The American Coup

[Peter Korsten]

James R. Coplin schreef:

> You have hit the nail on the head I think.  There is perception on both
> sides of the Atlantic that we are more similar than different; this is of
> course false.  The error stems from a "but we're from over there" and
> "they're from over here."  There is a massive and considerable cultural
> difference as well as some attitude.  American's chafe at European
> patronizing attitudes and like parents rebuffed by their progeny, Europeans
> see us as unruly and uneducated.  Both attitudes I think stem from a
> fundamental misunderstanding of each other.  

Well, I wouldn't put it that we're more different than similar, but 
there are a a couple of things that I, as a European, find difficult to 
understand.

For example, Bill's friend, who has a rare form of cancer, but cannot 
afford medical insurance. Hang on a second: this is a country with a 
massive GDP per capita, with just a handful of (usually European) 
countries having a higher value, and yet there are people that cannot 
afford medical insurance. Here in Malta, not exactly the richest country 
in Europe, if I need urgent medical treatment, I go to hospital. They 
take me ID card number and that's it. No bill. Everybody pays National 
Insurance, how much you pay depends on your income, and that's it. 
Everybody is insured. And if you can't afford them, the government 
provides medication for free.

It's this attitude that, if you're poor, it's probably your own fault, 
that is totally alien to most Europeans.

Another thing is who you would go to for advise on important decisions 
in your life. In Europe, people would discuss this with their family. In 
the US, they're more likely to talk to their religious leader. Eh? 
Wouldn't your family be more affected than him?

> I think part of it has to do with scale.  The US is freaking huge.  I know
> you say you have seen maps etc but until you have been here, driven around
> and dealt with the physical space, you can't understand.  I laugh all the
> time when my European guests want to know if we can pop down to Chicago for
> dinner.  A cousin from Norway was all excited that he had found a rare
> motorcycle what he called a little outside Chicago.  I live in Minneapolis,
> Chicago is a 8 hour drive.  The "little" outside Chicago was more like 4
> hours out of Chicago making a 12 hour drive each way to get this bike.  He

Western, northern, southern and central Europe are indeed quite densely 
populated (tell me about it, I'm living on the most densely populated 
off-coast island in the world), but go to the east and things start to 
change. But not that many of us have actually been to like Russia, which 
has half the number of inhabitants of the US, on a significantly larger 
area.

Not so in the part of Europe to the west of the rough line that starts 
at the Baltic states and descends down to Greece. People can tell from 
what village you are just from your dialect or accent, and this may also 
influence their preconceptions. There are about 50 countries (steadily 
getting more and more), with easily as many national and minority 
languages, and as many governments and their policies and, until 
recently, all with their own currency.

Compared to the two countries in North-America (to which I'm not 
counting Mexico, which culturally is closer to South-America), two 
currencies and two official languages (for those knuckle-heads in 
Quebec), that's quite a big difference.

> gets it now. Europeans have no trouble understanding the massive variation
> in the peoples of Europe, yet lump all Americans into a fairly homogenous
> media construct. I have never understood this peculiarity.

Probably because the nation state is quite strong in Europe, and so they 
might expect the US to be the same. It depends from one country to the 
next: Belgium is a good example where the idea of a nation state clearly 
hasn't taken off, whereas the Netherlands, despite fairly significant 
regional and religious (catholic vs. protestant) differences *is* a 
nation state, with a strong national identity of being Dutch, even 
though it's impossible to say what being Dutch actually means (short 
from wearing wooden shoes and sticking your finger in a dike).

Also, despite the 50 states and their own laws and governments, the US 
have a strong federal government (far stronger than the EU and its 
eternal disagreements), and a lot of institutions and companies that 
cover the entire nation. This is much less so in Europe, where there's 
no pan-European broadcaster (which would be pretty useless anyway, what 
with all the different languages), and the brands you see across the 
continent would typically be American (McDonald's, Coca Cola, Microsoft, 
Apple) and a handful of European brands like Vodafone and Nokia.

The comparison between the 50 states in the US and the around 50 
countries in Europe is interesting. Some of them are small or even tiny 
(Vatican City is basically a large church, a breathtaking collection of 
art and a disused railway station), whereas others are positively huge 
(like Russia or California).

But do you have that in the US, that when you cross a state border, that 
you notice a subtle difference in practically everything? That the 
houses look different, and the traffic signs (even though the same signs 
are used throughout Europe)? In Europe, this is normal. In one country, 
motorway signs will be blue, and in the next country they're green. The 
thickness of the red border around a traffic sign is slightly different. 
And so on, and so on.

All in all, Europe is for me a continent with a fantastic variety of 
culture and art that is unrivalled anywhere in the world (Italy on its 
own has more treasures than some continents), with centuries old 
cathedrals sitting close to hyper-modern office buildings, and a history 
(much of it painful, to this very day) that shaped the world as it is today.

And even though Europe may have lost its leading position, when it comes 
to the best cities to live in, the greatest amount of press freedom, the 
least amount of corruption (and, um, the largest amount of alcohol 
consumption per capita), it's always Europe that fills the top spots.

Which, in my view, makes Europe the most desirable continent, and as 
such that allows us a certain amount of arrogance. :)

- Peter