James Butler has responded to my post below. It helps to read his piece or the rest of this won't make a lot of sense. He has paid my arguments a compliment by resorting to personal insults. These start with: His view of the world is American because of a constant diet of American television and food from what I last saw of his waistline. James' abilty to deduce the national origin of my food by merely glancing at my stomach must make him a strong candidate for a detective's job in Scotland Yard. By stating that my outlook on life is `American' he means that I am incapable of perceiving the truth in the impartial way that he does. In the court of Armchair Angst, you are innocent until proven American.
He claims that I oversimplify life. I have learned from past history with many people over many arguments that this is coded language for `David doesn't agree with me and when I try to retreat into grey, he sticks his ground.' James professes not to understand the world and thinks `those with at least half a mind don't either'. It's difficult to argue with someone who thinks that if he does understand the world he must have gone stupid.
He calls me a `typical Wannabe yank'. I won't take that as an insult, though I am perfectly happy being British. There is much that I admire about the US and I frequently wish that US levels of service and organisation applied here. America is a cultural exporter. If you see a standard of living portrayed on US TV that exceeds your own, then you might feel that your life is worthless. But that isn't the end of the matter. We are free people in a free country and if we decide that a lack of coffee shops a la Starbucks is a blow to national prestige then the solution isn't to go into a funk about it. You can instead open your own chain and try to do better. That's what Coffee Republic, Caf? Nero, Caf? Uno and numerous other operators have done. We are also perfectly capable of selling products and ideas to the US. "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" & "The Weakest Link" were both sold to the US networks after their success here. "Late Night Poker" pioneered the idea of televised poker with under the table cameras showing the cards. For a while American poker writers were jealous of what we had!
The remainder of James' rant concerns the decadence of the US. He manages to compare the killings in the circuses of Rome with the ownership of cars that have poor fuel economy. The fact that he sees these as being morally equivalent tells us far more about him than either `empire'. The basic outline of his argument about the US is that of `imperial overstretch'. It's not a new theory. Several years ago I was worried about it too. I even went as far as to buy a bestselling book about it: Paul Kennedy's `Preparing for the Twentieth Century'. And nicely gathering dust it is too. In the four or five years since I've bought it, I haven't read more than one paragraph. I did however read another doom-and-gloom book by William Rees-Mogg and James Davidson called `The Great Reckoning'. So worried was I by the predictions of its chapter about urban America (titled `Drugs, delusions and the imperial culture of the slums') that when I needed to prepare something for a presentation course at Midland Bank, I delivered a talk on `The Decline of the United States'.
I cringe now to think that in the decade or so since I gravely told my audience of the forthcoming collapse of the US, the country went on to record nine consecutive years of economic growth. Didn't they know that they were supposed to suffer economic disaster? The cheek of those damn yanks! And I was so solemn too.
After the briefest of recessions, the US economy is now growing at over 7 per cent! For an advanced economy, that is a truly incredible result. I guess in part, I'm trying to spare Butler the embarrassment I now feel. Don't dig any deeper James, you'll only regret it! He writes: `But how much longer will it last? When the money runs out and the heathens batter their doors down then they won't be as happy as their TV persona would suggest. Yet again he is obsessed with the decline of empires. In particular the one he has read about the most. In James' world, all odes lead to Rome.
Concerning the middle east, he falls into the trap of the `undistributed middle'. This is the logical fallacy that goes `All dogs have four legs. My table has four legs. Therefore it's a dog'. When writing about the attack on the WTC he says that they were `an attack on capital. An attack on those who will not accept that there are some in the world who do not want to drink Coca Cola, eat McDonalds and wear Nike sports wear'. Apart from the fact that Coca Cola is famously headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, I want to scream when I read this drivel. No James NO! That's why YOU would attack the US. It's not why they have. They are not the same as you.
Al-Qaeda's philosophical underpinnings come from the writings of the late Egyptian theocratic writer Sayyid Qutb. His most noted works are "Milestones" and "In the shade of the Koran". It was he who popularised the idea of jihad and martyrdom in the latter half of the twentieth century. I intend to write about him another time but in essence what he hated most from his visits to the US in the 1940s was the separation of church and state, as well as the very act of independent thought outside the strictures of the Koran. He thought that all human misery in the west stemmed from the Christian idea of `render unto Caesar'. In his mind, happiness could only be achieved if we all returned to following God's orders. It's not just about not wanting Coke or Pepsi. It's about not wanting to think for yourself or tolerating others doing so.
Bizarrely he continues `...an attack by those who want nothing to do with the way that the US sees the world, who have no other course of action, because they do not have a state that champions their cause.' This is all great rhetoric, except that it's total bollocks. They did have a state. It was called Afghanistan and it became more corrupted by bin Laden's millions than any Central American nation ever was in the wildest dreams of United Fruit. The country was used as a terrorist training camp for years.
I stick to my assessment that the troops should remain in Iraq longer. James says `We can't keep fighting this anti-terror war forever'. I don't think we can afford to stop fighting it. Of course the US will leave Iraq eventually but there is much work still to be done, just as there was in Japan and Germany after WW2. Those countries have become free and prosperous. So too will Iraq.
In a recent update to his site, James picks on an incident in the US and concludes that it's another failure for multiculturalism. His ability to draw conclusion from to specific and apply them to the general is undiminished. Personally I prefer to look at the bigger picture. In the last decade or so, the US economy has grown by leaps and bounds. While over in mono-cultured Japan there has been a recession of about the same length. There's nothing like facts to spoil a good rant, eh James?
_ DY
at 6:18 PM GMT