the American State Department declared that if Vietnam fell to the Communists then so would the rest of Asia. The American withdrew in ignominy from Saigon. This was the first time in modern history that America’s step faltered. Many foreign missteps followed, but to my mind, and those of other friends I mostly felt that their motives were honest and well meant. But for those of America’s enemies, who are many, each perceived mistake was seen as an excuse to lambaste everything American.

Now America’s emblematic currency, the once mighty dollar, is openly sneered at everywhere from South America to the Middle Eastern Kasbah. I remember the same happening to the British pound about 30 years ago. It seemed an irredeemable situation for Britain. Like many Brits at the time I thought our country was ungovernable in the late 1970’s. Along came a woman called Margaret Thatcher, and the whole world, starting with the UK, changed for the good. Soon our pounds sterling became strong again, and our economy the envy of the World. The same can happen for America’s dollar.

Based on America’s can do attitude, innate ability and it’s tremendous but momentarily repressed sense of optimism, I believe America is not yet doomed. I also fervently hope that this is the case. The World needs a successful USA to survive and prosper. This, more than any other single factor will probably result in America and the world coming through its present difficulties.

However there might well be bigger, long-term problems to come for which will need an American / European alliance to lead the way forward, out of the mess. There is nothing inherently wrong with the rest of the world but for their inexperience in taking a broader, not totally nationalistic view of our world. Both Europe and America recognize that they must lead the way forward to solve truly global problems with the kind of thinking that leads to a broader, sweeping and strategic plan. In this instance, enlightened self-interest might well be the guiding light for the rest of the world. America must not lose confidence now that the sound of the economic gunfire is getting closer. America, join with Europe and lead.