An ocean away
Americans as 'the advance guard of the human race'
Back in October I was sitting in McSorley’s, a lovely historic bar in Manhattan that has long been popular with visitors looking for an authentic Irish-American Nu Yoik experience. The floor is an ancient accumulation of sawdust, beer and tobacco, the walls plastered with old photos of firemen, police and the presumably very honest stalwarts of the city’s Democratic Party machine.
Waiting for my family to arrive, I began talking to a couple from the Rhineland on a city break, and we fell into easy conversation. It was the kind of conversation, in fact, one normally has with a compatriot on holiday in a foreign land.
My new German friends were having a great time in New York but, like me, found certain elements of American day-to-day life odd. Strangest of all is their maddening and hateful tipping culture. By the time I got to the city, having been in the United States for three weeks, I was already sick of having to add 20 per cent to my bill, but here there were cash registers inviting me to give a 30 per cent tip. Why not just ask for 100 per cent while you’re at it? By the end of my visit to the US, I was so sick of this nonsense that I’d have rather been arrested for a tweet than have to tip again.
They both liked it here, but the man missed German beer and football, and of course European levels of safety. We talked about how we travelled around the Subway with 360-degree vision because it’s so unnerving compared to home. (Sure, American cities are ‘safer than ever’, but it’s all relative). But it was more than that; there was something essentially alien in the attitude and culture here that was noticeably different to both our countries. I imagine that I would feel that same sense of fellowship if I sat next to a Dutch or Scandinavian couple.
New York is, I suppose, the least American American city, but my main takeaway from travelling around the United States was that, for better or worse, the British actually have far more in common with our neighbours than with our Anglophone friends across the Atlantic. The United States is a remarkable place, a beautiful country full of the most generous-spirited people, but it is alienating to a British visitor in a way that Germany, France or the Netherlands aren’t. Maybe this is an obvious point, but it’s worth repeating.
The US is a western outlier on many measurements, such as the obvious things like owning more guns and believing in God. They are – not unrelatedly - much more generous when it comes to giving to charity.
America’s political system is also very different, in part because its much older, and its liberties are far more ingrained and secure. Americans are unusual in valuing freedom of speech, and are shocked that the British have a much more European approach. It is the only country founded on liberalism as its ruling ideology, what Daniel Bell called its ‘unspoken consensus’. Louis Hartz argued that both American parties are liberal, and merely in disagreement about its application - although perhaps the great rupture of the 21st century is down to that not being true anymore.
