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Jeremy Kaplan
Jeremy Kaplan
2 months ago

Impressive article from a foreigner visiting my country.

I’m a trucker. Have been to 47 of the lower 48 states, meeting people along the way.

America is a good country, full of good people. I have never believed the lies that somehow we are uniquely flawed or uniquely wicked.

Glad to see you go beyond the usual sneers and disdain from Brits and Europeans who visit here.

We Americans are a special people in a special land, uniquely blessed and uniquely strong.

And yes, you are correct, the Constitution is a sacred document. Our political Ten Commandments.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Kaplan

I’ve not visited the States, but as a “small island” Brit it also feels good to read about such optimism. Let’s face it, we all need a strong, optimistic US for the challenges which lie ahead from the East.

Even so, we on “this side of the pond” should be doing far more to help ourselves. How long, and how much damage, before we rid ourselves of what the author rightly (in my opinion) identifies as a “guilt complex” over empire?

That’s what Remainers, for instance, got so wrong about Brexiteers. They thought we were still hankering after our old imperial might, but in fact the driver was just the opposite: to rid ourselves of that whole mental albatross and start afresh. It’s yet to happen of course.

I’m an eternal optimist, despite everything, and refuse to accept that failure is inevitable. Let’s hope some of that US spirit filters through the Starmerite gloom over the next four years, to then move on with greater confidence.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Here here

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
2 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Yes, absolutely. I’ve always found Americans’ “can do” mentality impressive and Europe (including UK) needs to develop/recapture some of this attitude as a matter of urgency to take on the challenges of the next decades.
I know the woke wave is powered by a small number of disproportionately loud people but I felt that fundamental promise and optimism of the US was getting lost amid enforced guilt, pronoun hysteria and all the rest of it, and I felt a kind of anticipatory bereavement and fear in the way that you might when a relative who has always been so robust and strong suddenly seems ill and frail.
I get the impression that the MAGA movement is based on just such a feeling of something fundamental being threatened. And, from that point of view, I get it.
(P.S. I am stealing the term “mental albatross”. Very good indeed!)

Philip Tisdall
Philip Tisdall
2 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Well, you can’t just leave us suspended. Which state have you not traveled?

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
2 months ago
Reply to  Philip Tisdall

The Empire…

Vito Quattrocchi
Vito Quattrocchi
2 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

As an American who loves the UK, I’ve always believed that the US and the UK should have a Schengen Zone-style agreement where Brits can very easily move to the US and vice versa. Right now, most of the Brits I know who live near me were able to come here by marrying American women but I think, despite this method perhaps being the one preferred by British men, it shouldn’t be the easiest method of getting permanent residency.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Kaplan

True that Brits are commonly, embarrassingly, mean and unfair, or plain stupid when they address the USA. But this article, for all it’s exuberance, does mythologize a bit. There is a policy of leaving what’s called a “Beauty Strip” by the sides of many roads, to hide from motorists the more unappealing economic reality which lies beyond them? In the North East, I found you don’t have to walk very far before you come to the edge of the facade, and hunting has become what it has in Old England, restricted to small areas that are deliberately stocked with quarry. Whole farms are part of this rural facade, and not run as businesses but subsidised for the very purpose. One day a neighbour of mine trapped a groundhog that had been rooting up his vegetable plot, he put it in the back of the car and drove North, intending to ‘free’ it in the ‘wild’, but soon realized there wasn’t any wild left, so he drove South, to meet with the same surprised realization as he found when he drove West, where he finally, guiltily, let it go. And although there is much of the States I did not see I did realise that it didn’t matter, you could up the scale but the same was true everywhere. The wildlife TV is mostly about presenting animals as scary even when really they are not, to make up for the loss. Only Alaska has true wilderness left, and even that is under threat. But I still do miss Americans, and America. Individuals, souls, are still comparatively more free.

Ryan K
Ryan K
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It took me less than an hour to get to wildnerness in Colorado years ago….and while it’s a long time and a growing population, I suspect that compared to the East of the USA, wilderness is not far in Colorado Utah, Montana, Idaho…in particular aside from Alaska. And if you go far enough even in NY State’s far north is wilderness. The BBC is usually embarrassing in what it says, “mean and unfair.” Your country is adored here. Your accent…as if it’s one accent….anyone listen to Ricky Gervais here in the US? that’s not a posh accent. But I’ve been over there….the Isle of Skye was still pretty wild when I was there….before the bridge.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Kaplan

Agreed. It is rare indeed to see a European observer who ‘gets’ America writ large. He understands the importance of the Constitution and presumably the near mythic status Americans have attributed to the founding fathers, with Jefferson and Hamilton serving as our Romulus and Remus.
It seems this author took the longer, more difficult, seldom trodden path of taking the time to tour and experience the vastness, openness, and great diversity of the American landscape, a path first blazed by Alexis De Tocqueville who was the interpreter of America for the Europeans of his day. Many of his insights remain enlightening centuries later. Most foreign commentators don’t go beyond the coastal megalopolises where all their American commentator friends live or the elite universities where their speaking engagements are booked and filled with rooms full of the children of coastal elites striving earnestly (and failing) to Europeanize the USA.
It appears he also understands the Trump movement better than many American commentators. The MAGA movement isn’t about Trump. It’s ultimately about the people. The drive for change, the political pressure that led to the Biden administration’s policy resembling the Trump administration more than the Obama administration, it doesn’t come from Donald J. Trump. Trump wasn’t what plutocrats and elites should have been afraid of, and tried to stop. That pressure, that political force didn’t come from Trump. He only channeled it. He is and was one man at the front of a parade waving a baton, often awkwardly, often stumbling, but it didn’t matter how poorly he waved the baton or how he staggered along the route sometimes, because the political force, the drive for change, didn’t come from him. It came from the throng of angry Americans marching behind him. It was that throng that held him up, that gave him the power of their voices, that lifted him up far above what he could have accomplished on his own. The people are the core, the center, the heart of MAGA. Defeating this was never as simple as defeating one man, and in the end, the plutocrats couldn’t even do that. The time is now for the plutocrats to humbly accept the people’s judgement and submit their global empires to the popular will, or things will get very much worse for them.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Nicely put, Steve…

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Kaplan

Travelling in America as a student I always felt a sense of relief on finding myself back in redneck country, where the openness, generosity and hospitality of the people is in striking contrast to the grasping materialism, snobbery and alienation of the coastal cities.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

It’s cute when you’re passing through but you should try actually living there!!

Chipoko
Chipoko
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Kaplan

I am a Brit who has visited your wonderful country several times over the decades. Wherever I travelled I found your people were friendly, engaging and generous. It grieves me that a Woking Class elite has captured the US body politic and spread its venom not only throughout the USA but in western democracies generally. Trump’s solid electoral victory is a real cause for optimism in the USA and within the western democratic family. It is our last chance to change course and move back into a world of common sense and simple decency – the values that drove our nations in the WW2 fight against tyranny – a dreadful condition that has swamped us all and throttled freedoms in the last 1-2- years.

Chipoko
Chipoko
2 months ago
Reply to  Chipoko

… last 10-12 years!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Chipoko

You seem to be viewing Trump’s victory through rose-tinted glasses. 50% of us are in mourning.

J Bryant
J Bryant
2 months ago

That Western Europe and the UK are now such crowded places probably explains the dissatisfaction of their young people.
There’s nowhere to explore, nowhere to conquer (Dare we even use the word “conquer”?), no room for expansion, and an industrial base that seems to have reached the limits of expansion. Indeed, Western Europe and the UK are so overcrowded, young people are being schooled in “anti-natalism”: literally against life because the land can tolerate no more people.
Young people are naturally optimistic and vital. Deprive them of hope and opportunity and their natural energy will manifest in unhealthy ways (cue wokeism).

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
2 months ago

Wow. This article read like lyric poetry. It was a pleasure to read the author’s gentle and humorous thinking on the American experience, and I smiled throughout. Thank you, Daniel, for your delightful words.

Claire Grey
Claire Grey
2 months ago

Great article, I enjoyed that.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 months ago

Typical American nonsense, writing about other countries he knows nothing about.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Why do you say that BB? It’s a cliche, but in my experience Americans are optimistic (and polite). They have a huge country that is full of resources; they are powerful and confident. Britain was bankrupted and traumatised by the world wars, and then decolonisation. When I first went to the UK in the early 70’s it seemed, in comparison to Australia, a poor and depressed country. Maybe it’s not so true anymore, but in the USA, for all its problems, you see the vast wealth and sense ‘opportunity’.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

I went to California in 2019 – my first trip to the states – and I was struck by just how polite they were. They’re also nice to your kids in a way that us Brits usually credit the Greeks and Turks with. Contrary to what I’d been led to believe they were also exceptionally civilized drivers!

Regarding the state of modern Britain: I can confirm that it seems every bit as poor and depressed now as it did when you visited in the ’70s.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Slightly more so. At least then most people spoke English.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
2 months ago

Great article and, yes, when I travel the other way to the US I always tend to wonder: why does everything in America have to be so LARGE? Why does everything have to SPRAWL?
I think the simple answer is that Americans do “big”, because they can.
I walked around Washington D.C. in October, and the centre of the city around seemed like the crystallisation of this attitude. The MLK monument? Huge. The Eisenhower monument? Enormous. The FDR monument has 4 acts to it, for goodness’ sake.
If you come from Europe, this sort of thing can seem crass, unnecessary and a bit fake. But there again, we don’t have the physical space for this stuff and – therefore – not the expansive mindset to even consider it.
Being a European snob, I’ll also argue it is because we have so much history we don’t feel quite the same need to generate it using monuments the size of tower blocks.

Ryan K
Ryan K
2 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

My brother commented to me how much he likes London’s scale of buildings unlike in NYC. I enjoyed staying in London too. DC….interesting….to me its monuments are like monuments most anywhere. Meant to be impressive and large.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 months ago

I enjoyed the article and it’s sense of optimism but had to pick out this sentence.

“In the last three months, multiple assassins attempted to kill one candidate while plutocrats defenestrated a senile emperor so they could continue to exercise power through a talentless cypher.”

A brilliant summation of the campaign.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
2 months ago

Great essay! When I try to peer imaginatively down a road that I could wish that the West had taken – instead of the hyper-capitalist, hyper-liberal one it has travelled in my (Boomer) lifetime – the nearest I can get something a bit like The Waltons. Waltons Mountain was a place where America still loved itself…..https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/take-me-to-your-experts The world of John Boy and Jenny and their families was notionally set in the 1930s Great Depression but really it was an idealised 1970s. It was notionally in Virginia but in spirit it was more Home on the Range. Westerns used to dominate the television channels in my youth in the late 1950s to 70s to an extent that now seems unreal. The Waltons came along at the tail end of this tv era. The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, Rawhide, The Virginian….we boomer kids loved them although Progressive-minded grown-ups (uneasy about America’s affair with guns and the fate of Red Indians) perhaps not so much. The Waltons was a kind of ‘feminised’ version of the Western. Its storylines had, for example, a modicum of agonising about ‘Social Justice’. But they were not so engorged with it that you dared not feel good about your whiteness or maleness or sexual binariness – as would be the case today. It was a place where boy meets girl and starts a family; a place where self-reliance and stoicism was your code even if you did not entirely live up to it. For all its sugar-coated Hollywood fakery it was, at the end of the day, my kind of place.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
2 months ago

I remember those programs, but they were totally sanitized and idealistic versions of real life. Watch more recent TV series such as Deadwood and Hell on Wheels. Life was nasty and brutish, often short. Civil war, slavery, Indian wars and their extermination including the buffalo , gunfights and violence of all kinds, prostitution and exploitation of women who had no rights to speak of, rampant racism against blacks and new immigrants, especially Chinese.
Unrestrained greed and exploitation, gambling and rampant drunkenness. It was survival of the fittest, or the lucky ones, like in the gold rushes and land speculation.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
2 months ago

I am confident that they too will soon lift their gaze from the smouldering ruins of the Kamala campaign and once again find hope. I expect Trump’s suffering a massive heart attack would cheer them up no end.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
2 months ago

This must be the possibility (for some) to move out to Montana and dodge grizzly bears on your doorstep rather than poor types strung out on Fentanyl.
I suppose if you were a Brit of means with a US visa then you would do the same, given a conservative/libertarian bent.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

The most significant thing I picked up from my visits to the USA and the Americans in general are how very patriotic they are, unlike us British.
They may well tear each other apart over their politics but whatever you do, do not insult their country. They will instantly forget their differences and woe betide you.
I think we could learn from that.
In my opinion.

mike flynn
mike flynn
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Look more closely. Clinton’s, Obama, and the rest loath America and Americans. This why there is MAGA.

Ryan K
Ryan K
2 months ago
Reply to  mike flynn

YEP….schools teach how awful this country is….slavery, genocide of the Natives, exploitation of Latino lettuce pickers…. or so I assume , given what I hear ….

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The flying of American flags everywhere, particularly on homes is unnerving. It says to me that I should watch out because along with the flag usually comes gun-toting, god-fearing patriots.

Rory Cullen
Rory Cullen
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Given that American flags are usually on the homes of the most liberal people in blue states that’s just not true. Americans simply have a very different view of patriotism and show it publicly, outside of particular royal and sporting events a British or English flag is seen by some as rude and/or mildly racist in the UK, but this is an almost exclusively Western European opinion on flag bearing that the rest of the world, Americans included, fundamentally disagrees with. If you ever dared suggest to an American, Argentine, South African etc. That they ought take down their flag because of how it makes you feel you would be laughed at.

B Joseph Smith
B Joseph Smith
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

In an earlier comment you said you and 50 percent were in mourning. This is why you lost, although this comment makes me think you mightn’t even be American. Donald Trump said paraphrasing here
How can you run America if you dont love America? That is what the flag means here.

Lane Burkitt
Lane Burkitt
2 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Why would you find “god-fearing, gun-toting patriots” unnerving? They are very likely to give you a hand in times of need and to defend with their lives your right to disagree with them.

Richard 0
Richard 0
2 months ago

Thank you, Daniel Kalder. Really good piece of writing – I always look forward to your work. More please!

Corey Gruber
Corey Gruber
2 months ago

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” (D. H. Lawrence, “Studies in Classic American Literature”)

Warren Francisco
Warren Francisco
2 months ago
Reply to  Corey Gruber

There is a kernel of truth in this quote. The greater truth is that Americans are joyful, generous, grateful and Christian in the best sense of that word.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

How can a land so huge and diverse not feed itself, make its own cars, and produce its own energy? —–> It can and this greatly vexes a large segment of the DC cabal that would prefer we be dependent on them. A lot was made about oil and gas production during Biden’s term, mostly to obscure his administration’s to erase the gas-powered vehicle.
There are actual rules in place demanding a certain % of EV cars by a certain year because industrial-scale mining and child labor are okay, but that nasty, filthy, planet-killing gunk that’s all over is not. Except when we’re selling it to other nations and it becomes okay again. It also becomes okay here when an election is drawing near and Team Biden decides to drain the strategic petroleum reserve.
Meanwhile, the govt of the country that once fed itself and a big chunk of the world has worked overtime to regulate that practice out of business. Instead of regular farms, we have software salesman and vax peddler Bill Gates owning huge amounts of acreage and the Chinese gobbling it up, too.

K Tsmitz
K Tsmitz
2 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Indeed, corporate interests are gobbling up farmland and pricing small, independent farmers out of the market. They will own the food supply.
This should be headline news.

Will D. Mann
Will D. Mann
2 months ago

People here in the UK (and every where else in Europe and I believe in Canada) own guns and go hunting. The difference is that shotguns and hunting rifles are sporting equipment, used for hunting, not as weapons of war.

B Joseph Smith
B Joseph Smith
2 months ago
Reply to  Will D. Mann

The Second Amendment is about limiting the power of government, not hunting.

K Tsmitz
K Tsmitz
2 months ago

Yet step outside the dysfunctional cities, leave behind the demented discourse and actually enter the landscape and you will find that a sense of renewal is never far away. It’s everywhere: on the edge of a great lake, in the desert, on top of a mountain, or simply driving past immense fields, teeming with crops. This land — diverse, abundant, wild — is still young. And this is why, for all the talk of the end of America, and despite the corrupt media and devious politicians, optimism keeps breaking through.

I couldn’t agree with this more. My wife and I left the metropolis for a nicely wooded property in a small lakeside town that is surrounded by abundant agriculture and have never looked back. Being surrounded by towering trees and being good stewards of our land, walking to the sandy shores of Lake Erie, buying our groceries direct from small farmers and fishing boats, and the strong sense of community everywhere you go has filled our souls in a way that no art gallery, orchestra or Michelin-starred restaurant ever has.
Commute times be d@mned, cities look best through the rearview mirror.
It has instilled in us an optimism that was once ground to dust by the multicultural rat-race our cities have become. It has made us realize that there is so much worth fighting for, and we now stand proudly among the ‘deplorables’ and wholeheartedly support the NIMBYism that will keep the dysfunction and demented discourse at bay. I’ve never been happier.

mike flynn
mike flynn
2 months ago

Hard as the plutocrats, DEMS, leftists of all stripes, internationalist, CCP, cartels try to destroy the American Dream, it persists.

Hard as the education industrial complex has dumbed down and eliminated the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we find a way.

The size and space of the land does have a lot to do with this. And, no apology to the earlier immigrants to North America, nature abhors a vacuum. Immigrants from the British Isles and Africa began to fill the void with something great- warts and all. (My personal heritage is more south europe but appreciate the ground work laid down in the wilderness.) And now the over educated seek to destroy this real progress.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
2 months ago

It’s a well written piece, overly idealistic though, sounds more like he visited the national parks than the urban areas where most people live. Small town America maybe, Chicago New York LA not so much.

B Joseph Smith
B Joseph Smith
2 months ago

Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” is exactly what I was thinking of the morning after Trump’s election.

Rick Lawrence
Rick Lawrence
2 months ago

Optimism? Yes, I’m sure those with the means to make a buck always have good reason to be optimistic. Unfortunately, there are a good many disenfranchised folks in the US for whom optimism can only come from the promises from politicians of all stripes
 promises usually broken

Ryan K
Ryan K
2 months ago

America “conquering the wilderness ” narrative is old greatest generation school….since the boomers it America and genocide…American and settler colonialism. But now a good portion of America is tired of this refrain and want to get back to the Frank Sinatra WWII era video, the land he calls home….something like that. When Jews made Andy Hardy movies to give back to Gentile America its self image. Meet Me in St Louis…with Judy is a good bit of Americana. Even I remember Mama about Norwegian immigrants.
Your description of Britain is apt. Not like Ventura Blvd…endless strip malls or Northern Blvd, endless car dealerships… I live in an complex built iin the twenties on the British Garden model of living….still doesn’t look like Britain to me.
When I was selling encyclopedias( with little success) at new housing development to new housing development in Colorado and Wyoming, I was told by one woman…who invited me in her home….”honey, we don’t need no encyclopedia, we HUNT. “

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

Woo hoo! Thanks.

Sue B
Sue B
2 months ago

A beautiful love letter to the USA. May I add my own? As a Briton, I remember marveling that my steps on British soil were ancient; my forbears had trodden the same ground for a millennia. As an American, I marvel there are parts of this vast country that have never mapped and probably never touched by humanity. Both are humbling to ponder. As a Uk citizen and recent US citizen, these senses have combined to inspire my sense of foreign and belonging. For many, who share this sense of shock and familiarity, the USA is the land of optimism and possibility. I only wish the same for the UK.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
2 months ago

Very interesting piece.

William Amos
William Amos
2 months ago

A large and restless national spirit can do just as much harm as good. Especially when combined with a capricious electorate and unimaginable military and financial might.
As we have seen historically in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
America certainly seems to enjoy a periodic and ostentatious, self congratultory ‘re-set’ of its own self image. Unfortunately this is usually accomanied by another part of the world smouldering in ruins.
As I suspect Kiev is also soon to discover.

George Rigaux
George Rigaux
2 months ago

Some 900 million people’s worldwide are ready to move at any given moment. Over 20% of them want to move to the US. Optimism is indeed an Americas trait. IMO because the indigenous folk were pretty grateful for living where they were as are the subsequent waves of immigrants that keep coming.