Thread by @AChryssogelos

Some random thoughts on the US election today:

I hope I don't insult my American friends when I say that, while the world's interest (obsession even) with US politics is testament to American's amazing soft power, it is also a factor that stifles political life everywhere else.

US politics is a convenient and 'easy' way for the global citizen to feel civicly engaged without the sacrifices of participation: a way to care about 'issues' while feeling OK for not doing (and being expected to do) sth about them because, after all, it's a different country.

Why is this bad? First, it sucks away time & resources from real local issues. I remember 20 years ago leftist groups in my university banging on about guns & the death penalty in Texas and thinking: 'shouldn't these guys be trying to do sth for the problems of our uni instead?'

Doing sth about problems around you requires time and effort. US political issues on the other hand, so easily approachable through TV & the internet, are ready-made for people to consume American politics the exact way they consume an American sitcom.

In last few weeks I see so many non-Americans losing their mind over the Supreme Court or voter suppression in Pennsylvania. And I wonder how many of them actually know how courts in their country operate or if there are disenfranchised people right next door where they live.

You could say: 'So what's wrong? Millions fans around the world watch the Premier League because it's better than their local football league. Isn't this normal?'

I would answer: 'No problem with it until people outside England start street fights after a Liverpool-ManUtd game'.

The worse effect of the global reach of US politics is the external projection of its fault lines and ways to talk about issues. When I hear Europeans talking about abortion or racism for example, even if it's about their countries, you hear an essentially American vocabulary.

This has two effects: First, it creates problems where none existed before. Just because Americans care for something, it must be an issue here. I know Greek neocons (!) who seriously claim that our constitution obstructs their rights by not allowing them to carry weapons (!!!)

Second, it changes the ways real topics are debated by 'Americanizing' the terms of the discussion and stifling local context. The BLM and racism debate is a case in point. Does Europe have a racism problem? Absolutely. Is it the same as America's racism problem? Absolutely not.

Suddenly countries that historically were 99.9% white must be ashamed of their 'whiteness'. Suddenly black people in the UK or Belgium have to be offended by sth because (often white!) Americans are offended by it. The silliness of US late night comedy shows colonizes our minds.

But all this isn't accidental. Both sides of US politics actively expand their influence globally, from Evangelicals turning abortion and LGBT into 'a sin' in countries they penetrate, to the woke brigade turning 'whiteness' into a sin through their dominance of media & culture.

And all of this is bad for America's global standing as well! During the Cold War outsiders tended to like or hate the US based on their own local needs and aspirations - e.g. whether they were left-leaning or not. Who was the US president was largely immaterial.

Today, global fascination with US politics is a variance of what Lipset & Rokkan called the 'centre-periphery cleavage': politics in the periphery become aligned around the issues of the centre, but until this process is complete the centre will be resented for its intrusions.

If the world is America's cultural periphery, you can think of global citizens passionately taking sides in US politics, and fighting over it in their home countries, as a kind of anti-Americanism: we don't really love America, we just hate whichever of its halves we don't like.

Of course this doesn't do justice to the actual American people who care about the future of their country. Anyone who's been in the US knows that the vast majority of people there have nth to do with the 'woke Hollywood' and 'racist Trump' stereotypes we are fed by the US media.

Anyway, all my ranting boils down to my concern about why, if US politics is so polarized & dysfunctional as Americans themselves admit, the rest of us have to import this dysfunctionality. It's great TV, sure, but is it really healthy to live our politics through America?

[Says I writing in English on an American-owned social media platform...]