Everybody wants to go to America?

by jampadracis

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2003-05-17 05:13:00

Parent message is 451342
Well, not everybody, not me, at least. In my corner of Eastern Europe, I see that the current administration does not mean the whole of US, still it would be difficult to sneak around this admin to get in the US. Being a translator of American lit, I wanted to go, even got a grant to do so, but dropped the idea in February when the Iraq war was approaching. To think that every other person on the street could be a supporter of WAR, of invasion into a smaller, helpless country (whatever the regime in that country) – this is just that kind of thing that people from smaller nations would never stomach comfortably, in any continent (whatever their pragmatic governments say).
Still I dropped in the US embassy and took visa forms – that was the last straw – the questions were more numerous and dumber than those for Soviet citizens when they wanted to get out somewhere; worse than contemporary Belorusian, just humiliating.
Still, I am not an America-hater, I translate American literature every day and enjoy beats etc. The discomfort with the US policy is not only Arab, it is prevalent in all Europe (at least in popular opinion), so I hope the US will get over this period and will become a friendlier place again. 🙂