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Why Being Anti-American Is Just No Fun Anymore

How many can give up their daily dose?
How many can give up their daily dose?
Alan Posener

BERLIN - In my local video store, they’ve just created a new section for TV series. The very great majority of the series are American: The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Girls, Modern Family, Lost, 24, various CSIs, and so on and so forth. The dominant culture in Europe continues to be American.

By contrast, we don’t seem to care much about American politics these days. Forgotten are the aggressive campaigns of the Bush years, when hundreds of thousands hit the streets of Germany to protest America’s war on terror, its “export” of democracy, and to support then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s "German Way." Europe, scoffed the Neocons, came from Venus, the U.S. from Mars. And a good thing too, scoffed the Europeans right back. Today? We Europeans bomb democracy into Libya; chase pirates in the Indian Ocean; march off to a small anti-terror war in Mali – and nobody’s interested. Or somebody asks in irritated tones where the hell the Americans are.

Nobody gets excited about American domestic politics either – mainly because what’s going on on that front – high unemployment, massive government debt – is all so familiarly European. At best the difference is that the American government has rediscovered John Maynard Keynes while we Europeans are assiduous followers of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

For many years those who opposed our immigration policies said we should follow the American lead – they only let the best people in. Now we’re hearing that the U.S. is in the process of legalizing 11 million illegal immigrants. Eleven million! Critics also used to be vocal on the subject of European social benefits, praising the Americans for focusing on the power of the individual rather than a nanny state. Upon closer inspection, it turns out however that tax-financed health programs like Medicare and Medicaid are pure socialism.

Critics may point to all the guns in private hands in the U.S., yet the American government supports a national register of those with mental problems that would make it difficult for the unstable to get hold of firearms. What this boils down to is this: citizens who feel they have a right to own firearms to protect their freedoms have a government that wants to make major incursions into patient confidentiality and privacy of personal information. The absurdity of this is positively European in its dimensions

Long story short: it’s just no fun to be anti-American anymore. Why? As we could have figured out from watching all those TV series we love so much – the Americans are way too much like us.

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LGBTQ Plus

My Wife, My Boyfriend — And Grandkids: A Careful Coming Out For China's Gay Seniors

A series of interviews in Wuhan with aging gay men — all currently or formerly married to women — reveals a hidden story of how Chinese LGBTQ culture is gradually emerging from the shadows.

Image of two senior men playing chinese Checkers.

A friendly game of Checkers in Dongcheng, Beijing, China.

Wang Er

WUHAN — " What do you think of that guy sitting there, across from us? He's good looking."

" Then you should go and talk to him."

“ Too bad that I am old..."

Grandpa Shen was born in 1933. He says that for the past 40 years, he's been "repackaged," a Chinese expression for having come out as gay. Before his wife died when he was 50, Grandpa Shen says he was was a "standard" straight Chinese man. After serving in the army, he began working in a factory, and dated many women and evenutually got married.

"Becoming gay is nothing special, I found it very natural." Grandpa Shen says he discovered his homosexuality at the Martyrs' Square in Wuhan, a well-known gay men's gathering place.

✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.

Wuhan used to have different such ways for LGBTQ+ to meet: newspaper columns, riversides, public toilets, bridges and baths to name but a few. With urbanization, many of these locations have disappeared. The transformation of Martyrs' Square into a park has gradually become a place frequented by middle-aged and older gay people in Wuhan, where they play cards and chat and make friends. There are also "comrades" (Chinese slang for gay) from outside the city who come to visit.

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