Looking at America from the outside in
More important than ever in our broken media landscape
I lived in the UK for five years as a kid in the early 1970’s, and then for a decade twenty years later during the 1990’s.
The time spent living outside the United States was not only a formative part of my identity, it’s become an important piece of why I’m such a strong advocate for trained school librarians and building information and media literacy into every subject in the K-12 curriculum.
Living abroad during the Watergate era and again during the Gringrichification of Congressional politics in the 1990’s provided me with important lessons about the stories Americans hear about themselves vs. the perception of America abroad.
It’s something I’ve talked about during school visits — that if you’re only getting your news from one source, you aren’t getting the news. But going a step further, if you’re only getting your news from U.S. sources, you still aren’t getting the full picture. That’s why when there’s a breaking news event (something that seems to happen with exhausting regularity under the current administration) I do my best to check sources from multiple perspectives within the U.S., to see how the event is being framed across the political spectrum.
But then I take the extra step of looking at how the same event is being reported by sources based outside the United States. Are there differences in vocabulary used to describe it?
A prime example is how the U.S. media and overseas media reported on the use of torture during the Bush administration. Most American news organizations adopted the administration’s Orwellian euphemism, “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” for waterboarding, rather than naming it correctly and reminding readers that out that our country ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
However, they did call it torture when the same techniques were used by other governments.
Twenty years later, with the decimation of American newsrooms, our fractured, polarized information environment, and billionaire owners quashing editorial freedom (looking at you, Bezos and paper-thin skinned ‘free speech absolutist’ Musk) this is more important than ever.
A few days ago, a French senateur, Claude Malhuret, laid out what is happening in the United States in clear, unequivocal terms.
Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,
Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.
This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.
This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.
Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.
Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.
And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.
This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.
At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”
So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.
Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.
The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.
This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.
It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.
Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.
But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.
They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.
Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.
Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.
But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.
If only the leadership of the Democratic Party were as clear and unequivocal about what is happening in our country…what are they so afraid of? I know there are a few notable exceptions - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Chris Murphy, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen Brian Schatz, Rep Jamie Raskin, and of course, Rep. Al Green.
But the official leaders of the Democratic Party seem completely clueless as to how to respond to the current moment. Barbie Pink outfits? You know what would have been better? Showing up in fatigues in a show of support for Zelenskyy after the disgusting way he was treated in the Oval Office.
And then there are the ten Democrats who voted with the Republicans to censure Rep Al Green, including my former Congressman Jim Himes. I shouldn’t have been shocked by his vote, but I was.
Jim, while I understand your desire to be ideologically consistent, as you response to the many, many people writing to tell you how disgusted they were with your vote. But it shows us all that you are still under the delusion that the old rules apply. They don’t.
My son is visiting this weekend, and he reminded me of how during the Bush years I always told him that while he might not respect the person in the Oval office, he should still show respect for the office of the President. That’s how I was brought up, and always tried to conduct myself.
But Newt Gringrich was the beginning of the end of that, Trump’s first term continued the damage, and after a month and a half of Trump’s second term, it’s clear that the man has no respect for the office of president, for Congress, for the judiciary (unless it agrees with him), for the alliances that have served this country well, for the rule of law, for women—for anyone unless they are useful to him.
FFS Jim! The man is taking away security clearances as punishment and threatening law firms worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith. He is one of the greatest threats to the international order. Our allies are worried about sharing intelligence because they don’t want it going straight to Putin (something you would know even better than us, being on HPSCI.
But you’re still worrying about rules and decorum, even after the disgusting display in the Oval Office during Zelenskyy’s visit? Even after the Tariffs on, Tariffs off chaos that’s destroying our economy? Even after the attacks on our LGBTQIA friends? Even after ICE arrested and plans to deport a legal green card holder and threatened to arrest his pregnant American citizen wife? WTAF Jim?
We need leadership, and it has been sorely lacking. Almost 17 years ago, the grass roots helped to get you elected to Congress, Jim. Maybe it’s time to start listening to us again.