Maybe not a view, more like a glimpse...
In early 05, we expatriated from Los Angeles to go and live in the department of the Aude, in Southern France, a region where wine growing and tourism are the major industries. Think Napa Valley, without all the money.
The local wines (Languedoc, Catalan, Roussillon) are a bit on the plonkish side, at least their reputation is (long story), although they're actually quitegood (the rosés in particular) and there's a bubbly called Blanquette de Limoux (Limoux being 15 miles away from here) which I recommend. Trader Joe's used to carry it.
The locals are farmers, but with an international awareness often missing in the US, because Europe and exports, including to the UK, US, are very important to them.
...more below fold...
While traditionally on the Left, for historical reasons and a tradition of opposition to central Parisian power (another long story), rather than ideological principles, the locals are, in our experience, quite pro-American. They love America, what it represents, its culture, and Americans.
They don't understand Bush at all; they look at him sort of like the idiot leper cousin in the attic, but it doesn't seem to have translated into any hatred or fear of America and/or Americans.
When we moved here and we talked politics (a popular passtime), my views that America was in decline was met with polite skepticism. Their image of America was still that of the great power which won WWII and the Cold War.
Amazingly (or perhaps not so amazingly?) this has now changed significantly. Today, the CW, for what it's worth, is that America is in trouble, is weak and getting weaker. The people are troubled, concerned, even a bit worried.
They now look at me as this wise prophet who predicted it all, and my street cred has gone up a lot; I'm now like the local Krugman. :-)
The first nail in the coffin of the image of America the Great and Powerful was, indeniably, Katrina. And the recent media update last month with its images of a still devastated NOLA has again hammered this into place. Utter disbelief/incomprehension, etc.
Iraq has now become a huge liability as well. The way true power is understood, at least in Europe, isn't the ability to bomb from the sky. Everyone knows the US can do that, but it doesn't impress them. Power is understood here as the ability to act with stealth, to command with authority, to intervene with diplomatic or economic muscle.
Alas, we have little of that left. Our State Department is anemic, our diplomats are a joke, our Preznit is clearly an idiot, Condi Rice is looked upon as a clown, we're a debtor nation. We are the bozos of the diplomatic circuit. The drunk uncle at the party, prompt to get into a fight, politely ignored.
The fall of the dollar is another factor. I know next to nothing about economy, but I can't help feel that the rest of the world is starting to slowly, cautiously and carefully disentangle itself from the US empire. It seems to me that the folks here are coming to grips with the idea that they have to prepare for the After-America era, a notion which would have been unthinkable three years ago.
In conclusion, all this has only anecdotal value; it is a very small sliver of perception from one tiny part of the world, one that is quite irrelevant on the world's stage. But I'm struck by two things:
- the rapid change in the perception of America amongst fairly common folk here;
- the discrepancy between America's perception of itself (still suffused with power) and that which I now see here.