On being ashamed of your government

I’ve met two retired American couples in the past three weeks, both very chatty and pleasant. We met the first, from Phoenix, Arizona, on the ferry to Paramatta; the second, from Los Angeles, stood behind us in the queue at the airport this morning. In both of our conversations, the subject of the US elections came up. Luckily, both couples were Barack Obama supporters, or things might have got a bit heated.

It must be tough to be an American abroad when you didn’t vote for Bush and, quite frankly, you’re embarrassed by the man, his cohorts or their policies. Luckily for blue staters, they’re not alone. For here is something that (some) Americans and (some) South Africans have in common: they know what it’s like to feel ashamed of their government, to feel frustrated and powerless when it comes to explaining their leadership’s daft policies and pronouncements to others.

For Americans, it’s the war in Iraq, the Bushisms, the weapons of mass distraction. South Africans have Zimbabwe, the questioning of the link between HIV and Aids, garlic and beetroot. Not to mention rampant crime and, this year, xenophobic violence yadda yadda.

Granted, even vaguely left-leaning South Africans were always embarrassed by their government — how cringeworthy was PW? — and there was a time when, if you travelled overseas, it was best to pretend you were Australian. For a short while, between February 1990 and while Nelson Mandela was president, South Africanness was generally a source of pride. But the golden nostalgic glow of 1995 Rugby World Cup victory could only be mined for a fixed number of ads before it wore thin. Kgalema Motlanthe has done little to inspire hope for a better public image, beyond shuffling Manto into what Hogarth refers to as her padded cell in the Presidency. And if Jacob Zuma ascends to the throne as expected, South Africans can continue to shuffle uncomfortably whenever the subject of their democratically elected government comes up in conversation with foreigners.

In contrast, Americans who care about the way their country is perceived by others have a shot at change for the better. Obama is not perfect and he has fraternised with dodgy characters. (Then again, who hasn’t? I met Craig Williams the spy once when I was in standard seven, when he debated Tony Leon at my school. And I used to run into Ronald Suresh Roberts at liberal functions back in the mid-1990s, although he doesn’t remember, which is probably just as well.). But at least he represents the possibility that Americans can finally hold their heads up high and renew their faith in the ability of the body politic to make the right choices.

As Matt Taibi put it in his hilarious, excoriating piece in Rolling Stone :

“Barack Obama might be every bit as much a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we’re actually going to need in government if we’re going to get out of this huge mess we’re in.

“Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins ‘Country First’ buttons on his man titties and chants ‘U-S-A! U-S-A!’ at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

“The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn’t that she’s totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we’ll not only thank you for your trouble, we’ll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.”

Americans have a chance to free themselves of eight ghastly years of shame. Let us hope that South Africans will also get to have a real shot at real change.