As I sojourn in India my true love - I am nostalgic for America the ideal which is no more. Here are my musings!
I remember going to watch a screening of the CLIO awards at the USIS 35 years ago. I could not believe that there actually were awards for films that sold products and how everyone and everything looked so healthy and wholesome in the featured ads! I spent many hours trolling books to fulfill my fascination of this ideal world. I watched ancient sitcoms that came on the one TV channel we had in India, lapped up their rock and roll and, of course, Hollywood! There was an affluent world out there which appeared perfect with its beautiful people, manicured lawns, massive cars. thick cut slices of bread, creamy milk in glass bottles and blood red tomatoes. They made perfect objects that would last forever and promised equality of opportunity for all. A generation of us lapped up all things American and yearned to set foot on her soil.
My first real encounter with all things American was in Singapore when my husband took his blushing bride to Shakey's Pizza. I was fascinated with the menu and the decor but could not bring myself to enjoy the pie with its foul smelling cheese toppings. To my uninitiated nose cheese smelt like milk gone bad. However, I ate it believing that if this was American food it had to be good! Then came the Macdonald's experience, where I first encountered super sizes in food. I could not fathom how anyone could down a barrel of those immensely sweet shakes? I don't know if I relished the French fries and Apple pie because of their taste or because I was officially a participant in the American cultural experience.
My first trip to the US in the late 80s was an "eye popping" experience. I realized that the super size at MacDonalds was not an anomaly. Everything here was simply and incomprehensibly larger than life. I soon realized that the massive cars, houses, roads, buildings and malls embodied the aspirations and vision of America daring to out perform the human mind's ability to dream and conjure up a reality of abundance, invincibility and opportunity. Anything was possible here. Even though I only visited from neighbouring Canada, I bought into that ideal as did immigrants to the country, developing its business houses and it's educational brain trusts culminating in its present culture of innovation.
However, America is a social experiment with a high price. An experiment built upon a racialised society with a history of institutionalised racism. An experiment with high ideals reliant on the capitalist ethic to achieve them. And for a while it seemed like the good times would last forever. Alas, capitalism had a few plans of its own. Simply put, a bottomless hunger for natural resources brought on by a culture of obsolescence where everyday calls for something new and different to enhance the human experience in pursuit of cash, creativity and choice. This meant preserving a lifestyle by interfering in the sovereignty of other nation states which had resources it needed or which felt threatened by its ideology, respectively. It soon developed a dark side. A stratified society meant frustration for those facing barriers to achieve its ideals, while the red carpet went to the Rockfeller home? Drugs, guns, gangs, and attacks by outsiders began to plague this beautiful nation of baseball and apple pie giving birth to many Americas, the good the bad and the ugly! It began falling victim to its own smokescreen of an aspirational lifestyle!
I love America and Americans. I love it's "can do" attitude, it's over the top abundance and everything that attracted me to it in the first place! I am therefore sad to see this wonderful nation a trillion dollars in debt as a result of its arms programs and support of wars that preserve its currency and oil interests. It's sad to see it become the laughing stock as an unsustainable society of excesses. Where there is no credible public transport and gas for SUVs is subsidized. Where food is cheap and obesity associated health problems are driving up per capita spending and lowering productivity. Where the radical right is gaining ground as the salvation to right the wrongs of the state. Where the divide between rich and poor is growing daily.
What America needs to do is to let go of its self delusion and see itself in all its complexity. It needs to take a good hard look and redefine itself as a nation capable of self reflection that names it's issues, defines them and addresses them in its characteristically innovative and systematic way. Go America!
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