Exploring Anti-Americanism
POSTED BY: Khyron
UPDATED: Monday, April 30, 2007 03:01
VIEWED: 18266
PAGE 7 of 23
Quote:
Originally posted by oldenglanddry:
I'm not sure if I would say that is is sad but it is certainly true that most of America still does'nt realise just how much their nation is vilified by people in supposedly "friendly" countries all over the world.
I live in a relitively small seaside-town on the east coast of England that happens to have a large foriegn -language school in it and almost all of the students that i host in my home from all over the world declare a dislike and even hatred of the USA. Most of them see you as war-mongering arogants who are out to bleed the world white.
So, how are you going to prove them wrong?
For myself, I only have to read some of the threads on this board to cause me to heave a sigh of resignation at your country's innevitable future.
I was going to respond to this earlier, but someone rudely expected me to actually work for my paycheck.
Now, I am not the "average American" I have spent as many years in Europe and other countries as I have in the US. I have lived and or traveled extensively (and by that I mean staying in a place a minimum of a month) in Ethiopia, Panama, Greece, Italy, England, Turkey, France, Germany, Spain, Holland and Canada. I have always been met with friendliness everywere I have gone. In my experience there was no wholesale hating of all things American or America. In most cases the America bashing I found was from the media. For instance the media in the UK seems to be preoccupied with bashing America to the point that after 7 years of living there it started to sound like a school yard bully picking on the kid he is most jealous of.
America is not perfect, but then neither is any other country.
I personally stay away from anywhere American tourists go, because there are a few of the Jerry Springer army that somehow get overseas - but then I tend to stay away from German tourist too.
Point is, the UK has just as many Jerry Springer batallions as the US.
As for the students at the "large foriegn -language school" ask those students how many of them would like to EMIGRATE to America. I venture to say quite a few.
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Forgive me if I missed anything, pressed for time and had to skim this thread.
I think a large part of it is that the rest of the world KNOWS we are capable of better, and therefore holds us to that standard.
And becomes annoyed as hell when we don't bother to hold ourselves to it.
Just a thought.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Except I'm an actual and whole Irish person born, raised and currently living in Ireland who hates potatoes. And who is also a non-fighting hippie unless she is really pressed. And doesn't drink very much either. Sorry Chris!
The Irish are also known to be consumate liars.
Like the Americans are known to be ugly and hateful?
Okay, with nothing but love for the posters here and a huge amount of generalisation and in no particular order, here are some of the issues I have with the US as a whole:
You consider yourselves to be more important than the rest of the world. You don't even realise that you do, but you do. If it's in the best interests of America, then it's in the best interests of the world in general. You just don't seem to grasp that different cultures and countries work in different ways.
With this attitude you have, for decades, interfered in the affairs of other nations, often with disastrous consequences, because you wanted to make things "safer" for the
You consider yourselves to be the champion of democracy and the leader of the "free world". In reality you actively support monarchies and dictatorships when it's in your interest to do so, label any American citizen who criticises your government as "unpatriotic" and demand that they "leave the country if they hate it so much." You'll champion free speech to support bigots and racists, but ruthlessly silence anyone who tries to honestly evaluate your country's laws, foreign policies and general attitude. To the point that your media weakens and waters down any criticism to the point of non-existence. Why do you fear criticising your leaders so much? Our politicians get roasted almost weekly and we've managed not to erupt into civil war and/or general chaos. Lately anyway.
I also think it's pretty crappy that anyone who doesn't agree with the Iraq war has to make a song and dance about supporting the troops. Disagreeing with a war is NOT a personal attack on the men and women who dedicate themselves to protecting your country.
Invading Iraq had nothing to do with protecting your country. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. You've wasted thousands of lives and won't admit you made a terrible mistake.
You assume that anyone who disagrees with you, argues with your policies or suggests that *gasp* your approach may not be correct hates America, hates freedom and is a coward. The whole anti-France thing made me sick to my stomach - and once again proved that your ideas on democracy are the weirdest I've ever come across. You're fighting for democracy and freedom but vilify a country that genuinely believes you're making a mistake and exercises it's democratic right to vote against you???
I also despise the fact that you've labelled the French as cowards. Why? Because they were invaded by the Nazi's in World War II? Do you know what the French people went through back then? The sacrifices those in the French resistance made? The horrors they faced on a daily basis?
Nothing seems to be important unless it happens in your country, or effects your country in some way. You think that the world changed when 9/11 happened. It didn't. It just landed on your doorstep. And I can appreciate how it's a horrific tragedy for your people and how you will never forget the events of that day, but it is nowhere near the biggest tragedy the world has ever faced. More than 2,000 people died that day. More than 500,000 people died in Rwanda in 1994. A *lot* more than 2,000 are dying right now in Darfur.
Your military is huge, aggressive as hell, everywhere it shouldn't be and nowhere it should be.
You have absolutely no separation of Church and State. Most of your country is up in arms (literally!) at the very thought. You froth at the mouth at ideas like secular government, free health care and social welfare and conveniently forget that many progressive, democratic countr
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Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
"I do like the conceit that you display in thinking you can describe all the 300 million people ..." As do you, and the author of the piece:
about the French (In their heart of hearts, many French people still believe that to be true.); about everyone not American (A pattern of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion); about intellectuals, specifically of the French persuasion (The kind of anti-Americanism fostered by French intellectuals down the centuries revolves around intense dislike of what America is - not what it does.) and even about the US (The US represents, I suppose, a set of ideas about human conduct which makes approval or disapproval of its behaviour much more important to Americans).
Not to get all overly philosophical on you, but it seems like the trouble is that one can't accurately talk about a large group of people without some amount of generalizing. The danger to that, of course, is that there will obviously always be people who don't fit the generalization. But if one doesn't engage in some degree of generalization, how can one ever talk about a large group?? It's a quandary.
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
Quote:
(Everything DTH posted)
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I think a large part of it is that the rest of the world KNOWS we are capable of better, and therefore holds us to that standard.
And becomes annoyed as hell when we don't bother to hold ourselves to it.
Just a thought.
I know that's one of the main reasons why I don't like America. The first, of course, is Americans (flag-waving, song-singing, "I love my damn country" Americans, not the people who were born and/or live here).
---
"If I were a Nazi, someone would defend my constitutional right to hate Jews. If I were a Klansman, someone would defend my rights to hate blacks. It's a funny place, this world. Hate has rights. Love has none." - Jeff, Murphy's Boy
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Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Okay, with nothing but love for the posters here and a huge amount of generalisation and in no particular order, here are some of the issues I have with the US as a whole:
You consider yourselves to be more important than the rest of the world. You don't even realise that you do, but you do. If it's in the best interests of America, then it's in the best interests of the world in general. You just don't seem to grasp that different cultures and countries work in different ways.
No disagreement here, I see this all the time but I think the problem is much more pronounced on the conservative side of the spectrum.
Quote:
With this attitude you have, for decades, interfered in the affairs of other nations, often with disastrous consequences, because you wanted to make things "safer" for theyou"The Free World."
Which is retarded, we didn't learn from Vietnam, we didn't learn from Somalia, we need to just let the rest of the world work out their own damn problems.
Quote:
You consider yourselves to be the champion of democracy and the leader of the "free world". In reality you actively support monarchies and...snipped because I don't want my post to be too long...to erupt into civil war and/or general chaos. Lately anyway.
This is one of the dumbest things IMO in modern U.S. society, the entire basis of democracy is to question our leaders and hold them accountable yet when one of them screws up as badly as Bush has been doing there is still a chorus of "If you don't like the president then you are un-American".
Quote:
I also think it's pretty crappy that anyone who doesn't agree with the Iraq war has to make a song and dance about supporting the troops. Disagreeing with a war is NOT a personal attack on the men and women who dedicate themselves to protecting your country.
Well we had a big problem in Vietnam with this, people treated the troops (many of whom were conscripted) very poorly because they didn't like the war. It was a shameful thing to do and no one wants to be connected with that again.
Quote:
Invading Iraq had nothing to do with protecting your country. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. You've wasted thousands of lives and won't admit you made a terrible mistake.
About half of us will.
Quote:
The whole anti-France thing made me sick to my stomach - and once again proved that your ideas on democracy are the weirdest I've ever come across. You're fighting for democracy and freedom but vilify a country that genuinely believes you're making a mistake and exercises it's democratic right to vote against you???
I think it's OK to be a little pissed about that but we took it way too far ("freedom fries", give me a break).
Quote:
I also despise the fact that you've labelled the French as cowards. Why? Because they were invaded by the Nazi's in World War II? Do you know what the French people went through back then? The sacrifices those in the French resistance made? The horrors they faced on a daily basis?
Because they have lost every war since Napoleon, it is insensitive and really pointless but it is true that they have done horribly in protecting their country for a very long time.
Quote:
Nothing seems to be important unless it happens in your country, or effects your country in some way. You think that the world changed when 9/11 happened. It didn't. It just landed on your doorstep.
Right
Quote:
And I can appreciate how it's a horrific tragedy for your people and how you will never forget the events of that day, but it is nowhere near the biggest tragedy the world has ever faced.
It was the biggest terror attack ever.
Quote:
More than 2,000 people died that day. More than 500,000 people died in Rwanda in 1994. A *lot* more than 2,000 are dying right now in Darfur.
Right but those are spread out over months and huge geographical areas, I'm not trying to say that they aren't important just that the impact is lessened wh
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Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
You think "liberal" is an insult. I will *never* understand that.
I think I'm going to have to disagree on this point. As far as I can tell, the country's pretty evenly split along liberal/conservative lines, so there are one hell of a lot of Americans who think "liberal" is a very good thing indeed.
And wrt the rant, I hope you don't think that's the case for every American. Because I could just as easily rant about the attitudes of Europeans and no doubt offend you gravely.
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Quote:
Originally posted by yinyang:
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
Ah, self-reference. The bane of first-year philosophy students.
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The most radical anti-American is George W Bush, who signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America contract, to overthrow USA by merger with Mexico and Canada, a member of the 53-nation British Commonwealth owned by the Queen of the British Empire (Bush's 19th cousin).
www.spp.gov
Bush has already murdered over 30,000 US citizens since 9/11/2001, by allowing 40-million illegal aliens to run amok in USA, including the V Tech school shooter, who probably would never get a visa under the former rules, before wide-open borders and unlimited immigration.
www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53103
Plus Bush perped the 9/11 Massacres and Iraq War #3, that murdered 100,000 US troops and bankrupted USA. ARREST THE BUSH GANG NOW!
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Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
The whole anti-France thing made me sick to my stomach...
But the whole anti-American thing is just fine.
Wait, what's that? Oh, yeah, I think that was Webb's point. Interesting how that topic got lost about ten posts in...
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On a related topic: I find it very interesting--and correct me if I'm wrong, far-flung foreign browncoats--that Americans are the only folks on earth calling other American's un-American. Nobody's getting on British tv and calling other englishmen "un-British." No frenchman would dream of calling another frenchman un-French. In other countries, as I understand it, there's a basic sense of solidarity. But we American's accuse our fellow Americans of hating America at the drop of a hat. What is it in our national character that makes us so willing to divide our nation into "real" and "false" Americans? Perhaps if we can deal with so-called anti-Americanism at home, the perspective of the rest of the world would become clear.
HKCavalier
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