• Blog #1

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The idealist in me is also the infant and therefore this response calls upon my acknowledgment of the images that emerge in my mind when the loud, heavy, uplifting letters 'U-S-A' are uttered together. And that's it - uplifting, hopeful, big, futuristic, forward-looking, constructive, strong, humane, tough, optimistic, self-searching, living, breathing - human. These are feelings, not images. Pictures that stimulate these emotions include city-scapes, endless highways, giant harveters in sun-drenched wheat-fields, the Rocky mountains, stopsigns, old American cars, Civil War uniforms, New England forests, the flag, rockets, a motel in the middle of a vast desert. The Towers. I can't apologise for how this all might seem to a US national - this is simply a 'reaction' with no intelligent thought applied (as should seem obvious!).

But the Towers. That's where, oddly, the second region of response - the political - leaks inexorably into the idealistic. It's as well for me to remind myself of the question again here: 'What do you think of the USA'. Today, in a (geo-) political context, I think of the USA as resembling a wounded panthero leo leo (although, that is not to say I expect it to be made extinct any time soon!), unsure of how to heal itself. A thorn in the paw too deep to lick away; a weeping cut under the mane that it cannot reach; a tick in the ear, swelling, aching, throbbing and worrying. In the political sense, the only way that this great lion can be aided and given comfort and cure is from without - from the rest of the world. This demands a growing sense of mutual understanding that I happen to believe, on balance, needs far more encouragement here, in Europe, for example (outside the US, in other words) than there. If this is not achieved soon, then the implied 'other side' of this laboured metaphor might become more prevalent politically: a wounded lion tends to lash out, even at the hand that tries to heal it. But I'll leave that there. It's not a particularly good comparison, and could sound appallingly condescending, which certainly is not my intention. Besides, the USA, I trust, in actual fact, is quite capable of healing itself. And I don't really know enough about the USA, nor am I a citizen of it, so to argue the moral case for or against the United States (but not the British) government's chosen responses to extreme and deadly provocation would be injudicious. Politically, I feel that the USA has learnt and grown in the face of hundreds of dire, giant challenges in the course of its existence, moreso than my own country, and has been able to do so because of its constitution, which is in itself a great achievement in the history of humanity. I have faith that this growth will continue, to the incontrovertible benefit of us all.

But that leakage occurs again here, this time into the cultural 'region'. I am British (half English and half Welsh, in fact), and caucasian to boot, so perhaps in reality the cultural distance between me and (at least my preconception) of the USA is insignificant. That said, this does not have to be a negative thing insofar as those by-and-large shared, basic cultural values are regarded as definitive. So this is, in fact, significant, because of what the United States is - it's a country built on the labour of a thousand different cultures united under one political, aspirational roof. I can't be unhappy about being connected even in some sub-cognitive way to an entity such as this. And further, if this is the case, then writers submitting here from other countries, from other cultures who might feel a far, far greater cultural distance between themselves and the USA, need only examine more closely just what actually constitutes that country's culture; what values and ambitions and demands, needs and dreams and everyday desires, define it. If they can penetrate the crust of the contemporary, passe view, can bring themselves to plunge through the dross of prejudice or ignorance, they will find that here is a country where the conditions for the successful expression of these core, individual human wishes are slightly better than in their own, as I have.