Sack this man, NOW!

I'm not sure that is exactly the way to get what I want, but it felt good to type it. I am truly furious at the BBC and at Justin Webb, seriously jaded correspondent in the US.

I should first say I understand exactly what he is saying in an article which deals with the US/EU division- if you will, a division of consciousness. It's something I've thought about a lot through close dealings with both Europeans and Americans (though I've only encountered a wide variety of US expats in various locations, rather than visited the country itself. Saving the best..., is how I would put it).

But it's soo0 banal- I wouldn't blame you if you took one look and gave up on Webb's blatherings, but I feel I should mention them.

Let's start with the most obvious factual calumny. According to Webb the US response to the Tsunami illustrates their lack of reality by comparison with Europe. Did he bother to find out that France, to take the most prime example, was so ill-equipped in their effort to help that they had only one helicopter to administer their aid effort, and that loaned to them? As one Frenchman exclaimed on TV with a notable European flourish of realism, 'It is as though France no longer has the means even to express its emotions.' or as a reporter was reported saying , '"The good will of the rescuers is not in question," says Pujadas. "This is well and truly a foul up."' If he thought that Europeans were on the ball regarding the Tsunami it is Webb who is the fantasist, wilfully failing to notice failure. Frankly I couldn't give a damn who saw what pictures- I am interested to see who was on hand to help. So were the Indonesians.

According to Webb

'America is fast becoming a nation of faith not fact. A nation where the unpleasant aspects of human existence are simply airbrushed away.

Television coverage of the Asian Tsunami was a case in point. In Europe it was covered as an unrelenting tragedy, in America, one television network promised "incredible stories of lives saved in near miraculous fashion".'

...


'While Europeans fret about what they regard as real life, about poverty and social justice and about combating AIDS, Americans find it easier to rally round a vision, however otherworldly it might be.'

Like the 'vision' Bush has about donating billions of dollars to help Aids victims in Africa, I suppose.

Not only does he demonstrate ignorance bordering on complete dishonesty, stupidity is also displayed. Setting aside the assumption that the best measure of the reality of a nation's worldview is the extent to which they show violence of different sorts on their television, or the assumption that the nature of TV in various places is a good measure of anything at all, did it occur to Webb that the reason for a greater sense of 'reality', so-called, in Europe, could have been their much greater involvement in the casualties that were recorded? If the US' population had been hit by the tsunami like, say, Sweden's, I think there would have been more direct coverage, at the very least in terms of interviews with victims' families questing to have bodies discovered and returned.

Webb goes on to tack this observation to an observation about the numbers of Americans who believe in what is technically termed 'The Rapture'. Well, this teleological prediction may not be true, but it is certainly something about which Europeans are largely ignorant but Americans are comparatively well informed. It is Webb's automatic presumption that belief in certain things indicates unreality, which he also links to ignorance. In fact of course there are people in the US highly educated in the field of theology for whom such concepts as The Rapture are matters of robust debate. Debate- you know, the thing we don't have about our central idea for the future, the European Superstate. I'm willing to bet the populous of the US know more certifiable facts about different theories of the End-times than EU citizens know about their political masters' political teleology.

As if his massive simplification and condescension weren't bad enough, he adds a note of true absurdity, which nevertheless does approximate a truth- if I can explain.

'No wonder then, that in international affairs America is so willing to smite its enemies.

Or to hold firm to a principle even when practicalities get in the way.

It has been happening for years.

'Atlantic chasm'

Witness President Reagan's arms build up in the 1980s, which helped to destroy the Soviet Union, or the first President Bush's decision to press for German re-unification, when even Mrs Thatcher was nervous.'

The way this shadows, but does not represent, reality, is that, yes, America stands out by its willingness to consider the possibility that it might have enemies, to conduct foreign policy with this in mind, and to act when it views it necessary to act, or, if you prefer to use Biblical language, 'smite' the self-proclaimed enemies of the United States. This would, in a non-fantasist's lexicon, be known as 'diplomatic reality.' I can only think that Webb lives in a bubble that is not simply post-modern, but post-reality, and certainly pre-Sept 11th 2001.

But judging from this article, and others, Webb would only be comfortable in a pre-1989 world, and even that would have to be in a privileged post editing Pravda.