I’ll be honest, it’s not the proudest time to be a US-UK citizen. Back in the late 90s, when I added a mauve British passport to my desk drawer alongside my American blue one, it felt almost embarrassingly over-cautious, a self-indulgent hedging of bets, like triple glazing your windows. Of course, I liked that I could now vote in the UK, and would no longer have to pay foreign fees to go to a British university. But surely the primary point of having multiple nationalities was that you always had somewhere safe to call home: having the US and UK felt like holding two trump (ahem) cards.
Also, as much as people like me — people including me, let’s be honest here — like to ham up the cultural differences between Britain and America (ha ha, Marmite! Self-deprecation! What even is that?), we are only able to focus on the micro because the macro has been so homogenous and stable. When your two countries are among the world’s sturdiest democracies, with a shared language and culture, and their leaders constantly bang on about their “special relationship” (which always sounded to me like the kind of euphemism a parent would use when telling their children they’re in an open marriage, or on the verge of an especially acrimonious divorce), there’s not much else to complain about but yeast extract.
Which brings us to today. It turns out that Britain and America really do have a special relationship, although I think psychologists would use a different “s” word – self-destructive, say, or flat-out self-harming. Because if Brexit gave President Donald Trump hope that his nativist time had come, then Trump has proven how foolhardy Brexit is. We are leaving, to paraphrase LBC radio’s James O’Brien, a flawed but stable relationship with the EU for an entirely uncertain one with a misogynistic race-baiter who we hope won’t hurt us. If you had a friend behaving the way the UK is now, you’d stage an intervention.
It is quite something to watch this, as a citizen of both countries: both your homes descending into pandemonium, on the one hand enabling and, on the other, undermining each other, while the rest of the world watches in astonishment. Imagine if both your parents had a simultaneous sadomasochistic midlife crisis, and that crisis involved banning random people from the house instead of buying Ferraris.
What I find especially bewildering is the way both countries are betraying their most beloved and frequently cited self-image. No matter how badly they behaved in the wars of the past 70 years – Vietnam, Iraq – there was always the shining beacon of the Second World War, casting a glow on both. Britain and America, the stout-hearted good guys, the countries that don’t turn their backs on Europe or those in need. Take that, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys! Now we have a White House administration that spends Holocaust Memorial Day knocking out an executive order to ban Muslim refugees, and which refuses to mention the Jews in a statement marking the memorial, and a Britain where it is deemed elitist to call out racism.
And still, people in both countries are confused about why people would want to protest this. In America, anyone who objects to Trump is dismissed as “denying democracy”, while in Britain they are dismissed as – to quote one broadsheet commentator – “anguished luvvies and angry tweeters [more interested in] feeling smug than changing anything”. OK, Trump is playing the Joker and causing unconstitutional crises, but ha, look at the ladies in the stupid pink cat hats! Loser snowflakes! It’s funny how it’s always those who have nothing to lose who find the idea of protest so stupid. Let me use my US-UK privilege for a moment. I am, after all, bilingual. British people who say the way to deal with Trump is through “respectful diplomacy”? Let me respectfully and diplomatically tell you that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Those of us who grew up with Trump know that he has the attention-span of a tweet, and that while Prime Minister Theresa May is holding his hand and talking trade deals he’s wondering whether Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting better ratings than him on The Apprentice.
Safeguard your values, Britain, don’t chase American power. If I remember correctly, that didn’t work out so well for former PM Tony Blair. And America, if your politicians are looking to Brexit for inspiration, know that our politicians haven’t a clue.
There’s not much hope one can take from being British-American right now. The least I can do is use my double identity, to save my two homes from destroying each other – and themselves.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Hadley Freeman is a Guardian columnist and features writer.
