Rendering Unto Caesar: The American Cultural Gondola‏

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

One of the key transitions in the history of ancient Rome occurred when a uniform standard was forced upon the subordinate martial companies throughout the empire. Each ethnic group was denied its traditional military insignia and required to adopt the flag of Jupiter, father of the gods. The Roman mascot can be seen wherever martial prowess is valued over human intellect. This is especially the case in the US and in other Romes away from Rome.



During my time working in Europe I had numerous opportunities to observe other American visitors to that war torn territory. There were a number of occasions when I was quite embarrassed by the conduct of my fellow visiting country folk. It was an ugliness I had heard about from European immigrants to the US but had not yet seen up close and in person. The worst of the bunch were GIs stationed in Germany with tourist retirees coming in a close second. I will never forget a busload of elderly Americans trooping through the cathedral of Notre Dame waving small US flags and paying no attention to their surroundings.

America ugliness manifests a phenomenon that is similar to the gondola kitten experiment were kittens reared in the confines of a gondola develop more poorly than kittens allowed to wander freely. This tendency can be followed back in history to the Roman ambition to make the rest of the world conform to its uniform standard. American visitors want to bring back tokens of an alien culture, but they do so without leaving their own culture at home. American military service people eke out most of their time overseas within a bubble of Americana in a hermetically sealed base environment. When they sally out for encounters with the local culture they bring enough of America along in order to feel comfortable. This includes such American institutions as gang fights over prostitutes.



The gondola kitten mentality extends into the political domain with the export of American political institutions to places and peoples where it does not belong. Woodrow Wilson sought to extend constitutional protection to American citizens who assisted the British in their efforts to subdue the Kaiser. George Bush engaged America in a crusade to bring American political hegemony to Afghanistan and Mesopotamia. Now there is a movement to bring Syria, Iran, and North Korea into Washington's bankrupt orbit.

What experience do you have with the American cultural gondola and its pesky gondola kittens?

Links: Alexander Cooley on American military bases (2005). Bradford Plumer's observations on Cooley's article and on the US military base situation. Daniel Aldrich reviews Alexader Cooley's book Base Politics.

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

If we are so... parochial and insulated when our conquering heroes go oversees, how do you explain the explosion (if you pardon the expression) of first Thai. Vietnamese and Korean restaurants in the 70's and 80's and the now incipient boom in Afghan and Middle Eastern establishments today? Clearly the market for traditional kebab and tabbouleh wasn't fostered in the Bagram Airbase Sbarro or Taco Bell and the people frequenting these places are not only the displaced refugees who fled our Genghis Khan-like depredations.

As for the hoary Ugly American, it is a canard which is trite beyond words. Suffice it to say that cultural ignorance is equally distributed among many communities. It is hardly an American monopoly.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Are you giving American military personnel credit for the influx of refugees from countries with an American military presence? It is interesting that you mention the Italian-American Sbarro and the Mexican-American Taco Bell rather than McDonald's or KFC. I suppose for some GIs, those constitute "ethnic" cuisine. When I dine at an exotic restaurant in the US, I rarely hear the same kind of chatter from other American clientele as I hear when noshing in the presence of US military personnel.

BTW, the ugly Americans I encountered in Germany were more whory than hoary.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I'm giving them credit for fostering the ethnic food culture that exploded after they returned, sure. The refugees brought the food ways that the veterans were excited to try again, back here in the States. This is a very well known phenomenon that is as true for curry shops and WI shops in the UK. Your Pauline Kael Syndrome notwithstanding, US GI's are often interested in the cultures of those they were paid to kill and subjugate. My own father returned from depriving West Germany of the benefits of the GDR's worker's paradise with an enduring love of Weinerschnizel, red cabbage with apples and Mosel wine. He credits the military with expanding his horizons beyond the small town, Depression era upbringing and fostering in him a desire to travel and see the world.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

How are you going to keep 'em down on the farm once they have tasted fine German wine? The interest of American military personnel in Middle Eastern culture can be witnessed by the use of phrases such as "towel head" and "sand nigger."

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

To be fair, those American G.I.'s in the Middle East weren't tourists to Abu Dhabi but instead in places like Fallujah. You can't really expect cultural appreciation in a theatre of war.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Some of the Fallujah veterans went on to commit the Haditha Massacre.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

War does terrible things to young men, one of many reasons it should be an absolute last resort. It doesn't excuse them from atrocities but the trauma that leads to that kind of dissociation isn't something one encounters in normal life. Mostly.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

It can be witnessed in a hundred other ways too, if you are willing to look.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/afghan-kabob-wrightstown

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The food is the only thing I miss about Iraq.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Tell me about your favorite Iraqi meal. Other than the flesh and blood of Iraqi newborns, of course.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

While the blood of newborns is certainly tasty it doesn't hold a candle to the taste of thier mothers tears ;).

In all seriousness...

Goat meat Shawarma with goat cheese and greens.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Superheros eating gyros!

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Actually, they are super gyros.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected: Superheros eating super gyros!

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The only time I have had goat meat was at a Haitian restaurant. It was quite tasty. Goat cheese is especially good with grilled mushrooms and peaches. I am not surprised that the Iraqis do good things with food. They have thousands of years of culinary practice under their belt.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Romes away from Rome

Ok, I'll admit I chuckled at that turn of phrase.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I will never forget a busload of elderly Americans trooping through the cathedral of Notre Dame waving small US flags and paying no attention to their surroundings.

I'm betting that was a tour group and the flags were a visual way for them to keep their group together in case some of them got lost from the group etc. Not that unusual for elderly people to get lost if they're not fully functional. I'm pretty sure they weren't there to piss all over the French by rubbing their noses in American nationalism by flag waving. And usually now, those tour groups will wear specially made tee shirts with some logo for their group etc, you see that pretty frequently in NYC.

There maybe more culturally close minded in other countries too, but considering our national priorities on the arts, etc compared to the European culture (btw, I'm not including the UK in that) which you typically see mocked in right wing media or even here sometimes in the talk politics community, I sort of agree there is some truth in your observations.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

I was stationed in Germany shortly after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, during the 'Prague Spring'. I got to know quite a few Germans; all of them were happy we were there. I had a tank in my armored platoon break down close to Grafenwöhr. The farmer who owned the land nearby brought the crew homemade apple strudel and other goodies each day they were stuck there. I dunno, maybe he just did it to keep them from gang-raping his farm animals.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

He may have been hoping the strudel would help you to stay out of his cabbage patch once you got the machine moving again.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

At that time Germans were on hand to make a note of every brick that got busted by a tank tread, or ant hill that was damaged (for real). The U.S. government paid for any damage.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

You still gang raped his farm animals, though, right?

I mean, standards need to be maintained, strudel or no strudel.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

We made every effort to maintain the image of a conquering horde of savage barbarians. We did cut a little slack on autobahn destruction, however. As I recall, only one Mercedes and one VW were crushed.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

That is the kind of laxity that led Gaiseric to sack Rome. No wonder Edward Snowden hasn't been hit with a drone based Hellfire missile. Yet.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Did BMW demand equal time?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I had friends stationed in Germany in the 80s (AF/Army) and raved about how clean everything was; but they did mention quite a bit of anti American sentiment (not at them personally-- but at US policies), due to Reagan I'd guess and the Pershing missiles, etc and a lack of significant arms control talks in his first administration.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Was that East Germany or West Germany?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, what was that Fido?

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

[telemann.livejournal.com]

:-P

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

*Checks to see if it's Tuesday. Then realizes it's Monday so the Tuesday punchline is now irrelevant.*

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

It may be Tuesday in some parts of the world. Don't be so Americentric! :-D

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I kind of wish this was on Wednesday so I can make hump day jokes

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

America's objective is to liberate oppressed peoples from the cat gondolas that imprison them.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Canadians objectives are to find the rabid beavers that bite wayward photographers!

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I thought the objective was to liberate people from a Russian or Chinese gondola so that they could be imprisoned in an Anglo-American gondola.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Big Government and creeping socialism are starting to gondolify American society, but American kittens are still better off than their littermates in Russia and China.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Here in San Francisco the Chinese and Russian refugees fare much better than those from the Rednecki heartland. Let us not forget that American industry was built predominantly by people who were neither born nor raised in the US.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

If this is true, then if America has industry — Americans didn't build it. Somebody else made that happen.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I did not mean to imply that no Americans participated in the building of American industry. There is a qualifier that recognizes the contribution of people who were born in the US.

Just to throw one example out there, was the mastermind of the American rocket development program in the 1960s born and raised in the US? Robert Goddard was certainly a native born American, but he only provided the seed of the industry.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

The development of the United States certainly benefited from the contributions of many who were not born on American soil. The freedom and opportunity available in American society was, I believe, and important factor in the ability of the United States to attract and integrate so many talented people from other parts of the world.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I agree. Slaughtering the native inhabitants, cheating them out of their land, and keeping them down on the reservation also helped a great deal.