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If Only They Didn't Speak English
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If Only They Didn't Speak English: Adventures in America - The Most Foreign Land on Earth 5 stars
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That would explain many many Americans but definitely not all.Something that intrigues me about Trump: His sales language. Words such as "great" "big" "protection" "best" are all sales words. He sold the American people a bill of goods.
There is more to the story, of course. An argument can only cover so much information.
Voting practices. Bernie Sanders was virtually unknown at the time of some of the early primaries and early voting. On the day of the election, I waited outside for my ride to pick me up. Several people decided to find another polling place--driving and walking time being consumed--rather than just waiting. I had been in and out the poll machine with in 30 minutes. Not any serious time for a presidential election. Several people where leaving without voting becaise the line was too long . I asked all who left to please stay to vote. It was important. I could not say to please vote Hillary as I was too close to the polling place. One nurse stopped, looked me in the eyes, told me that they--he and she--had just got off of work and were tired. Surely I understood that. Other places had lines that were over 2 hours long. Many did not vote.
We walked into a wall of our own making.
Hmm... Too much to say. First of all, that was a great review, and I think its important for a book like that to explain to other countries what has happened here - even when we don't quite understand it ourselves. The main issue to me is that our country has a certain divide of interests, where half of the country has different aims and experiences and wants and needs from the other half. I have said before that having an extremely liberal leader does not fix this and heal our country (although it would feel good). I have never thought a Bernie Sanders like person is the answer or the right person to bring healing. I want the impossible. A centrist figure who can rise up to unite our country, and help us meet the dividing needs and expectations. For healing to happen, we need to stop being two parties of doing and undoing, and start to fix this mess. But that's just my take. I could get thrown out of Massachusetts for just saying that much. But my prayer is for leadership that unites. The other thing to say, is that this election "woke up" Americans to politics. And on both sides. People who never cared to vote or think about politics, now its the only thing on anyone's tongue. Its passionate, and sometimes there is vitriol. I think we were as a country, largely complacent. That time is over, and maybe that's the one silver lining to this mess. Folks have started to care. Hope that helps from one American's point of view.
Great review....sounds like a very interesting book.I remember in the late 90’s I read a book about some of the philosophical differences between US and other countries. One thing that stayed with me is that America was founded on the principle of individualism. Modern France and US were based on some of the same philosophies of equality, but the implementation was different in that the US; because of the focus on individualism, the focus was that all had the equal opportunity to succeed. In more socialist governments, it was that the government provided an equal base set of services. I tend to agree the election was a wake-up call because many in the country had lost hope about their ability to succeed and provide a better life for the next generations of their family .
Thank you for the feedback! Cynda we have a lot of apathy in the UK too. And Amy and JoLene you mention the US election being a wake-up call. I think Brexit has been our wake-up call in the UK. We just sleep-walked into it really. So many people have lost faith in the political process, they see politicians as self-serving. They didn't know who to believe and the arguments made before the referendum were simplistic. Now that it's happened, there are conversations every week in the news about whether it's a good idea or not, detailed discussions about what the implications are, and will we be better off or worse off. Pity we didn't get that level of detail (and interest) before the vote!
Great review ... I sometimes feel like I don't understand America either, and this is my native land.
Book Concierge wrote: "Great review ... I sometimes feel like I don't understand America either, and this is my native land."True dat!!! This made me chuckle.
If you think about the diversity in Europe and the size of the US, it's no wonder that we have so many differences.
Book Concierge wrote: "Great review ... I sometimes feel like I don't understand America either, and this is my native land."Amen.
The title is part of this sentence: "If only they didn't speak English in America, then we'd treat it as a foreign country - and possibly understand it better." He covers the difference in approach between the US and the UK towards health, religion, guns, the purpose of government and so on. He draws on his extensive coverage of politics in both countries to help the UK reader understand why in some ways we feel we understand the US when in reality we are poles apart.
He says “America is at a moment where all the things we thought we knew for certain about this superpower, that have been there since the Second World War, are up in the air. This nation is at a turning point. A huge number of Americans feel that their dream is being torn away from them. This complex, God-fearing, gun-loving, patriotic, government-hating gargantuan of a country wants to pull up the drawbridge and look after itself.”
Having reported from various places across the US he describes the year before the election as “a tumultuous and defining year in which one section of American society would look at the other as if they were from different tribes. The divisions with between black and white, young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural, educated and uneducated. In short, those who are doing well and that vast swathes of America who felt left behind. And it was this latter group whose fury and rage Donald Trump tapped into. The people wanted CHANGE in block capital letters. The politician who was going to catch the eye at this moment in US history was ideally not going to be a politician. What was needed was a tribune of the people who would be their voice; someone who would tear at the consensus, who would offer big, brave alternatives, who would show there was a different way of doing business.”
He writes in a style that’s easy to read, as you would expect from a journalist, and he offers plenty of anecdotes, either from the news or from his own experiences, some of which were by turns either laugh out loud funny, heart-breaking or simply baffling. He demonstrates quite clearly that Americans and Brits think very differently about many issues and have fundamentally different ways of seeing politics and their government.
With regard to social mobility he notes “One reason so many Americans tolerate inequality is their belief that it’s not here to stay; it’s not a permanent condition. Yes, you might start out disadvantaged and without much money. But through hard work and playing by the rules, you’ll get ahead. You might even become a Donald Trump billionaire. Work hard and you will do better than your parents. And then your kids will have a chance of doing even better than you. This is the American dream. [But] in 2016 the middle class formed less than half the population for the first time in 40 years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis resulted in millions of families losing their homes, as the banks foreclosed on loans that should never have been made in the first place. More Americans were dislocated by this crisis than during the great Dust Bowl famine of the 1930s. What voters saw was an America where social mobility had ground to a halt; where to do well and see your living standards improve you had to be part of the one percent. If you haven’t got the right educational qualifications then there’s no point waiting for an economic upturn. The jobs have gone abroad and are not coming back. And that is why so much ire was aimed at the one percent by an angry America. It wasn’t that people resented that there was a top tier doing very well indeed. The fuel for the antagonism was the belief that, in this post industrial society, there was no mechanism for the ordinary Joe to join them.”
Donald Trump positioned himself as the solution to these problems. He said “I am going to turn bad trade agreements Into great trade agreements. I am going to bring our jobs back to Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and New York, and Michigan, and to all of America. I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences. I will make wonderful deals and we are going to win so much you will get bored of winning.”
This outlines the basis on which Hillary Clinton was seen as an established political figure and lost to a man promoting himself as an ordinary businessman, a dealmaker, a self-made millionaire. She was part of the problem. He was the solution.
Another area he covers is the purpose of government. He suggests that most Americans would like the federal government to get out of the way and let people get on with their lives. Only a small proportion of Americans think it’s important for the state to guarantee that no one is in need. If you live in America it is up to you to shape your own destiny, not the state. Maximum freedom, minimum government. After the Edward Snowden scandal the scale of what the National Security Agency seemed to be doing caught many Americans by surprise. Combine that with a sense of weariness among Americans about the protracted foreign commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and questions were being asked about what the government was really there for.
He talks about how some states have no income tax at all (although they do have indirect taxes) and how people shovel the snow in front of their own homes and are responsible for anyone who slips on the ice if they don’t do it adequately. In comparison he suggests that US citizens (or at least the few who think of the UK at all, because why would they?!) view the UK as a quasi-socialist country where people are overtaxed and overburdened by regulation, where too many people wait for the state to do things that should be the responsibility of the individual. Think of the arts for example. In the UK the major art institutions are places like the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain - all bodies that are heavily dependent on the state for their funding. In the US such institutions are more often funded by wealthy individuals such as Getty, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Kellogg and Hughes. Americans tend to view the national health service in the UK as a third rate form of socialised medicine which is anathema to them.
He tells the story of John Major travelling to Harrogate for a conference in 1991. John Major was in an armoured Jaguar, his personal protection officers were in the Range Rover behind. They all stopped at a Little Chef for lunch. “They were the only people in the restaurant on this cold Saturday morning. A burly lorry driver walked in and seeing how quiet it was, said to the waitress in a loud voice that this would be the perfect day to hold up a Little Chef. As John Major’s bodyguards slowly felt for their Heckler and Koch revolvers, the Prime Minister piped up, ‘not as good as you might think’.” This anecdote made me chuckle, but is illustrative of the fairly low key approach in the UK. In contrast the US Secret Service use “the full Monty of sirens, blaring horns, motorcycle out riders and flashing lights. When the president moves it is not solely a question of security, it is also about the projection of might.”
In a thought-provoking argument, Jon Sopel draws on the history of the Revolutionary War and the constitutional right to bear arms and connects it with the independent spirit of Americans (who would rather look after themselves than let the state do it) to illustrate why guns are so prevalent. He gives statistics and specific examples of gun crime to illustrate just how common it is.
He also covers the ‘special relationship’, the media, fake news and so much more. I could go on, but this review is long enough! This is the perfect book for someone who wants to know more about the background to the US election via an informed and informative narrative from an experienced and engaging author. I thoroughly recommend this one.