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Roy Hodgson, a polyglot who read Stefan Zweig, trained in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and the United Arab Emirates before leading England from 2012 to 2016. The club of his life was Crystal Palace, the catchment area, where I grew up. , could be the most ethnically varied in European football. The clues in his supervised policy suggest the most astute type of worker.
In other words, there were reasons to acclaim “Woy” as the voice of modern England, liberal patriotism, and other non-oxymorons of the time. The nation never got there. For reasons difficult to place (it predates knee-jerk activism), his heir gets the honor. Or maybe it’s not that hard. Gareth Southgate has a winning team. Hodgson no. The moral joy of success has been given a moral turn. Don’t expect the high-minded kidnapping to survive a bad World Cup.
More or less deep, the ecstatic summer of England was audible from the other side of the ocean. Like in 2018, American friends find it hard to match the decor they were raised to expect from us and what they are used to here. The surprise is out of place. I know it by reputation, I know it, but the United States is the country with a stiffer upper lip.
My intuition (the “theory” is too strong) is as follows. If most of the time a nation contains its feelings, it is likely to come out with sporadic but absolutely torrential force. The reverse is equally true. A culture with a high average level of emotional candor is less prone to sudden rises in things. It’s the choice between boiling and draining: the same content enters the world with a very different violence.
Delimiting these ways of going about life is not the same as naming a winner. The price of the American model is a kind of environmental psychobability. “The medium by which people speak of themselves without revealing anything,” is how writer-doctor Theodore Dalrymple defined this mode of speech. In my Washington neighborhood, flags invite pedestrians to “live” their “truth”. Deepak Chopra remains at large. To feel at the appointment of these things is to listen to celibacy.
But then weigh, if you will, the booty. Emotional sensations are avoided, feelings emitted before your hands are exhausted: a personal openness that can be scratched in the short term can prevent mass surges. At this point, the United States also benefits from its internal schisms. The blessing of a 50- to 50-year-old electorate is that there is rarely a truly national mood. Adjust for geographic vastness and ethnic diversity, and something exceptional (at least in peacetime) is needed to foster the kind of flock emotion that has become almost biennial in England throughout my life.
If its sonority were the worst, a boom and sensational approach from England might be achieved. But, choosing my words carefully here, there are times in England – as serious as the death of a royal, as frivolous as a World Cup – when one becomes aware of a certain potential. It’s not that the discordant of the collective mood is insecure. But they may look less candid for a quiet life. The old hospitality of the country for strangers, opposites and the hidden may seem very theoretical, very quickly. John Stuart Mill did not take foreign countries into account when he cited social pressure, not just status, as a brake on freedom of expression. No doubt some Americans felt the same cold after 9/11. But England can convene a censored mood for minor events. Even a happy crowd is still a crowd.
Most of this, in the end, is a harmless search for belonging. By rights, it should be the youngest country that needs the constant security that is a nation and not just a market with a flag. But I increasingly sense this neurosis in the reverence of England for binding institutions like the national team and what must be the most sacred service in the world. When you hear that 21st century troupe, “We’re All Together,” you don’t have to strive to make an unspoken appendix. “Isn’t that so?”
Send Janan a janan.ganesh@ft.com
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