Hey Brits, you’re more American than you know
Andrew Sullivan

It’s a strange personal history I have — 21 years continuously in Britain, followed by 21 years and a bit continuously in the US. It can be a distorting lens, but also at times a clarifying one.

When I come back to England after long stretches in America, and visit my old friends and family, I see them move on, age, or mature perhaps, more clearly than if I were here all the time. And that goes for the country too.

After a brief visit, the one thing I can say for sure is that being in London today is far more like being in America than it was two decades ago. From Starbucks to WiFi, much of Londonland — and I include the vast expanse of England that is essentially a satellite of the capital — is indistinguishable from an American blue (Democrat-voting) state city.

Thatcher’s reforms, and Blair’s co-optation of them, have created, from a distance, a pseudo-American society. The energy in Londonland, its vibrant labour markets, its consumerism, its media, its multiculturalism, its unabashed capitalism, have a distinctively American feel. Even the new wave of eastern European immigrants is strikingly like New York in another era.

This is not to say that modern Britain doesn’t have its own cultural roots, or isn’t still distinctly British. Global capitalism was invented by the Brits, after all. And it isn’t to conflate Britain outside Londonland with the capital complex. But the tone and tenor are strikingly more American than they used to be.

Class has clearly diminished in the Londonland mind. People tip bartenders more than they used to. They own shares, make their own retirement arrangements, live near people with different religions and colours, and have turned urban American hip-hop into a strange English hybrid. What else are chavs but some kind of English fusion of “white trash” and “ghetto”, complete with bling? Brits today can even look at someone like David Cameron and be less interested in his class background than in what, if anything, he has to say. How, er, American.

There’s only one flaw in this analysis: how to explain the paradox of rising anti-Americanism. A fascinating new book by the pollster Andrew Kohut and the analyst Bruce Stokes lays out the empirical terrain. It’s called America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked. And its data are sobering if you are in the Bush administration.

America now has a lower favourability rating among Britons than China does. At the dawn of the millennium, 83% of Brits had a favourable view of the US. That’s now 55%. Only Germany and largely Muslim countries have seen a sharper decline in views of America.

Even more troubling is that for the first time this negative view of a country has translated into growing hostility to Americans as people. In 2002, 83% of Britons had good things to say about Americans. Last year that had slumped to 70%. The numbers are worst among the young. One in 10 Brits under the age of 30 disliked Americans in 2002. One in five disliked them last year. It seems they have not yet quite forgiven Americans for re-electing George Bush.

A great deal of this, of course, has to do with the underlying difficulties of living with a sole hyperpower in a nerve-racking world. Then there’s the Iraq war, along with America’s enmeshment with torture of terror suspects, and on top of that global warming. There’s also a sense — and a not unreasonable one — that America’s evangelical fundamentalists, with their zeal, intolerance and eschatological excesses, have hijacked a once kinder, saner nation.

With all these trends, the differences between Britain and America seem to be growing, not slackening. A new Populus poll found that 67% of Brits believe “Britain’s future lies more with Europe than with America”.

And yet I remain unconvinced. Culture still matters, and on that score Britain is still closer to America than almost any other country. I don’t mean simply the number of San Franciscans downloading Ricky Gervais podcasts, or the ubiquity in American pop culture of reality television created in Britain, or even the cross-cultural franchises of Harry Potter, Tolkien or The Simpsons. I mean rather a residual, tenacious sense that the individual is responsible for his own destiny. Some 82% of Americans ascribe lack of success in life to the individual rather than to society and 75% of Brits share this view.

Even on religion, the differences are less profound than you might think. Yes, Americans are much more observant, but not that much more godly. In fact 94% of Americans believe in God; but 61% of Brits do — not exactly the atheistic society sometimes described. Some 30% of Americans believe abortion is never justifiable, down 3% since 1990; 25% of Brits agree — up 6% in the same period.

The number of Americans who tell pollsters that religion is “not very important” in their lives has doubled from 7% to 14% since 1965. A convergence? Bush isn’t the only national leader who speaks of God. And there’s no member of the American cabinet who won’t say if she is in Opus Dei.

But to me the most telling aspect of Americanisation is anti-Americanism itself. Anti-Americanism, after all, is as American as its opposite. You will find few foreign countries as hostile to Bush as California. The most successful anti-Americans, like Michael Moore, are home-grown. Asked recently whether Americans were “greedy”, 64% of Brits agreed. But 70% of Americans chimed in agreement. Some 26% of Brits believe that Americans are “immoral”; 39% of Americans agreed!

Yes, it’s true. You can’t escape. Britain is not the 51st state and never will be. But 57% of Brits consider America Britain’s most reliable ally. Hate them and love them, you’re stuck with them and they’re there when you need them (eventually).

It’s the meaning of family. And the Anglo-American clan keeps subtly expanding, deepening and complicating itself.

The Country (USA) as a whole is a reflection of the people we elect, and were held accountable by that decision. Please don't blame me when I bash that a**hole President we have now, he's soured the whole world against us. Looked at the difference in perceptions since Clinton left office.

No big deal. They burned our capital once, we got over it.

Britian has been are closest ally for a very long time and I imagin that won't be changing anytime soon.

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i remember talking to brits in 1973 in the campgrounds of europe. the common market was a new concept then.

i remember suggesting that perhaps britian would be better as a 51st state. some of the brits said maybe that would be better than joining europe.

but i doubt it would ever happen, but i suspec britian will continue to remain independant from europe, too.

my favorite brit is winston churchill... and his mom was american.

a good combination.

tom w

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Remember the Birtish and French were rather found of killing each other until fairly recentlty.

I would be shocked if Britian jumped on the European band wagon, that would be going against 2,000 plus years of history.

Look a what the Romans went through to make them part of what was then continental Europe.

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Depending on how you ask the question, you can get the poll results that you want. I look at any poll result with a suspect eye, as it were.

That being said, there is a lot of talk about how the US is "perceived" in the eyes of the world, but there are other measures to judge this perception. The amount of business investment and currency exchange between the two countries continues to rise. British investment in US treasuries is very high, and US investment in the British economy is also very high, and increasing. The same can be said about other countries as well. There is a confidence in the US financial system that is meaningful when pondering how we are perceived by the rest of the world.

One of the reasons for the confidence in our system is that people know that our political leaders will be replaced on schedule and that a new start is pending, always.

We in the US have learned much having Bush & Co at the helm, just like we did with Presidents of the past. No new President will be elected in a vacuum, he or she will be elected mainly by people who also voted in the past. We have our ups and downs, and you can quibble and moan and groan about the current leadership, but they will be out in a couple of years.

But remember the President is NOT all powerful in our system either, he cannot act alone in very much of what he does. And take a look at Congress' poll numbers - they're even worse than the Presidents numbers.

Our voting citizens and the media have to wake up and look hard at congressional leadership in this country. There are a number of people elected time and time again in the Senate and House that need to go, but their incumbant status gets them back into office because the locals don't listen very well to what they say AFTER elections.

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I spent 20 years overseas, hitch hiked around the world 3 times, drove a Land Rover from UK to Australia, lived 10 years in the Middle East, etc., etc. and have met a few people on the way. Generally, everyone I met, aside from the Palestinians in Abu Dhabi, liked Americans, but not America. Individually, aside from the odd 'ugly American' tourist, Americans are well liked. American politics and politicians that cause us to invade other countries are universally disliked, and with good reason.