‘Coming Home to Smug America’

I was struck with the frankness of Meisler’s article. When I speak of the problems facing our country, problems everyone should be concerned with, people become quickly bored or angry. Over the last two summers I’ve had the opportunity to travel extensively through Western Europe, particularly England and Spain, as an undergraduate. I was amazed at the poor view most Europeans hold of Americans. They were able to talk about the problems that face our country and theirs from drugs to guns, and arms to AIDS, and to a much greater depth than people here can or will do.

The state of American politics is in such a way that it was nearly impossible for me to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates, which consisted of nothing more than ridiculous if not sickening one-liners. And this must have been especially painful to Meisler as he writes of political events for a living.

I was touched at the end of his article; after praising an American politician by comparing him to French politicians, he wrote: “Everyone else assumed I was putting him down.” It recalled to my mind a line from a Charles Bukowski poem: “And there will be nobody you can talk to about it.”

JOSEPH DUNCAN

Los Angeles