More American than America

Give Me a BreakI stood at Ground Zero last week and was moved by the enormity of that great unfathomable hole in the ground, so deep it's below sea level and yet still not big enough to hold the pain.

Being at Ground Zero struck me even harder this time, I think, because in the six years since 9/11 it has become even more difficult to feel good about being a US citizen. Anti-Americanism has never been stronger and only the most virulent conservatives dare to defend a country that has screwed up big time. I feel compelled to find something good about the country I was born and reared in.

Spending time in the southern states, before ending my trip in Manhattan, I was surprised to discover that a lot of people you wouldn't expect to feel un-American are feeling as confused as I am about what being American means. From the most comfortable to the least, they feel disillusioned.

Many cynically regard the presidential campaign as a superficial exercise in democracy. Hillary Clinton is seen as scheming and power-hungry - and not just because she's a woman in a non- traditional role. A bumper sticker sums up this attitude best: "Life's a bitch. Don't vote for one." Even hardcore Democrats don't seem to like her, but the alternative is more Republican triumphalism, so Hillary is gaining support by default.

To avoid despair, I remind myself that the Irish are just as cynical about their politicians, having been lulled into self-satisfaction by a decade of feel-good press releases convincing them they've achieved the American Dream on their own soil. While the Irish may be anti-American, they love the American lifestyle.

Because I've lived outside the US for 25 years, I feel a disturbing distance from the changes taking place in the heart of America, much the same way as returned Irish emigrants feel when they see what's become of Ireland. Travelling through the South, I kept asking myself if my liking for Americans could be anything more than the sentimental attraction of the émigrée for her origins, or if there was something valuable - even hopeful - about being American.

Americans have a willingness to be hospitable and helpful. They go out of their way to be "nice" - which is a bad word in Ireland. Here we've got used to the people we meet in shops and restaurants being distant and even rude.

In the US, there's still a value placed on being polite and even passing a few minutes in conversation. Maybe it's the fact that Americans lack local connections and are accustomed to forging lives in new places that makes them eager to forge bonds with new people.

Americans love to share their stories, the way Irish people used to do before they got so busy making money to bother. Americans strive to find connections between their own lives and others, while the Irish regard this as naff.

When I take the time in the US to listen to people's stories, there's the poorly-educated woman cooking my breakfast who put all her kids through college. There's a restaurant owner in North Carolina who tells me about a black bear that has been wandering on to his porch, which segues into the split in his family that goes back to the civil war. It turns out that this man, who is frying me a freshly caught trout, has an ancestor who signed the Declaration of Independence. He despairs of what the Bush regime has done, but feels powerless to change it.

His complaint is that the Republicans have killed the middle class - and it's a theme repeated in current affairs discussions. The upward mobility that was once taken for granted in the US has gone, so that the rich rise higher and the poor sink deeper and these are the only two choices on offer. I tell him that in Ireland it's not that different - except that in Ireland people don't realise yet that the American Dream doesn't work long-term.

The economic apartheid of rich and poor is evident in Atlanta's oldest and most expensive shopping mall, where Bond Street meets Rodeo Drive meets Grafton Street, with valet parking. The shoppers here - black, white and everything in between - are content to be rich. You wonder what Martin Luther King would make of it.

The non-rich of many colours shop in strip malls where prices are cheaper and the walk from the car to the store is about a mile. But it's the same in Liffey Valley. And while the health system is scary, with one cure for the rich and another for the poor, is it any better in Ireland? Coming home, I feel proud of the openness and kindness of Americans on a personal level. I even feel proud of their cynicism and confusion about their place in the world, because at least they admit it. Ireland seems the likelier candidate for a superiority complex - a less well-organised, more chaotic version of the US, created by the Irish who stayed home. And yet, so many Irish dislike Americans. Maybe it's true that we become what we most hate.