November 29, 2004
"Dangerously uninformed about American realities"
TM Lutas is working on an essay to explain America to foreigners who are not getting the truth from their own news media. I will be interested to see what results, though my guess is that people in many other lands just don't want to know.
...If you (outside the US) depend on getting information about the US from news sources who maintain their own cordon sanitaire and do not read, listen, or react to the alternative media structures of the US center-right, you will be laughably misinformed, even dangerously uninformed, though you do your part and consume your national news media voraciously. Far too many foreigners seem dangerously uninformed about american realities.
If you woke up and neither you, nor anybody you knew, could explain why George W Bush was reelected, it's a strong warning sign. If everybody was depressed over how such a bad man could have possibly been elected, this is a dangerous warning sign that you and your set have not gotten enough information to even come close to predicting the US. It's not a problem of you disagreeing with the US electorate. Diversity is the spice of life. It is that those whose opinions were different were invisible to you and when they made their force felt at the ballot box, you were shocked by their very existence. Your news media had an absolute duty to explain these people to you and they failed to do so. That failure is just one data point in a very busy graph...
Suppose you are a Frenchman. The logical conclusion to draw from History, and from American and Anglosphere (and before them Dutch) success is that your nation took a wrong turn somewhere around the time of Cardinal Mazarin. And that, as a practical matter, there is no way France is going to change at this late date. Your best bet is to stick your fingers in your ears, shout "I can't hear you! Bush_Is_Hitler!" and hope things don't get too much worse...
Posted by John Weidner at November 29, 2004 10:51 AM | TrackBackNever underestimate the power of laughter and humiliation. The point isn't to make people eager for better information. No, no, no, the point is to create an atmosphere were people want to avoid being laughed and ridiculed by their peers for having such poor knowledge of the US. It is to get people angry that their media outlets are not doing the job they are paid to do when it would be so easy for them to do the work and package it for general consumption.
It isn't about getting them to like us, admire us, or compare favorably or unfavorably. It's about not making further wrong turns that can lead to economic boycotts and political hostility from the most powerful nation on the planet. With appropriate knowledge, they will make their own choices based on their own enlightened self-interest.
You're wrong about France, you know. There is no nation on earth, the US included, that has no room for improvement. France could, if she wanted to, change "at this late date" and start gaining on us. She will never do so with her fingers stuck in her ears.
Posted by: TM Lutas at November 29, 2004 01:59 PMFrance could never gain on the US she simply does not have the population and the EU is systemically hide bound.Sorry better to stick the fingers back in.
Posted by: PeterUK at November 29, 2004 03:14 PMPerhaps the best thing to do with the French (and Old Europe, as well) is to let them go ahead with their grand dream of an EU supreme in world affairs, and when the whole thing goes BOOM! in their faces, maybe then they'll learn just how screwed up their political and economic arrangements are.
Posted by: Hale Adams at November 29, 2004 04:57 PMThe only problem with that is that the BOOM! is liable to be a real & bloody one. Ideally, it would contain itself to the metaphorical, but honestly, Europe seems to have learned no lessons from the 20th century. And we're getting further and further from them.
Posted by: Scott Chaffin at November 29, 2004 05:22 PMTM
I agree in theory that France could change. And even start to gain on us. (Peter, I assume this TM means on a per capita basis. If a country's economy is growing faster than ours, per capita, they are gaining on us. Not the same thing as surpassing us.)
But in practice no Frenchman is now able to look around and see any reason to hope that France will change radically.
