{"id":263901,"date":"2026-04-12T11:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/263901\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T11:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:49:10","slug":"column-i-just-got-back-from-europe-anti-american-sentiment-is-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/263901\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: I just got back from Europe. Anti-American sentiment is on the rise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was midday just before Easter in Paris. My niece and I walked past the city\u2019s famous opera house, where tourists were relaxing on the wide steps. French soldiers armed with assault rifles strolled around, a comforting sight given the warnings<\/a> about Iran-backed sleeper cells and potential retaliatory attacks. A busker with a guitar and a microphone entertained the crowd with a Coldplay cover.<\/p>\n

Between songs, he asked, \u201cAnyone here speak English?\u201d Unbelievably, not a single hand went up.<\/p>\n

The busker shrugged, turned both thumbs down in the universal gesture of disapproval, and said, \u201cAmerica, eh?\u201d I felt him.<\/p>\n

A couple of days after I got home, I saw a social media post that reminded me of that moment. \u201cHonestly,\u201d wrote @_thatambitiousgirl, \u201cI don\u2019t know how anyone could even feel comfortable traveling as an American outside of the U.S. right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anti-American sentiment is on the rise,<\/a> and it sucks being from a country whose presidents do things like threaten to end <\/a>a \u201cwhole civilization,\u201d invade Middle Eastern countries based on lies <\/a>about weapons of mass destruction, or insert themselves into pointless conflicts<\/a> in faraway lands. In college, I had friends who sewed Canadian flags onto their backpacks because they didn\u2019t want to be associated with America\u2019s misadventures in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

Polls show<\/a> that half of Europeans view President Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from NATO, as an enemy rather than an ally. He has managed the neat trick of telling our allies they are useless while castigating them for not rushing to help with his poorly planned war on Iran. \u201cThis is not our war,\u201d the German defense minister said <\/a>pointedly last month. \u201cWe have not started it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quite simply, with the assent of the Republican Party, Trump is taking a wrecking ball<\/a> to the world order as we\u2019ve known it in our lifetimes, while also managing to make life harder<\/a> for Americans at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re worse off in every way, and officially a global pariah,\u201d said the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Facebook <\/a>this week. \u201cAwesome. Love that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was glad to see that someone I know, the novelist Erin Zhurkin,<\/a> responded thoughtfully to @_that ambitiousgirl\u2019s Instagram post.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeen an American abroad for 20 years now,\u201d wrote Zhurkin, whose Russian-born American husband is an executive with Renault. \u201cSix countries so far. People are in general curious and grateful that I can see my country from all sides\u2026.I try to represent the heart of the US, which I believe is about being open to all people and finding commonalities rather than differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, truly, is the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1967, my family moved from Northridge to France, where my father had a year-long Fulbright teaching scholarship at the University of Pau. Before we got on the airplane, my mother sat the four of her rambunctious kids down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important that you not be \u2018Ugly Americans,\u2019 \u201d she told us. We were too young to have read the classic 1958 novel<\/a> she was referring to, but we understood that we were to be curious and respectful and maybe not yell, as we unfortunately did, \u201cYuck, this is NOT a hot dog,\u201d during our first meal in Paris.<\/p>\n

One winter evening in Pau, my parents took us to an anti-war demonstration, as they had done many times in Los Angeles. The locals we marched with were chanting something we couldn\u2019t quite make out. It sounded to our American ears like \u201cYohn-kee go ohm.\u201d We figured it out pretty quickly, and frankly, it was unsettling.<\/p>\n

Zhurkin had a similar experience in Moscow, in the early 1990s, at a kiosk near Red Square. \u201cAn older Russian lady looked at me, and in a thick Russian accent said, \u2018Yankee, go home,\u2019 \u201d Zhurkin told me by phone from Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she and her family had moved in September from Seoul. \u201cIt opened up this whole feeling inside of me that there is something about my country that may not be as wonderful as it seems. It was a huge, perspective-breaking moment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, Zhurkin was living in Paris. Trump had just been elected to his first term.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could not get into a taxi without someone asking me why I would let this happen, as if it was all me,\u201d Zhurkin said. \u201cThey\u2019d say, \u2018I can\u2019t believe you Americans are so stupide.\u2019 I was like, \u2018Look, I didn\u2019t vote for him.\u2019\u201d Still, she said, \u201cI feel like I am apologizing all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Joe Biden was elected in 2020, Zhurkin said, her family had moved to Ireland, where the vibe was much more \u201cThank God you guys got your act together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe in the not-too-distant future, we will again. And then we can start to put this long national nightmare behind us. <\/p>\n

Bluesky: @rabcarian<\/a>
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