Much of the world resents America. Sometimes, it’s because we project unmatched military power around the world. Sometimes, it stems from envy of our ceaseless commercial inventiveness, which produces wealth and comfort that others cannot equal. Among yet another identifiable group, it is mostly about the spread of American culture, and the way indigenous creativity is swamped by Hollywood’s vapid and violent output.
There are many other variations on the theme, but the last of these three in particular is an odd phenomenon. For although American movies and music, for example, are assiduously marketed around the world, and there is therefore a deliberate push outward from our shores, there is also a voluntary pull from the rest of the world, which repeatedly adopts American manners, mores, and preoccupations. Black British music artists, for instance, often displace their own distinct culture with the forms, gestures, and other trappings of the entirely different black culture that germinated in Los Angeles and New York. And it is often those who are loudest in their dislike of America who most assiduously follow its lead. They avariciously import what they profess to disdain.
This colors the optics of worldwide protest against American police violence and the grim death of George Floyd. Suddenly, there are Black Lives Matter look-alike demonstrations in the capitals of Europe and elsewhere. Protesters overseas make the valid point that there is racism in their own countries, too. But why, then, does it take a gruesome death in Minneapolis to spark demands for reform in London, Paris, and Madrid? The vernacular origins of race relations in Britain, France, and Spain are invisible as African immigrants face down on the pavement in Barcelona, chanting, “I can’t breathe.” This is about more than solidarity against racism; it’s also about adopting the latest imported political or ideological fashion. It’s what the cool kids do. It’s as if the whole world lives in America now.
In our cover story, Grant Addison makes the allied point that all of America now lives on campus. Woke know-nothings have graduated from university and, like super-spreaders of a virulent pandemic, have brought their vacuous revolutionary ideas out into the wider culture.
It is unfashionable but important to note that among the chief victims of this development are police officers. Timothy Carney expresses his sympathy for the thin blue line protecting life and property while many citizens who they protect assault them and slander them with accusations of systemic racism disproved by reliable data. Joseph Simonson explains that as ludicrous and dangerous as a policy of defunding the police is, it is not fantasy. It cannot be wished away. It has begun and must be defeated on the merits.
Adrian Nathan West pierces the grubby culture of ersatz status in New York clubs, Rob Long examines his shoes, and Eric Felten proposes a toast to independence.
