The Outgoing Spirit - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 21

it no harm. The demonic can be found in the edgy, abrasive, sardonic speech of New
York Jews, which is much closer to the Irish than it is to the Midwest. When they hear
angelic American speech—“this great country of ours,” “let freedom ring forth,” and the
like—most Europeans simply stare at their shoes and wait for it to stop, as some people
do whenever Schoenberg comes on the radio. Many Americans, to be fair, find this kind of
language just as excruciating.
European political discourse is much more downbeat. You might get away with a refer-
ence to freedom, but certainly not to God. Suggesting that the Almighty has a special affec-
tion for your nation would sound as absurd as claiming that he has a special affection for
gummy bears. Phrases can be tested for their shitless or angelic quality by seeing whether
the opposite would make any sense. The Republican politician Mitt Romney solemnly es-
tablished a Committee for a Strong and Free America, as opposed to a Committee for an
Enfeebled and Enslaved one. (“Strong,” incidentally, is a favourite American word.) An-
gelic discourse goes hand in hand with the high seriousness of the American public sphere.
Political life in the States is colourful but earnest. It is hard to imagine a goat, nudist, flam-
boyant cross-dresser or can of baked beans being put up for political election, as they might
be in the United Kingdom . Politics can be a circus, but not exactly a carnival. Michael
Moore's attempt to have a ficus plant elected to Congress is a magnificent exception.
Angelic language is too extravagant for British taste. Theatre is a venerable British art,
but emotional theatricality is as un-British as sunshine. A British, French or German author
might end the preface to his or her topic with some rather tight-lipped acknowledgements
to friends, colleagues and family. American authors, by contrast, have been known to write
roughly as follows: “Finally, I should like to thank my incredible wife Marcia (remember
that Caesar salad in Dayton, Ohio!), my three unbelievably beautiful children Dent, Tank-
ard, and Placenta, our wonderful mongoose Brian J. Screwdriver who taught me wisdom,
forbearance and compassion, and my totally extraordinary colleagues in the Department of
Apocalyptic Studies at Christ Is Coming College . . . ” One might claim that where Amer-
icans and the British differ most is in sensibility. It is this divergence that their shared lan-
guage tends to conceal. On one reckoning, however, Americans come out of the compar-
ison rather better. They may overdo emotion, but they are not fearful of it. A surplus of
feeling has rarely done as much damage as a deficiency of it.
The Kindness of Americans
There is, then, a positive side to the emotional lavishness of the States, as there is to many
an American defect. In fact, de Tocqueville writes that what Europeans tend to see as
American vices (restlessness of spirit, an immoderate desire for wealth, an excessive love
of independence, and so on) are exactly what makes the nation so resplendently successful,
and are thus every bit as serviceable to it as its virtues. Extravagant emotion may be mawk-