David Emanuel Andersson

Only in America? February 22, 2009

“Only in America” is a book by Matt Frei that I picked up at an airport, not because a recognition heuristic but because I’m a news junkie as long as the news is about politics and elections; the book seemed to be about American politics. It turned out to be both about US politics and American society, but unfortunately it seems to have been written for people who are more ignorant of these things than I am. Matt Frei is a BBC correspondent based in Washington, and as such he fulfills my prejudices about journalists: they are good and witty writers with superficial knowledge about a lot of things.

When Frei is describing what he thinks is weird about America, I couldn’t help but think that he is also inadvertently describing what’s weird about Europe and Britain (Frei was born in Germany but grew up in Britain).  For example, what he describes as Americans’ obsession with state-of-the-art bathrooms made me think of the sorry state of British plumbing as I experienced it while living there in the early nineties. When he writes “Americans believe, Europeans doubt,” I was thinking that American faith is just more obvious to Europeans because they believe in different things. Frei claims that Americans in general believe in God and the US Constitution while Europeans are skeptical. But one could also turn the argument around and say that Europeans believe in the Welfare State and Government while Americans are skeptical. Given the respective track records, maybe one should be more astounded by the faith of Europeans. I know I’m ideologically biased, but a largely unexamined faith in the welfare state (which is shared by 90% or so of European voters) seems to be the main reason that governments administer about half of the economy in most European countries. It doesn’t seem to matter whether a government calls itself  ”socialist,” “christian democrat” or “conservative.”