ANOTHER VOICE
This, I feel, is what Elsa is trying to tell us
AUBERON WAUGH
If I promise to refrain from writing about America for the next three articles, I hope readers will bear with me if I take one more glance at the society which, since the intel- lectual collapse of socialism and near- bankruptcy of religion, is bound to be the cynosure of the world. The reason why the rest of the world is fascinated by the United States is that without any social or religious ideology to deflect us our main preoccupa- tion returns again and again to the creation and enjoyment of wealth. America has taught the world how wealth can be created through new technology. Perhaps the les- son has been better learned in the Far East, but the fact remains that America is where the wealth currently resides. It is only when we examine the end and aim of the whole process, the enjoyment of wealth, that pro- fessional and upper-middle-class Euro- peans may ask themselves whether they really want any part of it. Without consider- ing the violence, the criminality and the racial tension or the intellectual paralysis which these have engendered (and which is peculiarly part of the American scene), we might ask ourselves whether the benefits of so much wealth — in terms of leisure opportunities etc. — really outweigh the disadvantages of living in a society demo- cratically geared to majority appetites and mass entertainments. Only, I should guess, for the very rich.
Last week's news of Euro Disney's £615 million losses must have gladdened the hearts of all educated Britons even as we thanked our lucky stars that they did not berth this flagship of the American culture in Blackpool. In Britain, we are told by the Financial Times, our leisure industries face a £2 billion challenge from 'rave parties', but at least, I suppose, they are our choice.
It crossed my mind that Americans might experience the same feelings of resentment and rage on hearing that Europe had rejected Euro Disney as I remember from two years back when I learned that not a single publisher in the United States was interested in my autobiography which delighted and stimulated some 120,000 readers (as I claim) in Britain. But Ameri- cans are not like that. They have no great cultural identity with Mickey Mouse, simply a desire to sell him and make more money.
Two weeks ago I wrote of my confidence that Americans would come to their senses before very long. Already there is plenty of evidence that they are returning to their first priorities after the momentary lapse of the 1992 presidential elections. As the great Evans-Pritchard reports, of six major elec- tions around the United States since the Clintons became President, Democrats have lost them all. It seems more likely than not that the Republicans will capture the Senate in next year's mid-term elec- tions, which will put a stop to the entire Clinton programme, including Mrs Clin- ton's plans for medical insurance which will add $4,000 to the annual cost of every employee and, by destroying American competitiveness, establish protectionism as the new orthodoxy. New York and Los Angeles are now both Republican cities . . . • For those of us who have never visited the west coast of America, talk of Califor- nia coming to its senses seems a contradic- tion, almost an oxymoron. We know only what we read. After the recent fires which nearly engulfed Malibu, destroying 350 homes, we read of LA as being 'a city on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The ten- sion and stress is so tangible you can almost feel it,' in the words of psychologist Ken- neth Deere, proving that Colemanballs live on in California.
People in LA were particularly con- cerned that 19 of the 25 fires were arson. `I'm afraid of who this guy is,' said a televi- sion writer named Jill in the Los Angeles Times. 'I think it's somebody who is trying to set the whole city on fire. It has the feel- ing of a horror movie.'
It is significant, I feel, that a vivid first- hand experience should immediately be transmuted into the second-hand banality of a trash movie. But Professor Albert Mehrabian, a specialist in environmental psychology at UCLA, urged exercise as the remedy for terror and despair. 'Strenuous `They're starting school a lot earlier these days.' exercise helps control the anxiety and depression,' he said.
We may laugh at the thought of all those Californians taking to their leg-press machines in moments of dereliction, but there is another side to the picture. A friend's daughter, who was evacuated with her family from her home outside Malibu expecting never to see it again, speaks of the extraordinary efficiency and good nature of the whole operation. The evacua- tion was organised, traffic controlled, movement restricted, 7,000 firemen appeared from nowhere to fight the 200- foot flames for 48 hours, 30 or 40 special tank helicopters, idle for the rest of the year, passed over again and again dumping tons of fire extinguisher with each journey . . .
They were brave as well as efficient, these Californian firemen, and they did not suffer a single fatality. It was a brilliant demonstration of what I call the American binary system at work. There is a correct and incorrect way to do everything. Any emergency can be systematised and worked out in advance. When monsters from outer space eventually arrive, you may be sure California will be ready for them. There is a logical response to every practicality as well as an illogical one, call them correct and incorrect, appropriate and inappropriate. For instance, it is neither logical, nor cor- rect, nor appropriate to return to your blaz- ing home and risk your life to save a cat.
There was only one fatality in the Malibu blaze, of course, and that was an English- man. America was dumbfounded by Dun- can Gibbins's behaviour in returning for his cat, Elsa. Everybody in England I have dis- cussed the matter with has found it merito- rious, no doubt, but quite ordinary. Dozens of people one knows would have done the same. If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it is that the United States of America has a truly admirable society — it has massive strengths, wonderful women, and many quite agreeable men. It is vigor- ous and free — but there is no place for us inside it. The English, as a race, will not fit into a binary system, however splendidly it works for other people. In any dealings with the Americans, we will always be chas- ing after our pet cats on inappropriate occasions, and we will always lose out. Our place is in Europe, and our role is to be making a nuisance of ourselves among our fellow Europeans.
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