Ongoing interview
I would like to have your opinion on the last comments that we can read in Indepundit!
I am very honored by the words some readers are writing on my text and me. But when they are comparing me to Tocqueville, I must add that he is a very big shoe to fill. In fact, believe me, such thing never cross my mind! On the other hand, I would like to remember this once more: America is not an essay. Like I said before [in another part of this ongoing interview], America is a poem or a love letter.
About the love letter, I remember one of your lines in the text: “America is the most beautiful woman of the women one loves.” But why do you choose to celebrate the subjective way of reading over the objective one by bringing poetry all the time to our conversation on America?
First of all, because reading is subjective in itself! I can give you a very good example based on the last comments I read in Indepundit: there are three different approaches to point 15 (and all of them probably true): “Hollywood is a satellite of Earth.” On the other hand, there also are two comments that I would like to emphasize: “America as a place doesn’t really matter all that much. As an idea it is everything.” (Dave) and “Being American isn’t a thing, it’s a state of mind.” (Kris) When I wrote America I didn’t have those insights that they have posted on the blog. But when I read it, it made total sense to me. I even thought that those comments could be written in my text! But may be (I don’t know that) they didn’t have that thoughts before reading my text either! This kind of situations is harder to happen when you are reading an essay, I suppose. But I can be wrong, of course, and may be America is an essay in the Ernst Junger’s tradition. However, I have no intentions of filling the Junger’s shoes as well.
Today, how do you perceive the critical voices in America?
I have no doubts that, in America, you have the best critical voices you can find in the world in the last past years! I have no intentions to connect criticism to anti-americanism either. However, I perceive some of the critical voices turning out more and more radical about America itself (I wish with all my heart that I turn out to be wrong about this though).
Is anti-Americanism also gaining ground in USA?
I'm not sure about it, of course. But it is difficult to have another explanation for what is happening in America (USA) in nowadays. When you read the news from a distant place, as we do, we cannot feel anything but dazed and confused. Not a day passes in which the United States media or independent media do not present us with news from someone putting public opinion on fire; public opinion on fire against America itself. From so far away, we can think that there is people interested in divide the whole country. Outside America, there are already enough people against America and they don’t need help from inside. You know very well the anti-Americanism all along Europe (where all countries are democratic and tolerant). I can tell you my Portuguese experience, for instance! Here, in Portugal, which is a democratic and a tolerant country (USA ally too), since I have started this “America is.” project there is people who don’t speak to me anymore. It is as if I could do anything but support America.
But you really think that there are Americans working to harm America?
I’m not saying that! I don’t believe that you want to harm your own country, by all means (in America or any other country). Who is planning to harm a human being or their institutions is a criminal person. But it is possible to believe so much in our own ideas that we act wrong with the others at time. On the other hand, may be it is possible to be right even if all the others are against you. But how can we know that? That’s why the famous Churchill’s sentence remains valid: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried time to time.”
Now we came to the punch line of Indepundit: “Does Miranda understands us better than we understand ourselves?” Is it what you think?
Of course not! And who wrote that sentence knows it very well too. He wrote it in a not literal way, but as sorts of alert to Americans not forget who they are. However, as a person, I am always paying attention to what people thinks about me. Why? Because they are outside, in a place I will never be.
I am very honored by the words some readers are writing on my text and me. But when they are comparing me to Tocqueville, I must add that he is a very big shoe to fill. In fact, believe me, such thing never cross my mind! On the other hand, I would like to remember this once more: America is not an essay. Like I said before [in another part of this ongoing interview], America is a poem or a love letter.
About the love letter, I remember one of your lines in the text: “America is the most beautiful woman of the women one loves.” But why do you choose to celebrate the subjective way of reading over the objective one by bringing poetry all the time to our conversation on America?
First of all, because reading is subjective in itself! I can give you a very good example based on the last comments I read in Indepundit: there are three different approaches to point 15 (and all of them probably true): “Hollywood is a satellite of Earth.” On the other hand, there also are two comments that I would like to emphasize: “America as a place doesn’t really matter all that much. As an idea it is everything.” (Dave) and “Being American isn’t a thing, it’s a state of mind.” (Kris) When I wrote America I didn’t have those insights that they have posted on the blog. But when I read it, it made total sense to me. I even thought that those comments could be written in my text! But may be (I don’t know that) they didn’t have that thoughts before reading my text either! This kind of situations is harder to happen when you are reading an essay, I suppose. But I can be wrong, of course, and may be America is an essay in the Ernst Junger’s tradition. However, I have no intentions of filling the Junger’s shoes as well.
Today, how do you perceive the critical voices in America?
I have no doubts that, in America, you have the best critical voices you can find in the world in the last past years! I have no intentions to connect criticism to anti-americanism either. However, I perceive some of the critical voices turning out more and more radical about America itself (I wish with all my heart that I turn out to be wrong about this though).
Is anti-Americanism also gaining ground in USA?
I'm not sure about it, of course. But it is difficult to have another explanation for what is happening in America (USA) in nowadays. When you read the news from a distant place, as we do, we cannot feel anything but dazed and confused. Not a day passes in which the United States media or independent media do not present us with news from someone putting public opinion on fire; public opinion on fire against America itself. From so far away, we can think that there is people interested in divide the whole country. Outside America, there are already enough people against America and they don’t need help from inside. You know very well the anti-Americanism all along Europe (where all countries are democratic and tolerant). I can tell you my Portuguese experience, for instance! Here, in Portugal, which is a democratic and a tolerant country (USA ally too), since I have started this “America is.” project there is people who don’t speak to me anymore. It is as if I could do anything but support America.
But you really think that there are Americans working to harm America?
I’m not saying that! I don’t believe that you want to harm your own country, by all means (in America or any other country). Who is planning to harm a human being or their institutions is a criminal person. But it is possible to believe so much in our own ideas that we act wrong with the others at time. On the other hand, may be it is possible to be right even if all the others are against you. But how can we know that? That’s why the famous Churchill’s sentence remains valid: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried time to time.”
Now we came to the punch line of Indepundit: “Does Miranda understands us better than we understand ourselves?” Is it what you think?
Of course not! And who wrote that sentence knows it very well too. He wrote it in a not literal way, but as sorts of alert to Americans not forget who they are. However, as a person, I am always paying attention to what people thinks about me. Why? Because they are outside, in a place I will never be.
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