我為何抵制去美國旅行？

My wife and children are American citizens. Every summer we fly from Europe to visit family. This year we won’t (cue shrugs from Trump supporters), mostly because I don’t want to holiday in Donald Trump’s America. Some of the other 77.5 million international visitors to the US in 2015 may feel similarly. Already, Trump is creating a new generation of anti-Americans. True, some despotic regimes such as Saudi Arabia also practise religious discrimination. But I don’t go on holiday in Saudi Arabia either, and I thought the US’s standards were higher.

我的妻子和孩子都是美國公民。每年夏季，我們都會從歐洲飛往美國看望家人。今年，我們不會去了(特朗普的支持者對此無所謂)，很大程度上是因為我不想在唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)治下的美國度假。2015年前往美國旅游的國際游客有7750萬人，其中一些游客可能有類似的感覺。特朗普已經(jīng)創(chuàng)造了新一代的反美主義者。的確，沙特等一些專制政權(quán)也推行宗教歧視。但我也不去沙特度假，我認為美國的標準更高一些。

I was always pro-American. I grew up on wartime stories of chocolate-distributing GIs liberating European towns. In 1980, aged 10, I moved from the Netherlands to California with my parents and was enchanted. The houses were bigger than in cold, pinched Europe, the TV more fun, and Americans spoke to strangers on the street. Even ordinary people had big houses, and they routinely ate out. (In Europe in 1980, a restaurant meal was a big deal, reserved for occasions like your grandparents’ silver wedding anniversary or a cousin’s release from prison.)

我過去始終支持美國。我是在解放歐洲城鎮(zhèn)的美國大兵給孩子們發(fā)巧克力的戰(zhàn)時故事中長大的。1980年，當時10歲的我和父母從荷蘭搬到加州，并為此感到欣喜若狂。美國的房子比寒冷窄仄的歐洲的房子大、電視更好看，而且美國人會與街上的陌生人說話。甚至普通人也有大房子，而且他們還定期下館子(在1980年的歐洲，去飯館吃飯是樁大事情，只有慶祝祖父母銀婚紀念日或者親戚刑滿釋放的時候才能成行)。

When I returned to the US as a student, I was enchanted again. By then I knew a bit about the country’s troubled past, but most Americans seemed open about it and keen to improve. One of my professors had a set speech in which he called race “the unfinished business of American democracy”. Though he was a pompous charlatan, I bought his general thrust: the US gets better.

當我作為一名學(xué)生回到美國的時候，我再次欣喜若狂。那時我對美國的不堪歷史有了一些了解，但大多數(shù)美國人似乎對此并不避諱，并渴望取得進步。我的一位教授在一場精心準備的演講中將種族問題稱為“美國民主的未竟事業(yè)”。盡管他是個裝腔作勢的假專家，但我認可他的演講主旨：美國變得更好了。

In 2002 I met my wife, and began visiting the country with her. But I found it was getting worse. The post-9/11 terrorism panic added countless people to the nation’s security staff, many of whom liked fondling their gun holsters and yelling at people. TV news pumped fear and stupidity into the American ether. And you didn’t need to be Thomas Piketty to diagnose rising inequality. Rich white people (lots of them heirs) lived in gated communities, where poor non-white people guarded them against other poor non-white people. In America’s big liberal cities, with their non-racist, non-sexist speech codes designed to trip up the unwary, the rich sealed themselves off through house prices. The poor were free to wait tables, fight in Iraq and devote much of their remaining mindspace to worrying about health insurance. It’s true that inequality has risen across the west, but no country in the EU has a Gini coefficient of income inequality anywhere near as high as the US’s.

2002年，我遇到了我的妻子，開始和她一起在美國各地旅行。但我發(fā)現(xiàn)美國越來越糟。2001年9/11恐怖襲擊帶來的恐慌讓美國大幅增加了安保人員，其中許多人喜歡撫摸自己的槍套并對人大喊大叫。電視新聞向美國的空氣中注入恐懼和愚昧。你不必是托馬斯•皮凱蒂(Thomas Piketty)就能發(fā)現(xiàn)美國社會不平等現(xiàn)象日趨嚴重。富裕的白人(許多人的財富是繼承而來)居住在封閉式社區(qū)中，而貧窮的有色人種給他們當保安，保護他們不受其他貧窮有色人種的攻擊。美國奉行自由主義的大城市出臺了不能涉及種族主義和性別歧視的言論準則，專門揪粗心者的錯，富人們在這些城市借助房價將自己封閉起來。窮人有在餐廳當服務(wù)員、在伊拉克打仗、將剩下的精力主要用于操心醫(yī)療保險的“自由”。沒錯，整個西方的不平等現(xiàn)象都有所加劇，但歐盟哪個國家都沒有美國那么高的基尼系數(shù)。

Driving through Georgia and South Carolina one recent summer, we’d pass a predominantly white town and, a few miles later, a much poorer black town. It reminded me of visits to my grandparents in apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, many people boycotted South Africa. My parents felt they should keep visiting their aged parents but, aged 16, for complicated teenage reasons, selfish as well as political, I decided to stop going.

我在近年的一個夏季驅(qū)車穿過佐治亞州和南加州，我們會在經(jīng)過白人人口占絕大多數(shù)的城鎮(zhèn)后，過幾英里經(jīng)過一個貧窮得多的黑人城鎮(zhèn)。這讓我想起了上世紀七八十年代，我們?nèi)タ赐幼≡趯嵭蟹N族隔離制度的南非的祖父母。當時許多人抵制南非。我的父母覺得應(yīng)該繼續(xù)看望他們年邁的父母，但我16歲時，出于復(fù)雜的青春期原因(既有自私也有政治上的原因)，我決定不再去南非。

It’s easy to sneer that only hysterical liberals will stop visiting Trump’s US. But I never heard of anyone staying away from the US under George W Bush or from the UK since Brexit. I disagree with Brexit, but I accept that it’s a reasonable choice to make. Handing a country and its nuclear codes to a volatile, narcissistic, lying, Putin-supporting, sexually harassing, law-defying racist is not.

人們很容易嘲笑稱，只有歇斯底里的自由主義者才會抵制去特朗普治下的美國。但我從未聽說有人不去喬治•W•布什(George W Bush)治下的美國或者退歐后的英國。我不贊同英國退歐，但我認可這是英國民眾做出的合理選擇。將一個國家及其核密碼交給一個反復(fù)無常、自戀、謊話連篇、支持普京、性騷擾以及蔑視法律的種族主義者不是合理的選擇。

I don’t want to holiday in a country that has imposed a travel ban on Muslims, albeit a watered-down version of the one Trump promised during the campaign. Anyone denying that his executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries is religious discrimination should recall Trump’s own promise to exempt Christians. His confidant Rudy Giuliani boasted this week that Trump asked him, à propos his pledged “Muslim ban”: “Show me the right way to do it legally.” In fact, the scheme Giuliani helped cook up appears to be illegal. The administration is trying to implement it anyway. When the next Islamist terrorist strikes in any majority-white country, Trump may well claim prescience and extend the ban. Meanwhile, he has also banned all refugees. For now, I would visit his America only for a reporting trip.

我不想在一個對穆斯林頒發(fā)旅行禁令的國家度假，盡管這個禁令已經(jīng)較特朗普在競選期間的承諾有所縮水。如果有人認為他針對7個穆斯林國家公民的旅行禁令不是宗教歧視的話，那么想想他自己承諾的對基督教徒的豁免。他的心腹魯?shù)?bull;朱利安尼(Rudy Giuliani)最近曾經(jīng)夸口稱，特朗普就其承諾的“穆斯林禁令”問他：“告訴我合法實施禁令的正確方式。”實際上，朱利安尼幫助拼湊出的這個禁令似乎是非法的。但特朗普政府無論如何都想實施這個禁令。當伊斯蘭恐怖分子下一次在白人為主的國家發(fā)起襲擊的時候，特朗普大可宣稱自己有先見之明，然后擴大禁令。與此同時，他還禁止所有難民入境美國。就目前而言，我只會因采訪而去美國。

Some sort of foreign travel boycott might please his supporters — unless they work in travel and tourism. In 2014, the industry “directly supported” 5.3 million American jobs, said the World Travel and Tourism Council. Given that only 14 per cent of travellers in the US come from outside the country, let’s say they support roughly 740,000 jobs. That’s more than five times the number of American workers who, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, are directly employed in the steel industry. Alienating foreigners could prove an expensive way to have fun, especially as some activists are now also calling for boycotts of American goods.

外國人以某種形式抵制去美國旅行可能讓特朗普的支持者高興——除非他們在旅游和旅行行業(yè)工作。世界旅游及旅行理事會(World Travel and Tourism Council)表示，2014年，旅游旅行行業(yè)“直接支持了”530萬美國人的就業(yè)。鑒于美國的旅行者只有14%來自海外，那么他們支持了約74萬美國人的就業(yè)。根據(jù)美國鋼鐵協(xié)會(American Iron and Steel Institute)的數(shù)據(jù)，這是美國鋼鐵行業(yè)直接就業(yè)人數(shù)的5倍多。事實可能證明，疏遠外國人是一種昂貴的玩笑方式，尤其是一些活動人士現(xiàn)在也呼吁抵制美國商品。

I’m not sure how long my boycott will last. Reality changes so fast these days that I wake up some mornings feeling like I’ve landed on a new planet. I hope one day we’ll return to the old one.

我不確定我的抵制將會持續(xù)多久。如今現(xiàn)實變化如此之快，以至于我有時早晨醒來還以為到了一個新的星球。我希望有一天我們將會回到過去的那個星球。