GOD BLESS AMERICA

I love Americans – most of them. I love America – most of it. That country has given the world more Nobel Prize winners I think, than any other country in the world. There are more people in institutions of higher learning than any other country in the world. Henry Ford invented the assembly line and revolutionized manufacturing. The New York Times is one of the greatest papers in the world. Those are not just fanciful or mythic notions – those are facts.

But there is a mythic America, a country that exists in a world of boosterism and over-the-top claims and self-praising ideas. That I can only giggle at, and that giggle is not friendly. Example: “Americans are the most optimistic people in the world.” That statement was made during a discussion about the future of America. Two scholarly experts said it on Public Broadcasting's Jim Lehrer News Report. Where did this man, an obviously well informed, well-read intellectual – get his information? It is part of the American myth, the belief Americans have in themselves.

Americans are easily, among developed nations the most isolated from reality of any people in any other country. They characteristically know little, and care less, about other countries and other people, unless they happen to be involved in some kind of “nation-building” – often described as a “battle for the hearts and minds of (fill in the country.)”

So I ask, where, statistically can they back this wild statement up? Has anyone done an optimist study comparing a cross section of Americans against a similar group of Canadians of Romanians or Frenchmen? They live in a world surrounded by uniquely American superlatives – dreamed up without proof – to reinforce the idea that, after all, where else would anyone in the world want to live?

During the current recession, with unemployment approaching 10% and hope for several tens of millions of American people fading fast, I heard Barack Obama say something like:“Americans are the hardest working people in the world!” He said it witha straight face. I would not be one to differ. Could I say that Americans are NOT the hardest working people in the world?” Who knows? Politicians currying favour will use thus kind of mindless hyperbole. But again, the question I ask is: had anyone done a “hard-work” study to determine whether or not the “fact” is true? Are they harder working than say – the Japanese? How about the millions virtually chained to machines in China producing the world’s all-time greatest volume of consumer goods? How about Asian students who lead in just about every category at schools and universities in Canada?

It beats me. In the next few days I will be taking an extended trip into the U.S., heading for a few days with a friend in Charlotte North Carolina, one of America’s most advanced and progressive boom towns. From there to the slightly chic and artsy, intellectual, picturesque city of Asheville, grandly nestled in the Blue Ridge. Then a return to home with a stop in Cleveland, one of the cities in America that is relentlessly shrinking but has some of the most astonishingly good cultural facilities in the world!

I have a lot of time for what is good in that country. I have a lot of feeling for their sense of being misunderstood. I only wish they would stop the bugle-blaring fanfares for levels of accomplishment that exist only in fantasy.

And finally, I must not, will not, add by railing against their indifference to Canada. They don’t even really know we’re here. Not one American in a hundred knows that we are their largest supplier of energy – not as they would believe – Venezuela or the Middle East.

Besides, they gave us Costco. That’s enough to love them for.