THE SILVER LINING

Americans have already donated a record $404 million to help the victims of Katrina. That’s the America I have come to know and love. As an immigrant, the one thing that has always struck me very forcefully about Americans is their willingness to volunteer and their readiness to lend a hand to others in need. Most Americans don’t realize how striking this is. I grew up in England and my view of America was often related to their helping people in need and their remarkable hospitality. I know the proportion of foreign aid is not that high compared to other countries, but when you really needed help, America came through with the bulk of the money: from AIDS in Africa to the tsunami victims, and especially with domestic disasters. The ethic may come from the legacy of building a country out of a raw continent (where helping strangers was contingent on their one day helping you), but helping others out when in need is part of the American way. I also associated American government with a kind of benign competence – maybe out of a collective memory of GIs’ rescuing Western Europe from Nazism and, eventually, Eastern Europe from Communism. I think part of the collective shame is that this didn’t happen this time in America itself – at least quickly enough. It violated a core American value. This is the second basic American value this administration has violated. The other is humane treatment of enemy prisoners in wartime. Perhaps the reason people feel more than simple frustration with Bush – the reason it amounts to anger – is not “Bush-hatred” (although that irrationality exists), but this president’s squandering of so much of what is best about America and his pandering to so much that is worst. I don’t fully understand it. I don’t think it’s malevolence. I think it’s a mixture of arrogance and incompetence. But the damage it is doing to some of the core meaning of America – that this is a country that rescues people who are in dire straits, and never, ever abuses prisoners in its military custody – is deeply distressing. And it will take time to restore that kind of reputation and, yes, honor.