If one were asked to liken Britain and America’s current relationship with that of a romantic affair the ineluctable response would be the oft-repeated evasion,

 

‘It’s complicated.’ 

 

Though the relationship begins much earlier as one between parent and child.

 

From the latter part of the 16^th Century up through the American Civil War, the main European power centres (Britain, France, and Spain) could be found alternately resisting and clamouring for the attention of the nascent confederation’s affection.  

 

The 19^th and 20^th Centuries gave witness to the newly formed nation growing rather too large for it’s britches – both rhetorically and territorially – stretching its limbs westward across Old Mexico and eastward across the Atlantic to fend off the Manichean threats of Nazism and Communism. Instead of commanding respect, this industrious will, and meteoric rise, to power reinforced an ever growing resentment towards what many Europeans perceived as the petulant hubris of a pubescent nation. 

 

For former BBC North America Editor Justin Webb, this rather deep and murky reservoir of disdain is today all too easily mined. Since the 2002 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent latest populist outpouring of anti-American sentiment, even purported neutral commentators such as the BBC have found it difficult to resist succumbing to what Webb perceives as the same herd mentality that so marks the actions of their counterparts.   

 

In such a convulsive atmosphere, Justin Webb is a somewhat controversial figure. He simply loves America. Even more contentious for many, is his admiration for, not despite, the country’s great paradoxes. 

 

What’s more, Webb’s defiant stance cannot be reduced to any simple ‘traveller’s notion’ that everyone, all over the world, is essentially the same. Instead, for him, America represents difference - a symbol of a forgotten age of national attachment, imagination, and belief that Europe has sadly abandoned. 

 

In many parts of ‘real’ America, Webb says, “there is no irony…just genuine innocence, a homespun 1950s feel that Britain has lost.”

 

“Americans have an incredible attachment to place which is an amazing strength.” 

 

And it is this “allegiance to themselves,” Webb remarks, which enables Americans “to wear flag underpants without any ironic intent.”

 

What Webb laments most, when comparing the two countries, is the cynicism and indifference that the death of God in Europe at large has wrought.  For him, belief is not simply a site of empty pride, but also something that propels Americans headlong into new realms of economic and technological innovation. 

 

Tied to this enduring spirituality is the well-rehearsed material myth of class transcendence.  Webb emphasizes the reluctance of America’s poor to accept any form of socio-economic redistribution, “the poor say no to taxes because they too think, ‘one day I’ll have a big car.’ Everything is potentially available to everyone.”

 

Unbridled capitalism, Webb concludes, is a good thing. He continues, “the awfulness of life is what forces the nation to such a level of wealth. America’s strength is its poverty.”

 

For all his genuine enthusiasm for what many derisively call ‘middle America,’ Webb sometimes finds it difficult to avoid the self-same caricatures, spanning back to Dryden, of America as a land of (ig)noble savages. His use of the ice cream ritual of Kiawah Island as a metaphor for the goodness of American nationalism betrays more than just a touch of Conrad. 

 

Even political rituals are reduced to the peculiar and superstitious: “you have to be able to bowl to become president.”

 

Despite this, Webb remains unapologetic about his willing surrender to American seduction. Having warmed so quickly to his own counter-narrative, Webb finds himself wondering, along with his purported subjects, “why would an American get a passport?” 

 

Yet as an embedded journalist, some may accuse Webb of abandoning the critical tenants of his fortunate position. Instead of confronting the vast network of signs, signifiers, and euphemisms that obscure America, Webb is content to shine a much softer light.

 

Some may also charge Webb with bad timing. With the turmoil surrounding healthcare resulting in very public displays of symbolic violence against the President - not to mention a fourfold increase in verbal death threats– Webb’s depiction of a peaceable and harmless people does not quite fit the picture.  

 

With this in mind, it may be necessary to take an altogether different stance vis a vis America: to take quite serious the ramifications, noted by HG Wells close to one hundred years ago, of an island of seemingly innocent brutes exerting a disproportionate amount of influence in a world they seem unwilling to recognize.  

 

In other words, it may be time to treat the country as the grown-up (with all the force of the word) that it is.