January 5, 2014.

Why I Chose the Red, White, and Blue

"Don't go on!" said Winston, with his eyes tightly shut.

Growing up British, I thought that I knew everything about national self-loathing. We were reared in the shadows of long-gone might, taught that we were mere dormice scuffling in the footsteps of imperial giants. To dull the pain, we administered heavy doses of sarcasm, self-effacement and "Upstairs, Downstairs."

"Dearest! You've gone quite pale. What's the matter? Do they make you feel sick?"

But then I moved to the U.S., and over my decade here, I have realized that when it comes to the rhetoric of self-flagellation, as in so much else, we Europeans are small time. The U.S. government, we hear, is no longer checked and balanced but broken. Banks and insurance companies are plundering the nation's treasure. Bridges are crumbling, children aren't being educated, and that thudding sound is 1.3 billion Chinese sitting down to eat America's lunch. For all this country's glories, its morale in recent years has felt low.

"Of all horrors in the world----a rat!"

So a couple of months ago I did my bit to buck the gloom: I became a U.S. citizen.