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In print | Published October 9, 2008

Wall Street is burning down, and the world is falling apart. Or at least that’s what it seems to be like these days.

As the ripples of the American economy’s collapse victimize yet another nation each passing day —European Union members are convening in Luxembourg this week to discuss the measures for financial stability — the importance of America in the global picture has never been so readily apparent. Forget the Middle Eastern wars and the terrible reality shows; when the proverbial international wallets are affected, America has the world’s undivided attention. It is fascinating in a morbid sort of way to witness the fall of one business giant after another, like so many misguidedly conceited dominoes.

This domino effect, however, goes beyond simple economics. At the end of the line is something much more intangible and, I think, much more significant — the likely destruction of a romanticized outside view of America.

Despite the recent string of negative hits to its global image, America still remains very much a shining city on a hill for many living in other countries.

I would venture to say that this claim applies to even the men and women of Europe, whose sole pastime appears to have become bashing “those arrogant Americans.” CBS’s Late Late Show host, Craig Ferguson, is one Scottish import who professes nothing but love for this nation.

And America has always been the country that could, born out of fire against the most powerful colonial power of that time. After the Second World War, America put the world on her financial shoulders and still managed to emerge as the global superpower.

The world finds it easy to forgive America, because it has always depended on her. For all the uproar over the Bush administration’s alleged ruining of the entire Earth, European nations still welcomed presidential candidate Barack Obama with an excited fervor matched only by the liberals’ on this soil.

The fascination with America is that she appears to be a place of hope — the land of opportunity, as it were — and that she simply appears under different guises. Overenthusiastic global policeman is the current one. America, it seems, cultivates success that is appreciated to a magnified degree overseas. This idea can be translated across various arenas — it helps explain, for one, the ridiculous amount of fandom Kobe Bryant enjoys in China, which already has a basketball star in native son Yao Ming.

Nowhere is such a cultivation of success so obvious, however, as in the economic arena. If nothing already espoused above is convincing enough proof of America’s global appeal, consider the influx of foreign students to American universities at the turn of the century. By 2006, according to the Institute of International Education, America housed more than half a million foreign students, the greatest number in the world. America offered research grants ­and fast cars.

But more importantly, prospective millionaires flocked to the big-name institutions hoping to cash in on the land of opportunity, which this time appeared in the form of something called investment banking. Today, the falls of Wachovia and Lehman Bros. share headlines with suicide bombings in Pakistan and might-be-a-cease-fire in Georgia. All of a sudden this nation looks as vulnerable as the broken ones that dominate international news every day.

Even with all its admitted shortcomings, from seriously flawed health insurance to incomprehensible mortgage plans, America was not some other nation in the eyes of an international. It was the nation, even if it was hard to express in words. The American dream wasn’t something confined to the working class and Arthur Miller, it was something even people in other countries could strive for.

Ultimately, I think, America has always been inspiration for the rest of the world, despite her many obvious flaws. It hasn’t been about what any given administration has done in its ruling tenure so much as the idealized thought of this place of dreams and opportunity. And to see the light source short-circuited is discouraging in a time where the world really does look like it is ripping at the seams.

James is a first-year. He can be reached at jamo4@swarthmore.edu.

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