Ugly American, Then and Now

Phrases Require Context

When I was ten years old, in 1952, the caricature of the Ugly American was a 6'6" Texan wearing a 10-gallon hat for a total of seven feet. He spoke brashly. His ranch stretched at least as large as Rhode Island. His cattle filled the horizon.

Europe laughed at him. France in particular. At least I thought so at the time. More likely it was a cocktail of envy and wounded pride—psyches still raw from their role in World War II.

China was closed. Russia less so. The Arab world existed somewhere beyond our peripheral vision.

That was then.

Today, standing on that same Texas horizon, is a mosque.

I have no quarrel with mosques. I have no quarrel with Muslims. Faith is personal, and America was built on the freedom to practice it.

But within certain mosques—not all, not most, but enough—a different message echoes. Death to the Infidels. Death to the Ugly Americans. Hate spewed by clerics who issue fatwas calling for the murder of those who dare speak against them.

A fatwa is a religious decree. Most address the mundane—questions of diet, prayer, inheritance. But some fatwas are death sentences pronounced without trial, without defense, without appeal. Once spoken, they endure. They travel through decades. They find willing hands.

Salman Rushdie

My first encounter with fatwas came through Salman Rushdie.

I read The Satanic Verses. I read all his books. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death for blasphemy. A bounty was placed on his head. He spent a decade in hiding.

How could words on paper warrant execution?

Then I remembered other images. Books burning in Nazi Germany. And then bodies burning.

The progression haunts me still.

Rushdie's Japanese translator was stabbed to death. His Italian translator was stabbed and survived. His Norwegian publisher took three bullets and lived. And in 2022—thirty-three years after Khomeini's pronouncement—a young man who wasn't born when the fatwa was issued rushed a stage in upstate New York and drove a knife into Rushdie's neck, chest, and eye.

Thirty-three years. A cleric's words, patient as poison, waiting for a vessel.

What Happened Over Sixty Years?

I have no comprehensive answer. Only fragments.

China opened and prospered—by systematically appropriating American technology while we applauded their emergence.

Russia sends tens of thousands of young men into the meat grinder of Ukraine while its current Tsar accumulates wealth that would make the Romanovs blush.

And America? We worshiped progress. We opened our doors to everyone seeking education, homes, healthcare, prosperity. We believed our own mythology.

We were asleep at the switch!

Our politicians—left, right, center—gradually abandoned the work of representation for the religion of monetization. Public service became a stepping stone to lobbying firms, corporate boards, speaking fees. They didn't sell out all at once. It happened incrementally, the way a tide erodes a cliff.

Geert Wilders

Last night I attended a dinner to hear Geert Wilders speak.

Anjou pear salad with field greens. Braised short ribs. Cheesecake.

Today I am sick to my stomach. I cannot say whether it was the food or the speech.

Wilders is a Dutch politician who has lived under 24-hour armed protection for more than twenty years. His offense? Criticizing radical Islam. Comparing the Quran to Mein Kampf. Producing a short film called Fitna that depicted Islam as inherently violent.

For this, fatwas have been issued calling for his death. Pakistani clerics have been convicted—in absentia, since they remain safely in Pakistan—for inciting his murder. A Pakistani man was sentenced to ten years for plotting a terrorist attack against him.

Wilders cannot walk freely in his own country. He moves between safe houses. His wife lives the same half-life. This has been their existence for two decades.

Is he a hero of free speech or a provocateur who pours gasoline on cultural fires? I suspect the answer depends on which fire is closest to your home.

Labels

People love labels.

Mine, if I must choose one, is enigmatic.

I am not a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. I am not an -ist of any variety. I am not Left, Right, or Center. Perhaps I am a Shallow Enigmatic—someone who gets up each morning and tries to do the best he can for himself and those around him, one day at a time.

I am 83 years old. I have run 22 marathons. I paddled solo across the Catalina Channel and the Molokai Channel, the last crossing on my 70th birthday. I built companies. I have great-grandchildren. I started programming in Fortran in the 1960s and now I build AI systems designed to catch machines in the act of lying.

And only now—at 83—am I arriving at a clear understanding of how profoundly we Americans have lost our way.

The Ugliest Americans Today

Not the Texan in the 10-gallon hat. He was a cartoon, and cartoons fade.

The ugliest Americans today are the clerics who spew hatred from the minbar—the Islamic pulpit—calling for death to those who think differently, who speak freely, who refuse to submit. They have wrapped murder in religious language and exported it across oceans. They issue fatwas from the safety of countries that will not extradite them, and wait for the faithful to carry out sentences they are too cowardly to execute themselves.

They are ugly. And they are not alone.

There are Americans who see what is happening and say nothing. Those who attend dinners and nod politely and go home to comfortable lives while the fabric unravels. Those who know the truth but find it inconvenient.

My parents were born in 1911, children of refugees. They chose protective silence. They kept their heads down. They survived.

I am breaking that pattern.

Don't lament. Engage.

Hallucinations.cloud is on the threshold of releasing a powerful tool to protect innocent lives from acts of extremists—a multi-model AI verification system designed to detect misinformation, expose radicalization, and shine light into the dark corners where hatred festers and spreads.

Words have consequences. Lies have consequences. The technology to fight back is coming.

The conversation continues.