The world is becoming Americanized … and that's not bad

Tom Friedman authored a book "The World is Flat" several years back, and he pointed out how goods and services are being bid, contracted for, and the work done by freelancers around the world.

Well, I bought into that, and of the 25 books I have had published, 24 of them have been handled by a self-publishing service in Australia, which gets the cover work done in Pakistan and puts them on Amazon. Yes, if you want a book published or a subdivision in Norphlet plated out, you can put it on freelancers.com and get bids from all over the world to do the work.

Later, I wrote a children's Christmas book … ages 4 to 6 — "The Crystal Christmas Tree" — and I needed illustrations. Using the same connections, I found an artist to do pen-and-ink illustrations. The international part of the book was the artist, a Russian living in Greece, who did the penand-ink drawing, and my artist daughter Lara, who colorized them.

International trade is worldwide, and that's great, because the more everyone in the world is business connected, the safer our world becomes. You don't go to war with your customers. But as great as that relationship is, I think the democratic phenomenon that is sweeping the world is superior, and that democracy comes from the good old USA.

This is how we got there. In the mid-1960s, Vertis and I were living in Benghazi, Libya, and we decided to spend a long weekend in Athens, Greece, celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. East African Airways had a route from South Africa to Athens that stopped in Benghazi, and even though it left at 3:30 in the morning, we were chomping at the bit to leave Benghazi. Our wedding anniversary is Jan. 17, so it was cold in Athens when we arrived, but we jumped right into trying to do everything possible in the few days we were going to be there.

Of course, we hit the Archeological Museum first, and then late in the day, when we were ready for dinner, we asked the desk clerk where he would go for dinner. He seemed surprised that so called "rich" Americans would eat where a Greek would, but since we really weren't "rich" we told him we weren't about to dine at any of the fancy tourist restaurants around Constitution Square. He gave us directions and after walking deep into the Plaka area of the old city, we found the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. We walked in and the Greek customers seemed surprised, but not as surprised as we were when the waiter handed us an all-Greek menu. However, the waiter just smiled and motioned for us to come to the front display case where it was point-andpick our dinner.

Well, looking around, if we were from Mars, we couldn't have been more noticeable. Everything about us stood out, but not as much as it did the next night. We had just seen the movie "Never on Sunday" and we wanted to hear some Greek music. So with directions from the hotel desk clerk, we ventured deeper into the Plaka section of the old city and finally stopped at a large Greek restaurant with live Greek music.

Well, we stood out because every person in the restaurant was dressed in black. Of course, that was the night Vertis decided to wear all white, but even if we had been wearing black, we would have stood out. Greek clothing and ordinary American wear were miles apart.

That's not the case today. Last year we were back in Greece doing a driving vacation when we stopped in Patas, a small Greek town well away from Athens. Vertis and I walked across the street from our hotel to an ordinary lunch place with counter service, and an all-Greek menu. Of course, we were lost as a goose trying to read Greek, but after help from a waiter, owner and a customer, we dined on lamb kabobs, fries, salad and drinks for under $12. However, what was surprising was how the local lunch crowd was an open display of how the social world has become flat.

First the clothes: if you had picked up the crowd of locals who came by while we were eating and dropped them in a Little Rock shopping mall, they would have blended right in with torn jeans and T-shirts, and not just the younger ones. But

the clothes were only a bit of the social change we noticed. Virtually, every customer held an American cellphone and seemed glued to it just like their American counterparts. The television featured American fare, as American music blared background music. The food was still Greek, but it was served American style with just about the same serving items most American fast food restaurants have.

Vertis and I sat there talking about how American culture had clearly dominated the social world, and in Greece, whatever in American is hot fashion-wise or leading the music charts dominates the tastes of most Greeks, but it's not just Greece. Every European and Western Asian country in the world embraces American culture. America is so dominating that it has become an American social imprint on the rest of western culture, and it is rapidly encompassing all of the world. Of course, the root of the influence is the American internet, which now penetrates every country in the world. Our lifestyles are being copied worldwide. The world is rapidly becoming Americanized, and that's not bad. While we Americans are exporting a lifestyle on social media our values are coming along, and democracy is part of the mix. It certainly isn't a surprise that the Chinese in Hong Kong, who are protesting, are calling for freedom as they wave American flags.

It's obvious our country is having a tremendous worldwide influence on the social life of the average person. But it seems to me, it is impossible for that influence to be regulated to just social. American internet, cellphones, movies and our lifestyle are penetrating every corner of the world, and it's not just commercial. The democratic values of United States are also having a global influence that goes far beyond just social, and with all our wrinkles, our social and democratic values make the world a better place in which to live.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union is directly related to a combination of social and democratic values, which had their origin in America. Those values, in contrast with the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe dictatorships, created a move toward democracy. As the world becomes more and more dependent upon the United States for commercial and intellectual items, the safer we become, and the less conflict we will have in the world.

The United States is riding on a wave of a social revolution around the world, and those social values are ingrained in our democracy. Torn jeans, Facebook and rap music is changing the world for the better. Isn't it a hoot that freedom is riding on a wave of torn jeans and cellphones?