It’s often said that the best anthropological study of the
United States by a European is Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835
classic “Democracy in America.”
Granted, the eminent French political thinker and historian
probably didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time downing
cheap vodka from Rite Aid, bumming around on the beach, blowing
stupid amounts of cash in Las Vegas, and getting arrested in
Tijuana, but I’ll try my best to follow his noble example and
offer some insightful final thoughts on this great country that I
have in many ways fallen in love with.
While working for the Daily Bruin, I have written a lot about
depressing topics. War, poverty and exploitation have tended to
dominate a lot of my column inches. This is because I believe what
the United States and my native Britain are doing in the world is
very immoral. In my opinion, when people are being killed daily for
barely concealed reasons of greed, control and domination, it is
incumbent on everyone to become active and try to stop it.
But I do have a lighter side that has enjoyed the comedy of the
abuse my writing has inspired. I have been called a neo-hippie, a
vermin and anti-American, some of which was unfair. I have been
told I’m consistently inconsistent and engage in left-wing
hysterics and emotional demagoguery, which would surely hurt if I
knew what it meant.
Yet this inconsistent, hysterical hippie has got enough
Republicans and Libertarians sufficiently angry to merit a
published letter nearly every week. It made me think I was doing
something right.
To my knowledge, I was the first to break the story about
Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz trying to stop the University of
California Press from publishing a book critical of his
scholarship. This lead has since been followed up by the New York
Times and the Guardian. In fact, I took a perverse pleasure in
being accused of “repeating a lie” by Professor
Dershowitz.
There was an important victory as well. The workers in my dining
hall who have been so genial and hard-working all year finally got
what they deserve: a wage that is sufficient to raise a family. To
get it they had to go on strike and fight against the university
establishment. But we won.
The students and the workers together proved the know-all
(actually, know-nothing) conservatives wrong. The lovely Suzanne
Jett, who has kept me updated all through the dispute, now earns $9
an hour instead of the miserly $8.32 she ““ along with her
colleagues ““ were told they should be grateful for.
I had the huge honor of flying to Boston and sitting down for a
chat with two of this nation’s most prized natural
resources.
Engaging in an hour-long bout of verbal pugilism with Noam
Chomsky ““ “one of the greatest minds of the 20th
century,” according to the New Yorker ““ was an
unforgettable experience, and the closest anyone could ever come to
having an argument with a fully conscious encyclopedia. Doing the
same with the veteran dissenter and historian Howard Zinn was no
less inspiring.
But obviously the United States is bigger than the Daily Bruin
and celebrity intellectuals. Maybe the best way to write something
of interest to everyone is to go through the five most frequently
asked questions put to me since I’ve been here. Here goes
then:
1. Does everyone in Europe hate us? No. No one should ever think
that the hostility to the Bush administration throughout most of
the world is an adversity to American people generally. There are
undoubtedly racist boneheads some places in the world who
reflexively hate the United States, but the vast majority of the
planet just deplores the Bush administration and its wars.
2. (In an American accent.) Do I have an accent? Yes.
3. (From a girl at a frat party.) What language do they speak in
England? Ummm.
4. (From boys.) Do British girls like the American accent as
much as the girls here like the British one? The fame you get for a
British accent in America is very flattering and maybe the cause of
a temporary delusion of grandeur. It will be sorely missed when I
return to being just another Englishman.
But I’m sure the American accent will have an equally
amorous effect if anyone is planning to take a year abroad
soon.
5. (From girls.) Are American girls hotter than British ones?
Yes. I can categorically say that American girls are a lot more
attractive than British ones (sorry to any British girls reading).
Having said that, we get it right sometimes. After all, we produced
the svelte beauty Keira Knightly.
So I bid adieu to this wonderful country with a very heavy
heart. Lots of thanks to all the brilliant people I’ve met.
The list is long, but shouts especially to Freddie, who helped me
through a double arrest in Tijuana and many other injurious
escapades; Ana, who is beautiful; and Sally, who is an all-round
stellar human being.
Tocqueville wrote over a hundred years ago that “two
things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human
behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are
constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost
unmoved.”
He’s hella right. Goodbye, America!
Kennard is a third-year history student. E-mail him at
mkennard@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.