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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - February 9 2004
US power and influence warrant careful
scrutiny
Writers of columns get a lot of hate mail. Apart from the letters
that are personally abusive, the most common theme is my so-called
anti-American stance. It seems that if you write anything negative
about America, you get branded.
So why do it? The answer is simple: America matters. Politically,
economically and culturally, the United States is the paramount
world influence.
Every day we, out here in the colonies, are affected by America.
From the television we watch, to the runaway films our creative
community must make to stay alive, to the rules that influence our
food, medical and education systems and standards, to the shoes
we choose to wear and the coffee many of us drink.
A number of letter-writers have pointed to the good America does
in the world. While there's no denying that, often it's about how
you arrange the figures on the page. Like the fact (as one correspondent
pointed out) that America is the largest giver of aid in the world.
Except he forgot to mention that US aid is tied to goods and services,
a practice that cripples developing countries and ensures America
is rated last on the international Commitment to Development Index.
America is a complex, diverse and difficult-to-understand country.
On the one hand it is increasingly defined by extreme security measures,
while on the other it has given virtually free reign to corporate
hegemony. Tax cuts that have overwhelmingly benefited the already
wealthy have been at the direct expense of health and education,
while safeguards and protections for people and the environment
are being steadily dismantled.
Every column is an attempt to explore a single strand of this multiplicity.
Whether it is a comment on the personal impact of a privatised healthcare
system or the infantilising of children's playgrounds because of
a litigious legal system that has little to do with safety, or the
outright denial of global warming while reducing corporate responsibility
for pollution, no one column is definitive. It is simply a perspective.
At dinner late last year in Los Angles, I got into an argument
with an actor-turned-businessman who had just shifted his furniture
factory from Arkansas to China and was lamenting the loss of the
local film industry to cheaper countries, like New Zealand. "New
Zealand," he said petulantly, "is irrelevant. Only America has the
weight to count."
His hypocrisy aside, he's right. Except that living as he does
in his bubble of economic wellbeing, he, like most Americans, doesn't
have a clue about the country he was calling irrelevant.
At the premiere of the New Zealand film Perfect Strangers last
weekend, Prime Minister Helen Clark gave a short speech, then watched
the movie with the rest of us. Afterwards she wandered freely, chatting
at length to anyone who wanted to speak with her. She was not the
star of the show, the room was not bursting with Secret Service
or hovering advisers, and there was no special fanfare for her.
She wandered over and introduced herself to my husband, a new New
Zealander. She wasn't in a hurry and they discussed the film and
the travails of travelling in a security-obsessed world. They even
talked about America.
Think about it. Where else in the world would the head of state
discuss anything, let alone politics, with a stranger in a room
full of people who had not been searched, screened or vetted in
any way?
This is what criticising America is about. Protecting the remarkable
nature of this land that enables our head of state to move freely
among the people who elect her. It is for freedom defined New Zealand-style.
It's because we live in a freshly minted country on the edge of
the world and have the opportunity to learn from history, to not
replicate the policies favouring rich over the poor and profit over
common good that characterise America in the 21st century.
These columns are not anti-American; they are an attempt to create
dialogue, to raise consciousness of the consequences of the globalising,
systemising and McDonald-ising of our culture and how US domestic
and foreign policy affects us all.
Unsurprisingly, most of the disgruntled letter writers are either
Americans living here or with business connections in this country,
or New Zealanders with business in the US. Take from that what you
will, but to them and others who disagree with the contents of these
columns, I have one comment - question authority; everything on
television or the radio that purports to be fact and everything
you read (including this column).
It was the mantra my now adult daughters grew up on. It is our
only defence, individually and as a country, against the creeping
controls of the world's only remaining superpower.
And if you don't believe the sometimes outrageous things I write,
look for yourself. There's plenty of choice.
My favourites are www.alternet.org, www.dissidentvoice.org, www.misleader.org
and, of course, The New York Times.
And keep writing those critical responses. I can handle the flak.
But perhaps leave out the bad words.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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