Exploring Anti-Americanism
POSTED BY: Khyron
UPDATED: Monday, April 30, 2007 03:01
VIEWED: 18266
PAGE 8 of 23
Quote:
Originally posted by fredgiblet: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.
Actually, they did pretty well in World War I, initially. They checked the German advance (actually backed them up a bit, too), and beat them in the "race to the sea" thus preventing an end-run around French positions. Of course, then the Germans dug trenches, to which the French and British responded by digging their own trenches. From that point in, everyone lost the war.
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Quote:
Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
You have absolutely no separation of Church and State. Most of your country is up in arms (literally!) at the very thought.
Odd, since it's written into the consitution. I'd be interested to hear what led you to this conclusion, other than the carricature of the U.S. you get from your news sources. Right, because we must all be theocratic lunatics. That's about as accurate (and nearly as offensive) as saying all Brits have bad teeth.
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Quote:
Originally posted by fredgiblet:
...the majority of the people who have these undesirable traits are the conservatives, the conservatives who believe that the U.S. can do no wrong, who believe that the Bible should be the law of the land, who believe that the rest of the world should bow before our greatness and bend to our whims.
Ah, the legacy of the two-party system. This is why we get nothing done in these discussions.
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Quote:The fact that we spend more $$ on the military than the rest of the world combined and have over 800 military installations around the world means nothing "by itself"? How can those fact possibly be meaningless? They're so consequential that I can't imagine a context that would make them disapear, especially from being considered by the rest of the world. Imagine you're a nation, ANY nation, and you have an American military installation or two in your borders. How would that enter your thought process? Or put it another way, imagine that we have several Chinese, Japanese, or Russian military installations within our borders. Under what circumstances would you consider that "meaningless"? It's that kind of thinking that prolly drives ppl nutters.
SignyM quotes factoids, which have no meaning in and of themselves, but are meant to lead one to believe that the US is all about military takeovers.... We spend a lot of money on high-tech weaponry to reduce our own casualties and reduce civilian casualties when we're fighting people who don't care about, and in recent cases actively cause, civilian casualties.
Then, in context...
I just saw an interesting movie, called Trinity and Beyond which describes in detail our pursuit of unassailable atomic superiority, and the 330+ tests we conducted - often using soldiers (and sometimes civilians) - to achieve it. The point is not that we tested more weapons or tested them under egregious circumstances, but that it is documented that we were looking for absolute supremacy. And don't forget that so far, we are the only nation to have used WMD on a civilian population, not once but twice.
Quote:We really had no interest whatsoever in the Banana Republics (hence the totally meaningless name
manipulation of the world economy...
), the Panama Canal, the price of oil, the stability of the dollar, or saving various nations from "communism" Quote:I didn't say we HAVE control, but even now we have veto power through our membership in the Security Council. We may not be able to make the UN do what we want, but we can prevent them from doing what we don't want.
and our complete control of the UN
---------------------------------
Always look upstream.
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As an "American" living in Canada, which someone here referred to as being similar in culture (and they would be right, but don't mention that to any Canadians...they don't like that 
)I've found myself in some heated conversations. Usually because some, and I can say this, stupid American did something stupid (in example, one conversation was over a gated community asking for one person to remove their Christmas wreath, that was in the shape of a peace sign, because they thought it was anti-war and, so, disrespectful to the troops) In my friends eyes, the Canadians eyes, it was an "American" thing. I had to remind him that gated communities happen here too, in Canada, and that with over 300 million people living in the States and 30 million living in Canada you're just bound to have more stupid 'People' scenarios happening in the States. It's just the odds are in that favor. Just after that conversation a man in Vancouver had to take down his Santa, while living in a gated community, because he'd placed a crown of thorns on it's head.
And, also, like someone said here. America's a huge country, separated by water and another country (The Pacific Ocean between Hawaii & Canada between Alaska) And, to be honest, it still hasn't formed into a cohesive whole yet. Gay marriage is legal here, but not there. One school in the south had their very first non-segregated prom the other day. There's many of these issues and they differ wildly, dependent on where you are. So different parts of America are at odds with each other, let alone the rest of the world. A person from New York is, most likely, going to be a different person than one from Okefenokee, Georgia. (But, there, I'm making a generalization. Cultured and open minded people live everywhere, there's just more of them in certain areas)
I was sitting in a rec room at a hostel in Ireland when the first bombs started falling on Iraq, a few years ago, and people, from all over the world were sitting with me. And not one of them made the generalizations to hate me, or, as they say, hate on me, because I was American. They understood that I didn't make policy for my country. And they also understood how divided my nation was. That America was, and still is, at a crossroads.
I'm hoping, with the new election coming up, we make the right choices. Because that seems to be where the major faults lie. Our foreign policy. And, to be honest, I'm not sure how we can fix that. You vote one person out, but the next one seems to play the same game. Though, and not to make this political, I don't remember Clinton inspiring such animosity, over seas, that Bush seems to garner.
Anyway, long rant, I'm sorry, but I've been a lurker here, posted a few things, a long time ago, but this issue just bugs me. As soon as the world sees we're all just people, and by all, I mean the world over, subject to the happenings of our governments, things might get better.
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Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
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.
If we could get ourselves out from under the domination of the two-party system, it'd go a long way. Heck fire, it's as much as been said in this thread that the only bad Americans are the conservative Republicans. That kind of divisive thinking is what lets the politicians (who are all of them crooks) stay in power, in spite of the fact that they don't really have our best interest in mind. Somewhat akin to the British empire's "divide and rule" strategy.
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The only nation to use an atomic weapon yes, the only nation to use a WMD no. By our current definition the British, French and Germans did in WW1, and Iraq did more recently.
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Causal,
Some people call that type of person FredG was talking about Bush's 'base'. It's not like they don't exist. If anything, they have elements even crazier than that. So, yes, there is a part of politics that does resemble what FredG was describing, and yes, they are ultra-conservative, AND - they even vote republican ! Imagine.
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Quote:
Originally posted by fredgiblet:
[B...the majority of the people who have these undesirable traits are the conservatives, the conservatives who believe that the U.S. can do no wrong, who believe that the Bible should be the law of the land, who believe that the rest of the world should bow before our greatness and bend to our whims.
Incidentally, I'm mostly socially conservative, and i don't believe any of the above. I think you're painting with too broad a brush. The same sort of carricature of social liberals could be offered and it would be no more realistic.
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