Excuse my title, but it is an obvious gag, given Matthew Parris’s reflections on America in a recent article in the Spectator. The title of his article is “America is a moral idea or it is nothing”. Well, that sounds like rubbish to me. By the way, it is not a title arbitrarily stuck by an editor on an innocent piece. It is Parris’s claim in his text.
The central hoop of the America barrel is, I think, the moral idea of America. Dislodge the idea, and the rest will not hold. America is a moral idea or it is nothing.
Aye, one might think so, looking out of the window of a train. Parris was in America. He got on a train in Denver, Colorado, looked out of the window, drank some coffee, and then reflected that America wants to be Right: before realising, cleverly, that Trump is Wrong, and therefore, by deduction, concluding that “Trumpism is profoundly Unamerican.”
Well!
That is how a Parrisian in America syllogises.
I, too, was in America last week, also, in fact, in Colorado. And I think Parris could well have written his piece without leaving London: all he had to do was switch on his Geiger Counter and think of Trump. I submit as proof:
Hypocrisy, they say, is the homage vice pays to virtue – and that’s why this President confects grievances and injustices to sell his aggressions to the American people.
Critique No.1: It was not ‘They’ who said it,
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“ Trump, with all his faults, represents a very interesting attempt by a major power to turn the wheel of the ship of state. Few commentators seem to recognise – yet – how badly this is needed across the West”
These sentences are for me the crux of the matter.
Excellent article. You always look at things from such an interesting angle. Maybe it’s the lack of a smartphone.
I’m in Utah, travelling around, was in Arizona a couple of weeks ago. All good here, friendly people, brilliant customer service, several chats with Americans from all over, only a few political but all were pro Trump/Republican in sentiment and generally happy with life and how things are going, one was a cowboy, a proper cowboy, horses and cattle all his life. There seems to be a spirit of optimism around that I haven’t felt for a while, even in the US. Commentators need to get out of the big cities and in to the country and small towns to see what’s really going on.
There are also areas here that have been left behind in a way nobody in the UK who hasn’t seen it could understand, far far worse than in the North of England and South Wales have been, bad as these area have been abandoned politically. Trump has said he’ll improve things for them and people need hope.
Nobody in Europe is offering hope just now.
Well Said! I too read that Spectator article and thought it served only to reflect very badly upon its author.
As you say, Parris appears to have traversed the landscape of a foreign land, without engaging in a meaningful way with its inhabitants. And to add insult to injury, returned home with his Old World Snobbery still intact.
“… and that’s why this President confects grievances and injustices to sell his aggressions. .”
The grievances and injustices felt by “Middle America” pre-dates Trump’s arrival on the political scene by some years, and built considerably during the reign of St Barry of Obama and Lost-in-Space Biden.
Trump recognised that and acted as the front man for a movement of disgruntled Americans who were ignored, held in disdain and contempt by a so-called liberal elite class.
He won, because he acknowledged it and promised to do something about it. He is doing what he promised. The big majority support him.
Allow me to make a sweeping statement, based on my experience, coming from a 58 year old East European who has been living in Britain for 34 years:
You don’t understand a country until you have lived there for at least two years. Preferably 10.
Getting on a train, looking out of the window and then writing an article for a magazine, thinking you are really clever? Yeah, right.
Agreed, although in my experience an Anglo living elsewhere in the Anglosphere takes less, as less cultural and no language challenge – started a few weeks in after buying a car, and well-Americanised when I left 15 months later.
Also to generalise, the younger you are the less time it takes.
Parris was one of the many reasons I dumped my Speccie Sub some years back, after discovering this forum.
Ditto.
The myriad ways in which those who believe they are part of the elite seek to dismiss the result of the democratic process as “wrong” while pretending to be democrats! Never ceases to amaze me.
“Hypocrisy, they say, is the homage vice pays to virtue – and that’s why this President confects grievances and injustices to sell his aggressions to the American people. “
Well Parris, whatever he “sold”, the American people bought it. Unlucky, Parris.
Parris knows no more about the real world than Fraser Nelson.
I thought Spectators were supposed to observe. 🙂
Parris has always talked 100% liberal BS, don’t waste your glasses reading it…
Agreed. When I used to subscribe to The Times, on the run-up to the EU Referendum, I regularly commented BtL in favour of Leave. I enraged him so much he actually replied in the comments and told me so …… a badge of honour I polish every so often 🙂
God Bless America. Let’s not overlook the gene pool – Descended from risk-takers who braved the North Atlantic in dodgy sailing ships for a life in the New World, whereas we’re descended from the stick in the muds the risk-takers left behind.
Although as frequented decades ago, that might seem hard to fathom in an American Diner, among heavyweights tucking into tall stacks of pancakes and maple syrup.
Maybe get a car next time, Professor Alexander (and Mr Parris), and disappear into a continent? Would facilitate hunting for a socket adapter. Pull off the highway at American Diners, motels and State Historical Monuments, and see what’s there. Oh my Highway 101, Westport Beach, Fort Ross and Ronald Reagan of long ago.
Well I may be a Brit but according to my genetic profile and other research my ancestors braved the cold, inhospitable waters of the Baltic and Channel in open longships to settle in Normandy. One later crossed the channel to eventually settle in Essex and bred with a local peasant girl. I suspect this sort of background is common to many “stay-at-home” Brits.
Sadly the gene pool of this country is being weakened of late by many of the new arrivals who are encouraged to come for an easy life.
The gene pool is not being weakened but replaced by the incomers setting up a replication of their Third World shitholes in our cities where the indigenous population that has absorbed and integrated incomers over centuries are leaving as they do not want to live in a foreign land. Being 3/4 Yorkshire I would expect my genes to have sailed across the North Sea a thousand years ago.
Understood – bit of an over-simplification on my part, I know.
Even so, if I’m remembering history right, in the 500+ years between the takeover by Norman aristocracy and the start of emigration to the New World, there wasn’t much in the way of inward migration to these shores.
As for genetic profiling, the profiles I’ve seen of indigenous Brits tend to be quite similar – perhaps we all got homogenised over the last 150 years due to greater physical and social mobility.
Time will tell what narrative, agenda or stark reality unfold over the next 150 years.
Risk-takers, chancers, or those that were taken prisoner, they weren’t likely successes. Plenty of those, already successful, stayed.
A dangerous narrative, more likely.
Trumps carries are working here; Stakin Starmer is talking about cutting red tape and making tax concessions for some business sectors so that they can compete. Exactly what is required to make our businesses more profitable and encourage growth. Go Trump.
Trouble is the Two Tier Kier talks ignorant drivel that will not be backed up by any action or indeed the actions his gang of Student Unionistas will take are dedicated to destroying businesses, especially the non-corporates.
“Trump, with all his faults, represents a very interesting attempt by a major power to turn the wheel of the ship of state”
Yes. Strip out the usual 20-30 million vote fraud including an estimated 9 million dead over the age of 120, and the Demon Party barely exists. This is only April. Lots to do. I said to a few Americans (not the brightest of people) in 2020, that the stolen election guaranteed the destruction of their country. They had no idea what I was on about.
Trump’s tariffs are quid pro quo. The Beaverstanis (canuckistanis) have been tariffing 25-300% for decades, yet somehow escaped the Tariffs. EU is in part a large tariff-Continental bloc. China, India etc all playing the tariff game. What Tronald faces:
The Deep State – endless it appears. Lawfare and the Lawfia – out of control and simply criminal. Fake News. Faker ‘science’. Sexual degeneracy and Queer/Trans fascism. Climate Fascism. Burn Loot Murder, Brownshirt violence. Int’l Orgs that are money laundering/world gov’t creations. Nuclear war with Russia. Protecting Christian culture. Where I depart with Tronald is his deep love of Jews and Israel and the obvious fact that criminal Pharma still owns large… Read more »
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. They also protect Christians. Maybe that’s why Trump (and most sane people) support them.