Plucking the Eagle's Feathers
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Now considered the only remaining "superpower", the United States of America are admired the world over for their powerful business accumen and their scientific/technological superiority.
To my generation, living its personality-forming teen age in the Fourties and Fifties, the US of A were the Ultimate Dream. Everything American had our stamp of appoval.
It began with the first word of Engllsh we learned: "chewing gum", directed at GIs in uniform, who had come across the border from Germany on leave. We even changed our English pronounciation from English to a sort of Texan drawl. We were absolutely hooked.
By now, American culture has acquired a set of characteristics, no longer strived for by Europeans. Having outgrown blind acceptance, the former World War II teenagers are now more sceptical.
Two aspects of the American Way of Life, however, remained with us into the 21st century, and one survived the 9/11 trauma:
One is the relative freedom of the individual from governmental regimentation and the other is the cultural creation of former slaves called JAZZ.
This kind of music, although now pushed into a niche-existance by commercial world pop, is truly worth being called America's main contribution to music.
But it is the Europeans, who keep Jazz from going under, rather than the broad American public.
The freedom of the individual we so admired, has gradually been sacrificed to the new scare hysteria, Washington's instrument to have citizens under control.
Still, the majority of Americans adheres to the notion of being bigger and better than others.
US - superiority to the rest of the world does not reside in the small details.
Technical tid-bits
Americans still cope with inferior quality in simple articles for daily use:
The Paper Clip
If they are really so practically inclined, why has nobody ever had the idea to make paper clips that do not tear the paper when being removed.
In other countries, industry has long found out that all you need is bend the wire a second time in order to avoid that.
The Clothes Hanger
Take an American clothes hanger. It is made of wire, bends pitifully under the weight of your winter coat and leaves rust stains on your freshly washed shirt.
Its counterpart in Italy for example, is not only made of wood, it even has a handle for easier hooking on and off.
The Door Knob
Carrying your breakfast tray in both hands, you open the door in Europe by using your elbow.
Not so in America. Instead of door handles, they have door knobs.
So put down your breakfast, turn door knob, open door, pick up breakfast, put down again on the other side, close doors, pick up ......
better have breakfast in the restaurant downtown!
The Matchbox
They strike fire with those shabby cardboard matches, that never tear at the forseen place - similar to toilet paper.
Scoolbooks
While over here every half-civilised child carries his or her books and notepads to school in a knapsack, satchel or briefcase, American youngsters tuck their books loosely under the arm. Sometimes they manage to tie a belt around their stuff.
Change
Once grown up, Europeans carry their coins in a purse or a billfold.
Over there, change money is stuffed loosely inio the pocket. Purses for coins don't seem very popular
Banking
The overseas corporate banking system is cumbersome. E.g. there are no possibilities for international bank-to-bank money transfer, as companies omit their banking connections from their letterheads.
Daily Paper
Newspapers are thrown by delivery boys from the street as far as the house porch, not deposited neatly in the mailbox
Okay, these are minor drawbacks. So how about the more serious deficits in the American Way of Life?
Politics
The social health system, - using an Americanism for once - sucks.
Nutritional awareness has produced dozens of clowns publishing a book praising some weird new diet about every fortnight.
The enormity of their national debt shows Americans to live beyond their means.
Few of them seem to realise, that their excessive footprint would wash away, if Europe and Asia had second thoughts about American imports.
The primary educational system is inferior to ours. Teachers are both underpayed and underestimated.
There are schools in the world's Number One Nation, where teaching science in the form of Darwin's Evolution is banned in favour of a twisted anachronism called "creationism". Another drag to cultural development, courtesy of the Christian fundamentalists.
America is the world's major polluter and resource-guzzler. Extremely careless, casually wasteful energy managment are payed for by the rest of the planet and by its future generations.
World police functions, traditionally exercised by the Armed Forces, is driven by self-overestimation. The export of their way of life as the only one worth living, is mainly for commercial dominance.
God's Own Country is bound to continue crusadeing for democracy in places and cultures their military, clergy and politicians do not understand.
Despite a series of laws proclaiming "Equal Rights", America continues to discriminate its fellow citizens, although the majority no longer considers it racism.
The gap between extremely rich and bitterly poor citizens is not smaller than in a South American feudal society.
Money and power belong together like sex and crime. They are hardly ever considered to have a downside.
The US use a hopeless system for electing the best man or woman to be their president.
Without the slightest doubt, there are hundreds of bright, resourceful, capable and motivated candidates among the hundreds of millions. But the system to identify them should be based on more relevant grounds than money.
Boycotting today's most important international organisations is another deplorable trait in American politics. The world tribunal for mass murderers in the Haig; the Kyoto protocol for world survival, etc. all of them need the United States of America because they still see them as "powerful and important." Occasionally the US even block majority decisions of the United Nations with their veto
America's ground transport system, being based on the personal motor car, led to the neglect of energy-efficient public transport.
The percentage of imprisoned criminals is, I believe, the highest in the world and the death sentence is widely applauded.
Despite this dire situation, the right to bear arms is kept alive by the mighty NRA, short for the National Rifle Association (or is it the National Rifle Assassination?). This powerful lobby is the main responsible for countless murders taking place all over the country.
They say: "It's not weapons that kill people; it's people".
And with this blatant stupidity they get away in Washington and the with the Supreme Court.
The gun madness would fill another Taboo-Breaker chapter to the brim.
I renounce. Please refer to Mr Michael Moore's film "Bowling for Columbine".
Culture
Cultural interests are restricted to the American Way of Life.
Areas of culture, where another country is far ahead are simply ignored rather than imitated.
Americans fail to recognise the simple fact that every country has something it does much better than others.
As an example: Nobody beats the Italians when it comes to caffè.
American coffee is a thin, nearly taste- and odourless brew served in huge cups as a drink to accompany food. And it is the preferred kind.
Glorification of violence and war, are all covered by religious fundamentalist goups and very popular in the media.
America develops an increasingly degenerated form of the English language.
As a British writer once formulated it:
In the time of the Colonies, the decision had been taken, to make English the language of the United States. It was never disclosed, why this decision has not been carried out.
There is an obstinate reluctance to switch to the metric system
The world owes the heritage of many different units and systems to the Brits. And it owes the simplicity we now enjoy to the French.
However, even the citizens of Albion have changed from £/d/p to decimal, from Fahrenheit to Celsius, from gallons/pints to litres, from pounds/ounzes to kilogrammes and are about to get used to the kilometer.
Americans on the other hand, stick to their plenitude of inconvertible units. They even exhibit a phobia towards the decimal system.
While the rest of the world has no problem understanding "0.1 percent", Americans must be given " one tenth of one percent" to get the idea.
Alcohol
Just as with inhibited sex, the average American must live with a disturbed relationship towards alcoholic beverages.
To him or her they are narcotics rather than part of a hedonic culture meant to waken the joy for life in us.
From Hollywood films we all know the brown paper bag, in which a person, thus branded as an unsteady character, hides a bottle. His hand grasps the bottleneck, wrapped in the crumpled paper and guides it to his unshaven face.
Et voila! An instant outsider of society.
And while we're in Hollywood films:
The bad guys are the ones that smoke cigarettes and the criminals are identifiable by their foreign accent. Believe it or not, that includes Englishmen!
In the early Sixties, I once bought a carton with six beer cans in the supermarket of a little southern town.
Shopping for the ingredients of a European supper that I intended to cook for my host family. I hoped to keep them from drinking Coke with my oeuvre.
During that time, the useful "multipack" cartons were being introduced.
Clever engineers had developped a machine capable of cutting, embossing, plying and printing this box, all from a single piece of cardboard, including a handle for carrying.
The cashier tucked the multipack, including its carrying grip, into one of those brown paper bags (see above).
A bit less comfortable to carry but:
".... so people can't see what you're carrying home with you", the helpful woman said.
Moderate drinking, especially the European custom of enjoying some wine with a meal are the exception here.
The main meaning of "drinking" in American parlance is neither slaking thirst, nor is it enjoying a glass of burgundy to go with the steak, it is synonymous with excessive drinking.
Other nations seem to have problems with moderation, too. Including some Scandinavians, perhaps.
But people in the wine-producing countries of the Mediterranean hardly drink excessively. In Italy for example, you never find the streets adorned with staggering men at night.
No doubt, America has just as much to learn from modern European culture as vice versa.
Unfortunately, it appears that Europeans are more prepared to pluck prunes from the orchard across the Atlantic (they have such a "trendy" appeal), than Americans are willing to adapt any European way of doing things (what would you do, if your own style was the best in the world).
One day perhaps, Americans may discover "..we're not alone!"