NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET -- EUROPE & THE UNITED STATES

NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET  -- EUROPE & THE UNITED STATES

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© May 22, 2011

Some fory three years ago, or 1968, when I was putting together a new company in South Africa, working with Nalco Chemical Company’s subsidiary, ICI’s British affiliate, and South African Explosives, Ltd.’s specialty chemical division, I found it remarkable how much those of British descent forged their identity and legitimacy on their European ancestors. 

It was as if this gave them a free pass to distinction.  They relied on the pomp and circumstances of that affiliation, and little on the hard bricks of scholarship, engineering and technical acumen, and the pursuit of new knowledge that go into a solid career.  They were unembarrassed to borrow that knowledge and know how from the Americans. 

It was only the pragmatic and unsophisticated Boers, the Afrikaners, who apparently saw it necessary to struggle through four, six or more years to acquire a solid education that could identify with the American spirit of substance and the pragmatics of doing instead of posing as if doing.

The Afrikaners, like Americans, did not look to Europe as their “homeland,” but the uncultivated wilds of Africa, which they had endeavored to tame. 

Not surprisingly, I felt a natural connection as an American from the heartland with the Afrikaners while having abhorrence for apartheid, or separation of the races.  With this policy, the majority Bantu (black) population (80 percent) was subjugated to the rule of the minority white European population (20 percent) of which two-thirds was Afrikaner and one-third British or Anglo. 

It was a strange feeling being an American executive with more hands on technical knowledge than most of those with whom he worked, which were primarily Anglos.  In 1968, business was still largely controlled by English descendents while the Afrikaners, descendents of the Dutch and French Huguenots, controlled the government. 

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I preface my remarks here with this frame of reference because of the hype now surrounding the alleged raping of a maid by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a hotel in New York City. 

Fox News and CNN, not to exclude Charlie Rose of PBS have been like lusting moth for the scandalous light in this affair.  True, IMF has played a major role in the world economic meltdown of 2008, especially with regards to Greece, Ireland and Portugal.  Were Samuel Beckett alive today my sense is he would make absurd comedy of the affair.

Charlie Rose, in his little interviewing show on PBS of movers and shakers of the world, rushed over to Paris to interview the New York Times Paris bureau chief, a reporter from for the French newspaper, Le Monde, and a senior adviser at France’s Institute for International Relations.

The French seemed appalled that Strauss-Kahn was shackled like a common criminal when led off after being arrested.  The French expected him to be treated with dignity consistent with his prominence and importance, and not like a guy from the Bronx caught with his pants down.  Viewers to Charlie Rose were informed that anti-American sentiments were rampant at this umbrage.

Incongruously, I sat there listening to the exchange smiling and shaking my head.  I happen to like some of the books written by authors Charlie Rose interviews, and find interesting some of the people he brings to his table, but what I’m sure he takes to be polite decorum and noblesse oblige I take as insulting to Americana. 

I could give two shoes what Europeans think of our criminal justice system, or our practice of the rule of law.  I took satisfaction in the way the New York City Police Department handled the affair, and if guilty, which I doubt will be the final verdict because money talks and people with it talk the loudest; I am pleased with how it went down.

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Forty three years ago, when the Anglo managing director’s wife of Nalco’s affiliate criticized my children in a restaurant for holding their forks in their right hands, and shoveling in food with their left, I sensed where the criticism was coming from.  Her husband was totally out to lunch when it came to leading the merger.  To redress this fact, she found it necessary apparently to center her anxiety on my children.  I said nothing, but mimicked them to excess in duplicating their manner of eating.

Obviously, it can be seen here I can be petty.  That said I’ve never ceased to be amazed how those who manage a certain level of sophistication look to Europe for what is right and just and important in the scheme of things. 

Yesterday, I received my copy of Time (May 30, 2011), the weekly magazine with the cover headline, “Sex, Lies, Arrogance (all in red), What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs (with an apology to pigs at the bottom of the page).”  The cover story inside is even more American with a bizarre picture of Strauss-Kahn.  The article includes a “rogues gallery” of flawed men from Thomas Jefferson to Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

It will be interesting to see what David Brooks, author of the current bestseller, SOCIAL ANIMAL: THE HIDDEN SOURCES OF LOVE (2011), has to say on the subject.  He quotes former University of Iowa professor Antonio Damsio widely in this work. 

Cognitive man, according to Damsio has not given sufficient attention to feelings, and therefore is often side blinded by them despite having otherwise celebrated gifts. 

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