Americans and history

 

When they think of Europe, Americans often rave about the centuries of History Europeans enjoy as their common legacy. The inexhaustible bounty of artistic treasures, centuries-old villages and castles, the innumerable palaces, museums etc., can even be overwhelming. But their feeling is often that while it’s marvellous alright, it’s also… dead. It’s the past and it’s now totally irrelevant. And this is where Europeans and Americans diverge. For Europeans, while their History belongs to the past, it is certainly not dead and definitively not irrelevant. It lives on. 

So when he made his famous remark opposing Old Europe to New Europe, Donald Rumsfeld didn’t shoot at random. He knew that the relatively weak sense of History Americans have would make them rather sensitive to this jab. His aim was to disparage the French and the Germans as belonging to a world of old that makes them incapable of perceiving the true nature and the dangers of today’s world. Which of course isn’t the case of America, “the New World” by excellence in the eyes of Americans. Identifying their society with modernity as opposed to the Old World where so many of their ancestors came from in search of a better life, they are known to be always on the move, constantly perking over the skyline, aiming at the future in which they see the promises of a better life. 

Optimism, which has been identified with Americans since the Republic was founded, is probably their greatest asset. Americans, among the least thrifty people on earth have such confidence in the future that they don’t even bother to save. Why do so? Tomorrow will be better. Today is already gone. It sorts of illustrate the relationship of Americans to Time and therefore to History. Americans want actions, not endless talks. They want instant gratification. History, which they have so little of, doesn’t make sense and is “reserved” for the Europeans. Their ancestors left Europe and 2000 years of History. Now America is different and doesn’t care much about the past. And isn’t it essentially un-American to be turned to the past?

Wasn’t Rumsfeld also playing on the inferiority complex towards age-old experienced Europeans, always ready to remind Americans they are just spoiled children with no experience of life and the world? By pointing out France and Germany for belonging to “Old Europe,” wasn’t he in fact telling Americans to have no inferiority complex towards these old men? Look forward, be Americans! And look at other European countries, the good ones, the modern ones. In fact, this can be rather funny when you consider it: Italy, England, Spain (at the time…) Poland, being the new Europe…

When he made his notorious speech at the U.N. Security Council, Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister at the time, didn’t miss the opportunity to remind the world that, yes, his country was an old one, to which J. Straw, British Minister of foreign affairs, could only agree and say that his country, too, was an old one. And how! Nearly one thousand years ago, England was invaded by the Normans coming from France. Hastings, 1066! Every British citizen knows this date marking the foundation of “modern” England: the year the French arrived… 

In the Norman town of Bayeux, one can admire a tapestry woven during the years of the French invasion, both a fantastic work of art and an extraordinary witness of the conquest of England by the French. Among the fascinating details that can be admired on this nearly 70 meters (76 yards) long piece of linen, there is the one which I chose as an illustration for this post: it shows Halley’s comet, which was crossing the sky during the year 1066. Seen as a bad omen by the astrologers of the King of England (Harold II) and a good one by the French, it proved the French to be right… 

As the comet returns every 76 years, can’t that be understood as a metaphor for the enduring permanence of the past and the importance and respect any human society should devote to its History, as both France and Old Europe do. But wouldn’t that be totally un-American? 

As Plato would write: “Time is the moving image of eternity”. Not sure Rumsfeld thought about Plato when disparaging old Europe and the French…

Note: The picture is the Bayeux tapestry.