Oi America! Remember us?
I started this piece two days ago, as euphoria over America’s stunning midterm triumph swept the nation. I meant to wax lyrical about a people who stood up and said, "Enough.”
Then I read Ian Dunt’s stunning, eloquent piece, “I’m so bored with the USA,” which prompted me to trash my original draft and rethink it.
What tipped it was perhaps just a small thing. After his win, a British Sky journalist asked Abdul El-Sayed whether he was registered to vote in Michigan. He snapped back that the reporter obviously wasn’t, so why would he care what the reporter thought? He said he wanted zero votes from the UK.
Fair enough to say that on the day, having just come out of his watch party feeling buoyant. But it still stung, because hundreds of millions of us outside America were cheering him on, along with all these other winners from the bleachers. We felt your frustration and your horror at what your government was doing at home and abroad.
It would be nice to be remembered.
Because here’s the rub: the decisions made in Washington land on all of us. Fuel prices bite from Vanuatu to Vancouver. Interest rates are climbing everywhere, inflation keeps creeping, and “affordability” is defying gravity. Whether you voted for the current ringmaster once, twice, or never, his administration exported that pain. And we had no ballot with which to say enough.
Put it bluntly, “We, effectively, have become America’s serfs.” Allies have been ignored when convenient and blamed when not, and what once happened quietly in private is now done in public. He argues that progressive Democrats see us much as MAGA does. I hope he’s wrong.
For two years, America’s friends and close allies have been mercilessly bullied, insulted and even threatened with annexation. The world is clearly praying for a return to normal. But in less than two years, the damage has upended the norm, and undoing it will take far longer. One midterm won’t do it, and neither will a two-term Democratic presidency, given the geostrategic hurdles that lie ahead. New members of Congress will take their seats facing an impatient electorate that wants quick results, because the euphoria they feel now is a dopamine hit that soon wears off.
So here is what we ask of you.
Look outward; find out what is happening beyond your borders. Ask almost anyone on a street in Manchester or Oslo who runs Washington, and they’ll name the president, his VP, his cabinet and a few senators besides. Ask the same question in reverse: who the leaders of Britain, Denmark, India or Indonesia are, and I’d wager the answers would be paper-thin, if at all. We follow your politics because it shapes our lives; now is the time to follow ours. Iran is the country on every American’s lips right now, yet I suspect many of those lips couldn’t find it on a map. It’s a small thing, but it feeds the impression that, as far as America is concerned, the rest of the world is merely a rumour.
And please, whisper it if you must: the “greatest nation on earth” line has worn painfully thin, and the last two years' activity certainly hasn't helped.
I say this as a lifelong friend. I’ve admired America for most of my life and drawn inspiration from it, but these two years have dimmed that admiration. Now it’s just an ordinary candle battling a strong breeze. Americans are innovative, clever, kind and generous, with a can-do attitude I wish the rest of the planet shared. You can take comfort now that it is not the administration you just voted against.
But Trump's tenure has left a sobering backdraft: a fundamental shift away from America is already under way, and America started it. Look at Canada, which over the past eighteen months or so, since Mark Carney took office, has been quietly diversifying its trade away from its giant neighbour. He told Canadians that hoping America would simply return to normal is no strategy and that America can no longer be trusted.
If you listen carefully, that’s the sound of an ally growing up, and others, like Canada, are watching closely. Perhaps the shift is overdue. It’s time we took charge of our own affairs rather than letting figures like Putin and Trump decide what we should do.
To be honest, the world has become addicted to all things American, and it’s time for rehab, for us as much as for you. With the seismic shift of the last few days, there’s a palpable sense that things will improve in the US and that politics will return to normal. Only this time, it has to be a new normal.
As Ian Dunt put it: “Let us pretend the last two years were just a terrible dream.”
Once again, my thanks to Ian Dunt for the inspiration to write something I’ve been holding back for quite some time.
