My love affair with America began at 19 when a missionary uncle took joy in welcoming stray young relatives who pitched up on his Los Angeles doorstep. I still recall our first drive up the sun-drenched coast to San Francisco, wondering why Americans bothered to schlep to Ireland when they had such staggering natural majesty on their own doorstep.
In the background thrummed the burning issues of 1970s America – Vietnam, student protesters being shot dead, the busing riots, Watergate, stagflation, the oil embargo, the resignation in disgrace first of a vice-president and later a president – all playing out in the shadow of three assassinations.
It was a given that the young no longer trusted anyone or anything they had been told to believe in, yet to this slack-jawed observer, what really set these Americans apart from us was their limitless optimism.
In many ways those trips, infused with the hospitality of working-class Irish-Americans serving dinner on shamrock-patterned plates, shaped my view of every American tourist that crossed my path in Ireland. It was cool to mock the loud clothes and sentimentality but behind that very often was an authentic generosity and courage that would have shamed many of us native Irish if we’d thought about it at all. Above all, there was that (almost) infectious, wide-eyed optimism.
It’s that America I struggle to recall now amid all the angry sweeping statements about all Americans, elevating Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” swipe to a national brand.
A pre-tariff-wars YouGov poll of seven EU countries in early March already showed a steep slump in sentiment towards the US, with only a fifth of Danes feeling positive about it, 29 per cent of Swedes, and Germans, French and British all between 32 and 37 per cent. Anecdotally, some Irish too were already walking away. Friends who cannot stomach spending money in Maga America cancelled the annual visit to emigrant offspring. Many with subscriptions to venerable US media outlets were reviewing them. An aura of embarrassment is attaching itself to Tesla.
[ The American counter-revolution is being led by Dow Jones, S&P and NasdaqOpens in new window ]
Now post-tariffs, the impulse to stand up for ourselves, to strike back, is palpable. Some are adopting informal boycotts. Professor of American Studies and director of the Clinton Institute, University College Dublin, Liam Kennedy wrote in these pages that “boycotts of American goods and services from outside the US – something that would once have been unthinkable – have been increasing in number and intensity”.
Some are arguing for a flag sticker to be applied to all US goods to raise consumer awareness. And half of us are furious enough to support self-harming retaliatory tariffs on US goods, according to a Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll. The anger is not just about financial jeopardy. Nearly eight out of 10 believe that Donald Trump disrespected Ireland by inviting Conor McGregor to the White House on St Patrick’s Day, demonstrating that disdain for this America is also about breaches of fundamental decency implicitly supported by half the US electorate and Maga-infected kin far across the world. A friend visiting a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean last week was transfixed by a gang of partying Russians sporting red baseball hats with the slogan, “Make Volatility Great Again”.
For many, the cartoonish ignorance underlying White House policy and conduct is reminiscent of the Brexit wars which began the same year as Trump’s first election in 2016. Our rage at the carelessness and historical ignorance on display was such that we often had to remind ourselves that while half England had been infected with the Brexit mindset, the other half was in despair. So this might be a good time to reflect that within months of its so-called Independence Day, the whole project was shrivelling into a painfully embarrassing family skeleton which dares not speak its name but continues to inflict lasting wounds.
It’s hard to resist the urge to blame voters for their governments, especially those who were warned repeatedly. Despite the narrative it was never just the so-called “left-behinds”. During Trump’s first term, I encountered groups of affluent, high-flying American and Irish accountants as excited as children at the riches up for grabs. But that liberal, decent, brave America many of us used to know, the one that is deeply flawed but still full of generosity, intellectual curiosity and daring, is still there, clinging to the wreckage. That’s the one being terrorised by official intimidation, appalled at legal residents being kidnapped off the streets by masked government agents and far-right trolls drawing up lists of public servants to be fired, the one despairing at the dollar-eyed spinelessness of politicians, universities, lawyers and tech bros, the one mortified at the spectacle of allies and neighbours being insulted and humiliated, yet is still the one that showed up in its hundreds of thousands at anti-Trump protests over the weekend.
It’s that America that we need to remember and support.
We are too connected for it to be otherwise and it’s always reciprocal. Our massive exposure to the North American tourist market is already being felt. In some areas there is not a house that is not connected to tourism or US multinationals.
A fun question posed in 2016 – when both Brexit and Trump seemed unlikely contenders – was which would you choose if you had to: Brexit or Trump? The “correct” answer was Trump, because his reign would be temporary. He will be. That other America will regroup and find its courage and optimism again.
