From D-Day heroes to social media boasts: What happened to America?
· Citizen
After this week, I was left wondering what had happened to the Americans my father worked with, side by side, in the snow, servicing US and South African Air Force Mustang fighter-bombers by the headlights of Jeeps so they’d be ready at sun-up to attack the Chinese and North Koreans in 1951 in the Korean War.
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These Yanks were, like my old man, from what is sometimes called “The Greatest Generation” – personified by those who plunged into the teeth of hell and withering machinegun fire on D-Day to help liberate Europe from the Nazis.
Those Americans cared little for war but they did their duty and they would, I guess, be pretty disgusted by the younger generations who toss insults, like their dumb president, at Europe, claiming that if it wasn’t for the US, Europeans would all be speaking German.
That sort of nonsense emerged again this week as many Americans struggled to swallow a massive, sour dose of karma, as their national football (sorry, soccer) team lost to Belgium, 4 -1, at the Fifa World Cup.
They got karma because Donald Trump tried – as he has with so much else in his life – to bend the rules and get the world football body to reverse the one-match ban on US striker Folarin Balogun.
Once the Belgians had shown them what genuine footballing talent is all about, many of the Americans on social media descended into the schoolboy boastful ways of their man in the White House.
Yeah, well, have you got one of these, one supposed military veteran asked, posting a picture of a massive aircraft carrier. I say supposed because most of us who actually have seen serious action don’t see killing machines as worth boasting about.
Then came the debate about: Yeah, well, our athletes are the best in the world and if we played soccer instead of American football, baseball and ice hockey, we’d be the world champions in soccer.
It was amazing to see how much tribal loyalty a simple sorting contest could generate among US social media users. Most of the thinnest-skinned were, of course, white males, many of whom professed to be strong Christians and clearly devotees of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) cult.
I could understand, then, why much of the world regards the US with suspicion and regards the country as a warmonger, rather than the peacemaker role it believes it fulfils.
Which is all a great pity, because I once regarded America as a beacon of hope for democracy – where different views were tolerated, there was a welcoming live-and-let-live society and where many were prepared to give up their lives for justice.
On the other hand, my daughter-in-law is an American, highly intelligent, hard-working and caring and, despite coming from a place like Texas, believes in science and logic (she’d have to, she’s an engineer with an MBA).
She personifies that young, professional generation which has long since broken out of the splendid isolationism of their forebears, working and forming relationships all over the world.
I am hoping that, once Trump departs the political stage in three-and-a-bit years’ time, the pendulum will swing back towards the old relaxed, confident, multicultural society which has always been regarded as being bigger than the sum of its individual parts.
I’d like that place to be one my granddaughter can be proud of, just as I hope she will be able to boast one day about her African roots, too.