Image, Sweden
There's modesty everywhere in Sweden -- Stockholm has hardly a skyscraper, people drive sensible Volvos and Saabs, bigwig lawyers race around the streets on 40s-era military bicycles, and the jaw-dropping beauty of the women is characterized by their stylish clothing -- plaid scarves, tarry-cloth coats, well-tailored trousers and funky spectacles -- rather than overexposed cleavage and undercovered derrieres.
And yet, politically and culturally, there seems to be a bit of haughtiness in the Swedish people. This assertion comes from their vote, this past Sunday, to reject the European common currency, or "euro," and instead stick with the Swedish currency, or kronor. Many news stories about the vote have cited Swedes' general fear that a move to the euro means a cultural and political move closer -- too close for comfort, apparently -- to the other European countries, and a move away from cherised Swedish independence.
Swedes -- and I -- believe that their distinctive approach to government -- tax the bejesus out of income, goods and services, put the resulting treasure into schools and hospitals and roads and social causes, and don't raise so much as a bayonet in battle -- makes theirs' a distinctively successful, prosperous, harmonious society.
Evidence of this superiority is everywhere, for all to see. Streets and the sea are remarkably clean. Everyone is well-fed. There's hardly a hint of poverty. Trains run on time. Women and children are treated as equals and, shazaam, so are immigrants and minorities! More than any place I've ever been, this is a color-blind and gender-blind society. Swedes' backs deserve a pat.
And, yet, is it only the Swedes themselves who are doing the patting, and is it deserved? According to my friend Dan, a lawyer in one of Stockholm's Big Three firms, Swedes pat themselves on their backsides all too much, without justification for it. They celebrate their mythic state; the reality, according to Dan, doesn't measure up.
"The Social Democratic state is rotten through and through," Dan said. Whazzhemean? The Social Democrats, unquestioned leaders for 70 years, are shamelessly corrupt. Its officers live dazzling lives, fed lavishly by figurehead positions on phony boards. Relatives and friends of the powerful have backstage passes to government favors. A Soviet-style black market in goods and services thrives, inspired by people's dread of paying exorbitant taxes. Red tape a mile thick and bureaucracy a mile wide must be negotiated for even the smallest request. And women's rights? A farce, at least when it comes to the private sector, according to Dan. The only place where women have opportunities equal to men, he says, is in government. That way, he explains, the government looks pro-women's rights. But women's access to other sectors -- business, finance, law, medicine -- is equally unequal here as anywhere else.
So, back to the euro. It seems that Swedes voted it down because they feared it would mean an end or at least a compromise to their free-thinking, clean-living ways. What would set them apart, anymore, from everyone else? But, another question, from a cynic: are they truly set so far apart, and will their image of themselves as an enlightened, egalitarian society crumble around a rotten core? I freakin hope not.
