And so to sea

I always knew that one day my ship would come in, and today it did. I will be boarding for the long trip homeward in a couple of hours, and I’m just taking the last opportunity for a bit of wifi in a lovely little cafe near my hotel. One more blogpost, a few more tweets, and a skype call or two. Then eleven days or so with no network. I’m feeling withdrawal symptoms already.

What of this strange land I’ve been exploring? It’s as conflicted and polarised as I’d expected, not only on the topics like climate change and LGBT issues which I was deliberately focusing on, but on the very nature of this “experiment in limited government”. The current hostility between Democrats and Republicans, and between the wider ‘conservative movement’ and everyone else, is only the latest phase in a very long running conflict, the conflict into which the country was born. The polarisation between right wing and left wing media is also more polarised than ever – it’s almost impossible to find actual news coverage which is free from bias of the most blatant and manipulative kind.

It would be easy for me to characterise America’s inability (and the right’s unwillingness) to act on climate change as simple selfishness. Americans may think that they have the most to lose from the dramatic emission cuts which are needed… that’s if a change to their current energy-intensive lifestyles is to be considered a loss. But it may be that they have far more to gain as well, including some freedoms they forgot to protect. In their jealous guarding of the right to drive everywhere, they have in practice lost the freedom to walk (you wouldn’t believe the distances I’ve had to go to find the simplest things, from a bookshop to a laundrette, often along sidewalks which couldn’t be called pavements because they’ve never been paved). In defending the many freedoms of business, they’ve been left with a public which doesn’t feel free to live simply and within their means; with a media which is daily attacking people’s freedom to think for themselves; and with a political culture which narrows the range and depth of democratic freedom to an extent which would no doubt have horrified the founders of the nation.

This is also a country which seems disturbingly obsessed with the idea of being number one, of proving over and over again what a great thing America is. Which makes me wonder who they’re trying to convince.

I don’t have the answer to that, and I certainly don’t know what the outcome of their ideological war on the climate will be. I also have more thoughts to mull over before I can express them properly. Thankfully I will have plenty of time in hand…

Goodbye internet, until I see you again on the other side of the Atlantic.