How Europeans see (or don't see) Americans
By Amira Ibrahimovic (07/18/05)
Oh Europe. From the green fields of Ireland, to the towering churches of Russia, to the ice hotels of Sweden, to the inviting mosques of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
It is a land many American Democrats dream of escaping to, and a land that serves as a constant reminder of what American Republicans escaped from.
"Imagine taking all the good that lies within Europe, all of the honor, all of the virtue, all of the various nationalities and religions, all of the music, all of the food, all of the ideals and dreams and putting this into some wondrous land. That, I am most certain, would closely resemble America," said Elvira Begovic, a Bosnian Muslim politician, in 1996.
"Their disregard for international law, their complete refusal to honor the Geneva conventions, and the hideous record of abuses and tortures at their detention facilities have stained their image in a way that I am quite certain they have not fully understood as of yet. The more a democracy turns to illegal means to defend itself, the more it becomes exactly which it struggles to defeat," she said in 2004.
The complex relationship between the United States and the various countries of Europe is constantly evolving and surprisingly tumultuous.
While a majority of people in almost every European country admire Americans (for example, 85 per cent of French citizens describe the American people as 'hardworking and ambitious'), there is scarcely a country on the continent that admires the current American government.
Even close American allies - like the United Kingdom and Italy - are dealing with citizens who are more than 85 per cent opposed to the war in Iraq, among other cornerstone American actions and policies. In fact, the only countries in Europe where a majority of the population approves of the current American government are Poland, Bulgaria, and Albania. Hardly European power-players.
Even in these countries, the situation is volatile.
The war in Iraq is a perfect symbol of the American-European relationship. Everything good, and everything bad, about this relationship has been made obvious by this war.
After George W. Bush's speech following the terrorist attacks in London, protestors in Bulgaria burned American flags and vandalized a Ford dealership. This was the reaction to a line that was not even noticed in the United States - "I am fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here." Across Europe, governments expressed outrage that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died not because of weapons of mass destruction, and not in some honorable effort to free them from tyranny, but simply because George W. Bush chose their country - a country that had nothing to do with al'Qaeda prior to the invasion - to stage his war.
There is one obvious reason why Europeans and Americans - despite having so much in common - view the war in Iraq so differently.
In Europe, Iraqi civilians are front and center in media coverage of the war. When they are killed, they are not described as "collateral damage" - and this side of the Atlantic, the nightly news air video showing, in horrifying detail, their mangled bodies. Where Americans, from their media, hear numbers - Europeans see faces (and blood, and guts).
Not that this makes Europeans any more willing to do something. Europeans still sleep soundly at night.
This is related to the European concept of government. Europe is, and has been for decades, a region where the political right-wing is represented almost exclusively by fascists, racists, neo-Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists, or some other such group whose policies offer little more than a chance to publicly berate some ethnic or religious minority. Sometimes it seems that right-wing governments gain power in Europe only where there are concerns about immigration. Likewise, the left-wing was largely composed of stoners and socialists, and even communists.
So Europe opted for centrist/left-of-center parties that didn't completely destroy the economy but didn't build concentration camps either. These governments operate on the principle of collective consensus, of international law - known to American Republicans as boring their populations into such a state of apathy that no one can even conceive of the idea of doing much of anything.
America is a superpower, and this creates problems as well. While Americans may believe the reasons are more related to jealousy than anything else, from the European point of view that is completely false. The American government is so powerful that its decisions usually affect Europeans, and the rest of the world, more than it affects Americans. For example, how many Americans were affected by an increase in the taxation of steel imports to the United States a few years ago? How many Americans even knew there was an increase?
Certainly not as many as found out the hard way in Russia. Steel factories closed, entire towns were left without industry. Suicide rates jumped, as did the incidence of domestic violence, drug abuse, and violent crime.
"With great power comes great responsibility", as they say. Europeans just feel that the world's superpower has a responsibility to more than just its own citizens.
Beyond government, the most striking difference between the American and European people is religion.
In Europe, religion is generally a private affair. Churches, mosques, and synagogues have very little political influence and publicly professing any belief in God is often viewed as improper ettiquet. There are exceptions, of course - but only in countries where religion is involved with politics.
This is not to say that Europeans are not religious, in many cases even more religious than Americans (for example, more than 60 per cent of European Muslims feel that Americans are not religious enough). Europeans simply feel that the American style of religion is more about others, and the European style is more about oneself. No one in France believes that American televangelists say their prayers before bed, and in the Netherlands you'd have trouble finding anyone who thinks evangelism is healthy.
Europeans combine religion with science, and do not view them as mutually exclusive concepts. In Europe, the theory of evolution isn't an attempt to explain that evolution happens, it's an attempt to explain how it happens, the idea of evolution itself long ago accepted as fact. Homosexuality, in Europe, is viewed as a normal, genetic attribute of individual human beings. The scientific evidence for both in Europe is accepted without religious conflic. This creates some conflict (for example, more than 90 per cent of Britons said they were 'horrified' that some schools in the United States still teach creationism).
Europe also has greater connections with Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. One of the centers of European science, mathematics, and art (al'Andalusia, in Spain) is Islamic. Europeans share an understanding of, and friendship with, nationalities and religions that are more or less unknown in the United States.
Still, though, there is much that we share in common as well. Most Europeans believe in the God of Abraham, be they Jews, Christians, or Muslims. Most Europeans believe in the idea of heaven and hell, and strive to live good lives and impact the world in a benefitial way.
In the end, Europeans stereotype the United States as a trigger-happy, adolescent country that - although it may think it knows everything - has a lot of growing up to do. Americans stereotype Europe as an old, senile grandmother just a few slips away from a broken hip and a nursing home.
In the end, for every anger, every frustration, every conflict - there is something equally fundamental in people on both sides of the Atlantic that will ensure that we will never truly be driven apart.
That said - hahaha - give us a Barakh Obama/Jim McCann ticket in 2008; you're driving us mad over here.
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