PARIS—“The damn British and Americans, they come to take advantage of the culture and they give nothing in return. I know what they’re about!” Such was the oration of a drunk who, to judge from the ensuing altercation with a waiter, had made similar truths known within the Parisian establishment he’d just deserted.
The inebriated personage ambled away at the early hour of 10:15, having once and for all scared the devil out of me. Word to the wise: the whole world beyond the shores of our shining seas is infested with subscribers to the doctrine of anti-Americanism. Don’t make the same mistake I did: stay home and safe from the masses of snarling foreigners who regularly tear the star-spangled banner to shreds like the dogs that they are.
In the subway later that evening, preferring not to gaze at the potential European supremacists who seemed to crowd around me, I took notice of a poster advertising a lottery to win one of the 55,000 Green Cards granted each year by the U.S. government. “Work, live, study in the USA!” Great. Not only do they hate us, but they also want to invade our country and increase their numbers within our borders to more surely overcome our resistance when the time comes for our destruction. Nothing could satisfy them more than an active role in bringing us to ruin. I refer those who don’t believe me to Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), who reminded us at the Republican National Convention that Paris yearns to make our foreign policy.
Now, many people will make up stories to explain why the Europeans—and everyone else, for that matter—take such a keen interest in the United States, its culture and its language. Stories to account for their astoundingly successful efforts to teach their younger generations to speak English, for their indomitable preference for American clothes, music, movies and television programs at the expense of their native industries, for their incessant focus on America in their news coverage (to the point of following our election more closely than their own), for their avid taste for American food—well okay, the food part’s not true—but you get the picture.
Yes, otherwise perfectly lucid individuals insist that the Europeans and their unmistakably anti-American cohorts don’t despise us at all. Crazy, I know, but I’ll continue for the sake of argument. This view attributes the world’s emulation of the United States not to a plan to eliminate our well-deserved dominant status, but to a feeling of admiration and a desire to share in our prosperity.
Those who naïvely believe this scenario might smugly claim to understand such phenomena as the 20-week streak from May to September during which English language films ranked first in theater sales in France, or the hearty support John Kerry enjoys in all the countries where he isn’t running for president.
But the reality is that people abroad like John Kerry for the same reason they like him back home: because they hate America. Call them anti-American or unpatriotic, respectively, but their underlying betrayal is the same: they want to seize our country and change it into something else. When European youth wear Levi’s jeans, watch Dawson’s Creek and read about the presidential debates in Der Spiegel, if not The New York Times, their enthusiasm for America may seem benign, but they are indeed preparing to participate in our country’s future and emasculate it of its eminent position as a hegemon.
Like so many others before him, alcohol made the unhappy customer speak the truth. We don’t give anything back. And when the whole world hates us, why the hell should we?
Daniel B. Holoch ’06, a Crimson editorial editor, is an Environmental Science and Public Policy concentrator in Quincy House. He is currently studying in Paris and doesn’t believe a word he wrote.
