It is hard to pinpoint the earliest memory I have of being told about this mystical land of promise where nothing seems impossible. But I remember that when I was a child, each of these stories left me with the certain feeling that there was no conceivable challenge in this world that could not be overcome by an American. A bit silly, but I believed that if any catastrophe were ever to happen and Luxembourg could no longer stand on its own, the US would come to our help and save us. They did it before, they can do it again, no doubt.
When I was in primary school, Luxembourgish author Henri Losch once came to visit our class and read from his newly published war-time memoires. Although we were still quite young at the time, I remember his stories being impressive and compelling, as Losch was about the same age we were when the Allied forces arrived in Luxembourg. I can still picture his excitement when he told us about the glorious sight of the troops marching through the streets, and more specifically the American soldiers: “They handed out chewing gum and even cigarettes for the older kids, can you imagine?” My own grandmother paints a similar picture when reminiscing about her childhood and the liberation from the German occupation. Still to this day, she expresses her gratitude and admiration for the United States: “Spending sleepless nights lying on a sack of potatoes in the basement while waiting for the sirens to stop is something you simply cannot forget. They were our heroes.”
My parents were definitely influenced by American pop culture in their youth, be that in the form of music, television, or fashion. Nevertheless, you can sense that at the same time, their generation started to see the illusion of the flawless country crumble and become what today some people might consider “woke”. As US foreign policies grew ever more questionable over the years, the voices glorifying America became a bit quieter. It was also brought to my attention that by the time my parents learned about World War II in school, it had become widely established that the liberation of Luxembourg was a coordinated move by the Allied forces, and not as it first might have appeared, a gracious act of mercy by the US.
Where are we at today? Being a late millennial myself, I feel that apart from the stories my grandparents told me, not much of the former vision of the American heroes has remained intact. It is hard to say whether there was a concrete tipping point or not. While solidarity with the US was certainly still great in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the revelations of the countless deceptions leading to the Iraq War definitely dampened that enthusiasm. However, I remember that the election of president Obama in 2008 felt in a way like a sort of redemption, or at least evoked in me the idea that the US were still able to come together as a nation and vote for change. Considering the relentless images of divisiveness since the beginning of the Trump presidency, I wonder if that ability for change is still intact.
One would think that after Trump’s unlikely win in 2016, political analysts, news pundits, and journalists would bid caution when it comes to predicting the outcome of the November election. Yet four years appear to be an awfully long period, with sufficient time to forget and fall back into old habits. There is no shortage of news reports indicating a strong Biden lead in the polls, which can only end up in, as experts like to put it, a “landslide victory” for Democrats. However, on the other side of the aisle, claims of an inevitable second triumph for Trump are just as numerous and the enthusiasm for the president remains unshaken it seems.
Meanwhile in different circles, the murmurs around the possibility of Trump not accepting the election results, given he were to lose, have by now evolved into loudly voiced concerns. HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher interviewed nearly every candidate who ran for the democratic nomination, and asked each one the same question over the course of their campaigns: “What if Trump won’t leave?” Shrugged or even laughed off by most at the time, the issue now seems to have become a legitimate concern. At least serious enough that in 2019, the bipartisan Transition Integrity Project (TIP) was launched, an organisation which played out different scenarios that could arise after the announcement of the November results:
