SideQuest: Alienation

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August 21, 2004

Alienation

Lance Armstrong, a month ago, said something that the French (or was it European?) supporters would rather cheer for the number 2 and boo at the number 1. I think this is not entirely true. I think that Europeans overall care more about the battle than the victory. It's the struggle that makes the fight of a sportsevent interesting and not the records. Because it is the struggle that shows how difficult it is to achieve success. This is exactly why Armstrong was so popular just a few years back. It was because of his struggle with cancer and how he became victorious. So they definetly like to cheer the number 2.

Americans are very different in this. They want to quantify every result, they care about being in the recordbooks instead of being victorious. Not that Europeans cannot appreciate or be amazed at what Armstrong does. I mean look at Schumacher in Formula 1 racing. He is a lot like Armstrong in his sport. And he is quite popular. We are not boo'ing at the number 1. What Armstrong has felt is the increased impopularity of America, we were boo'ing at an american. I understand that this might be difficult to see this through the eyes of an American. In recent years though America has made some (mostly) political decisions that have alienated them from a large part of the world including Europe.

The following things need to be considered in this.
1: America is the strongest, most powerful (military and economical) country in the world and basically superior to all. The rest of the world is in essence at their mercy. Do not forget this, it is very important. The rest of the world needs to have a lot of trust in this country. That it will do the right thing and protect the world (not only its partners).
2: America likes to show of. In commerce, in products, in sports and in war. It's a chauvinistic thing that any other country in the world would probably do. However this emphasizes the above mentioned superiority. People like to defy superiority because everyone wants to be superior.
3: That America is refusing to sign something like the Kyoto protocol has had a big impact on what people think about the intentions of America. This protocol wasn't about nature. It was more about the world joining in their fight to save nature. In forgoing this protocol and instead choosing for their own (already strong compared to most) economy has made some people doubt how much America is about protecting the world and the american/human ideals and if it's not more concerned about protecting it's own interests.
4: This was only strengthened by what many perceive as the big deceit that was the war on Irak. Noone doubted that Hussein was a cruel dictator and posssibly had Weapons of Mass Destruction. However, there was no Al Qaida in Irak, America should have never used that as an excuse. And America SHOULD have known that there were no WMD in Irak. And in fact large factions of them did. It was this small group around President Bush that kinda pushed this issue by using misinformation (even of ministers of state and senate members). The worry that was among the world before has now turned into distrust because of this whole situation.

Now all of this seperatly might not seem such a big deal. But together they have had a huge impact on the image of America. Up untill about 1998 America was just fine. The Kuwait invasion (1st gulfwar), the Baltic wars, the peace attempts in Israel/Palestinia, everything they did from the late 80s up untill that point in the late 90s was good for their general image and made the people trust the USA.
After that things went down hill. I won't say it was all Bush his fault (even Mircrosoft is an example of what hurt America's image), but he was the katalyser that made things worse.

The big thing was of course the 9-11 attacks. A terrible and horrific event. America was hurt, physically and in their pride. The people demanded a response and were right to do so. However the people don't directly govern a country and with a reason, it is because they are not good at.
The president and other governers are the ones that we trust to make the right decissions for us. Bush's media and carreer consultants told him to strike back hard. Up untill here everything was still good. But then the implementation of this came and things went wrong.

The USA was provoked and didn't turn the other cheek as Jezus had preached. It declared war on Terrorism (and though unspoken also on Muslimism). They took on the role of 'protectors' of the world and went on a crusade. The way they did this was stupid. They could have combatted terrorism effeciently and with a lot less rethorical wording then they did. In this they themselves created or should I say physically shaped, the enemy, made it HAVING to work together to survive. It has made the enemy more visible, but also more vivid and more 'connected' than ever before and giving them more advertisement then they could have ever created themselves. They didn't realize it at the time but the USA's actions made them the bully of the class and not the teacher, the avenger and not the superhero with a secret identity. They forgot that it is not what you do, but how you do it that shapes your image.

So what next... there are only two possible outcomes.
1: The issue bleeds to death and in time everyone forgets and starts to trust eachother again.
2: A cataclismic and definitive war with one of two outcomes. A total collapse of the great USA (probably economicallt as a sideeffect of this war) or the utter destruction of terrorism. The latter is almost impossible because terrorism is everywhere.

Let's hope the first is the path that we (as a planet) will end up upon. It will take a lot of expertise and vision to achieve that. However trust is required for this and unfortunatly the world is largely gouverned by fear (look only at what Michael Moore showed in the last part of Bowling for Columbine). Slowly more and more people start to see this, let's hope we will be wise in our choices in the future.

P.S. By writing this I'll be picked out by Echelon or something the likes and probably end up on some sort of list. Let's hope I'll still be able to enter the USA :)

Posted by The DJ at August 21, 2004 10:53 PM
Posted in Philosophy

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