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Broken Dreams


h1 September 3rd, 2005

I don’t usually post on the weekend, but I had to post an excerpt from this article about the effect of Katrina, by Matt Wells for BBC News. Click on the excerpt to read the whole thing:

The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week.
Which reminds of this similar article that I read back in April, by Andrew Moravcsik for Newsweek International:
The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America’s self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country’s social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions—globalization, in a word.
Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways—none made in America. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book “The European Dream,” hails an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law—a model that’s caught on quickly across the former nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as much a “model” for development as America’s scandal-ridden corporate culture. “First we emulate,” one Chinese businessman recently told the board of one U.S. multinational, “then we overtake.”
Many are tempted to write off the new anti-Americanism as a temporary perturbation, or mere resentment. Blinded by its own myth, America has grown incapable of recognizing its flaws. For there is much about the American Dream to fault. If the rest of the world has lost faith in the American model—political, economic, diplomatic—it’s partly for the very good reason that it doesn’t work as well anymore.


3 comments to “Broken Dreams”

  1. There are dozens of models to choose from and most of them are horrible systems to live under. The EU is hardly the humanitarian paradise that the author suggests and I doubt very much that the average Chinese citizen would willingly choose their system over ours.

    Yes, we’ve got big problems, but I don’t think people are giving up on America just yet.

         by Dashiell September 5th, 2005 at 11:35 pm

  2. yo!

    I give up. I don’t want to get assassinated. being complacent is safer.

         by yummicoco September 7th, 2005 at 1:12 pm

  3. update slut

         by AlexisT September 13th, 2005 at 12:24 am


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