“The point about all this is that this very idealisation of America
\nby Americans, its self-identification with virtue, contributes enormously both
\nto its innocence and to its arrogance. There is often a real generosity of spirit
\nand a friendly naivete which strikes the non-American (at least the English
\nones) when encountering an American citizen. One thinks of the countless jokes
\nabout the American as an `innocent abroad<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We have heard a lot about “The Ugly American” in the prisoner abuse scandal
\nin Abu Graid. But Clarke and Hoggett’s article, encapsulted to some extent the
\nquote above, shows that the "Ugly" and the "Beautiful" Americans
\nare two sides of the same coin. All of us in the West who have been exposed
\nto American culture at all (and that is the vast majority of us) have been exposed
\nto “The Beautiful American”. The American who is generous, friendly, polite,
\nthoughtful, considerate and well versed in internal American and World affairs.
\nWalter Cronkite comes to mind. <\/p>\n
This psyche is born of the humbling awareness of the privilege of being born
\nin such a great land. It is the greatness and the successes that American society
\nhas experienced that leads also to the arrogance. The belief that American society
\nis “the end of history”. It is the ultimate expression of western liberal democracy
\nto which all other peoples on the earth would, given sufficient knowledge, naturally
\naspire. <\/p>\n
Many of us in the West outside America struggle to contain both sides of the
\ncoin. At one time we see the ugly and think all America is ugly. At other times
\nwe see the beauty and are overwhelmed by it. <\/p>\n
I wonder if America could recognise its “ugliness” just a little bit more,
\nthat the rest of the world would be more able to see its “beauty”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For some time now I have been thinking about a notion I like to call “The Beautiful American”. I came back to it when I came across this article: The Empire of Fear: The American Political Psyche and the Culture of Paranoia from the online journal of Psycho-Social Studies. (via Orgdyne) A quote to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}