FAKE AMERICANISM, PAX AMERICANA…AND THE INDIVIDUALISM SCAM OR CURSE! – FROM ‘WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?’ TO ‘WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?’

By Mansor bin Puteh

This did not stop me from traveling to forty countries attending film festivals, seminars, forums and conferences, and even been selected to be a member of the international observers’ team to monitor the 4 June, 2014 Syrian Presidential Election.

And for the past few years before the covid pandemic, I returned to America once or twice a year when I would travel on the Greyhound from Los Angeles to New York City spending three days and three nights on the trip and on the way back to Los Angeles, to catch my flight back to Malaysia, usually with a stop in a city in China where I was once off-loaded because the ground staff spoke with me in Mandarin and then decided I wanted to get off the plane there, because he thought I was Chinese! 

In America almost everybody thought I was Japanese including some in Japan where I had the occasion to go to few times!

Oh, when I was growing up and in Secondary School in Malaysia we had Canadian exchange students and many American Peace Corp volunteers teaching at the university where I was majoring in Advertising at the School of Mass of Communications, who not only imparted knowledge they were specialized in but also live images of America – the Old America that I grew to like and be fond of, the images that the then President John F Kennedy had wanted to create for many Malaysians and others to remember and admire. 

I studied in English-medium schools operated by the Catholic priests, although a Muslim unlike the many Muslim students in Malaysia whose parents sent them to other English medium schools operated by the government then. 

For one I found that there was not much diversity in New York City and also on the Columbia University campus, compared to now when there are more students and residents of the city who are originally from other countries.

We prayed for the Eid Festival in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, because the number of Muslims in New York City then was small, and some wealthy Arabs rented the hall for the prayers, that did not fill the entire hall.

Nowadays, for the same Eid Festival prayers, the Muslims in the city performed it in the streets, because they are now so many of them and all who are proud of their religion and are not afraid or ashamed to show it to the others who accept them as what they are.

I lived in a dormitory called Harmony Hall in my first year at Columbia and later moved to Sunnyside and then to Astoria in Queens in the second year.

There were just a few Malaysian Muslims living in the areas where I lived at, but recently when I returned to Astoria, I found that there are many Halal restaurants and two Islamic Centers which were converted from stores where I bought stationery. 

Because I did not look Arabic or Muslim, but Japanese I was able to move about in the city and the whole of America without attracting any attention. But then I hardly loitered away from the public areas, except once I took the wrong bus and ended up at Harlem at night when it was drizzling when Harlem was a place no white folks would go to even in the day. 

It is therefore quite an irony to see a place like Harlem which was said to be the ‘most dangerous’ part of New York City in the past but which is now one of the more multiracial places in the city and the whole of America.

I was back there few years ago and found the place to have developed with many stores and white people sitting outside of restaurants and mixing with the local blacks, a sight I did not see there in the late 1970s or early 1980s. 

To me this is the America that I knew would be, starting from Harlem and on to the other places, with diversity and a place for all – that can be used to show that there is a New America that is being created right before our very eyes, yet, Hollywood and American literature will conveniently not look at, because it does not fit into their ideology or strategy to promote Pax Americana although no one seems to be talking about it anymore these days!

But Pax Americana was the reason for the existence of Fake Americanism that exists in many countries around the world, embraced by the younger generation and the older ones who were exposed to the magic of Hollywood, the simplistic music of pop America that had swing and freedom of physical self-expression and later on, the lingo Americans used that crept into the everyday English speaking styles of many in other countries.

The irony is that Malaysians who studied and lived long in America did not bring back the accents and lingo and lifestyles associated with America; they brought back their diplomas and sometimes graduation gowns and mortarboards.

Only those who never lived and studied in America who were quick to accept American accents which they copied from characters they found interesting in many Hollywood films and other entertainment programs on television. They are also those who are quick to queue outside of any American fast-food restaurants to sample the burgers and to think that they are indeed in America! 

American psychologists must return to the past when those before them had brought out the issue concerning the inner thoughts and senses of many Americans who felt compelled to blame themselves for the ails and tribulations they experienced then instead of dumping all blame on the others, no matter how wrong they themselves could be, when they say to themselves, ‘Why did you do this to me?’

As an outsider, who had studied and lived in America for a few years and who had the fortune to return to the country few times to mix with a host of people with diverse backgrounds I think I have an advantage over the community leaders who take sides. I am an onlooker with no side to favor or to take so no one can ask me, ‘Whose side are you on?’