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|Monday Oct. 1, 2001 | BACK | NEXT WHO are the americans? It’s highly irresponsible for media to keep feeding hate against the only superpower still capable, we hope, of protecting us from tragic craziness of a few who can destroy the world by
Angelo Persichilli
There are plenty of people
who don’t agree with American policies, either foreign or domestic.
There’s also a manifest effort to explain, if not justify, the terrorist
attacks against the Americans, as a reaction to those policies.
One of those who has no doubts about this connection is Haroon Siddiqui,
an editorialist at The Toronto Star, who on Sept. 19 wrote a column on the
subject, "It’s the U.S. foreign policy, stupid."
Even if I run the risk of being considered stupid by the Toronto Star
sages, I want to express my disagreement.
First of all, it’s necessary to put some perspective into the role of
the United States of America in the events of the last century, a perspective
that can’t ignore the presence of the Soviet Union.
The last century was dominated by two political and economic
ideologies: Marxism and capitalism. Both tried to do good things for the
people of the world, but they had different goals and different means. While
Marxists focused on social justice, Americans focused on freedom and
democracy. In the process, both tried to control and exploit economic
resources around the world to feed their systems. Even politically, the U.S.A.
and the U.S.S.R. reflected the different faces of the same coin — a coin
minted in Yalta on the ashes of Nazism and fascism.
We know what happened to the Soviet Union. It institutionalized social
justice but left it in the hands of a few in the administration of the
democracy (read dictatorship).
The U.S. went the other way: it focused on freedom and democracy and it
left the administration of social justice in the hands of individuals. So
in a nutshell, socialism has produced some good ideas on how to spend profits;
unfortunately it doesn’t know how to generate it. Capitalism, on the other
end, knows how to generate it, but needs some adjustment in its spending.
The
Soviet Union failed, not because it resorted to dictatorship to impose social
justice, but because it was not able to generate the economic recourses to
finance it.
The
United States is still there, the last superpower of an old system and the
first superpower of a system in which we are unable to define yet. The
Americans have been left to deal with problems left in the area they
"managed," but also with those of the areas that for half a century
gravitated around the Soviet Empire.
In
this transitional and difficult time, many people, governments and
organizations are trying to come up with a new model for peaceful coexistence.
That’s what the globalization dispute is all about.
Unfortunately
there are also a few crazy people around who are trying to take advantage of
the transition and to take over the world. This is not fiction any longer.
This is a tragic reality.
It
is understandable that many people are still trapped in the logic of the
"Cold War." For half a century we’ve been fed with hate literature
against the Americans or the Soviet Union. I understand that. What instead is
highly irresponsible, is the activity of certain media, who are still trapped
in the past and unable to go beyond the left-right axiom, who still keep
feeding hate against the only superpower still capable, we hope, to protect us
from the tragic craziness of a few with the potential of destroying the world.
Most
of the criticism against the United States from countries oppressed by Marxism
and exploited by capitalism is not related to the nature of the "American
dream," but to the need to extend that "dream" to their
countries where there is neither freedom, nor social justice.
What
about us Canadians?
Before
we define ourselves, let’s ask another question: who are the Americans? Are
they the 300 million people with U.S. passports or all the people who take
advantage of their policies? Who are the Americans? Those citizens of British
descent who founded the Empire, or the Cuomos, Giulianis, Powells, Jacksons,
Minetas and people from all over the world enjoying a lifestyle they seek and
defend? I believe that all of them are "the Americans," people of
all cultures, religions and race. It is important to understand that in order
to understand the Americans. What they have in common is their daily
lifestyle.
And
who are "Canadians?" People like me and Mr. Siddiqui, who borrow 35
cents from the "Americans" every time we spend our loony in order to
finance our lifestyle? What about the remaining 65 per cent, produced with the
same tools, ideology, and lifestyle of the people south of the border?
I
know life is tough in Canada and that there are people who still today cannot
buy a BMW or a cottage in the Muskokas, but being American is not just the
ownership of a passport, it is a way of life. It’s funny how easy it is to
live off the American economy, to be protected by its ominous army, to provide
them manpower to build weapons and to manufacture Coca Cola, and then hide our
conscience behind a piece of paper and defend starving people in the Third
World while having lunch in a trendy restaurant in downtown Toronto.
Americans,
like Soviets, are no angels. But let’s ask ourselves another question: did
those evil Americans do anything good?
Just
a few other suggestions for Mr. Siddiqui: there are a couple of world wars
worth mentioning in which the Americans were on the right side of the fight
against tyrants. And one of them (Hitler?) was particularly engaging.
As
well, there are a few American researches in the technology and science
sectors who have produced results in saving people’s lives in medicine, in
improving the quality of life for everybody, and, don’t forget billions of
dollars to help the fight against starvation and diseases. Of course, these
are marginal considerations.
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