Is it just Americans

[Saucemaster]

Originally Posted by Get Smart

ouch! dems fighting words

aint go no CHINESE in me at all beeyotch

revealing my innate hypocrisy and bullshit, altho *I* lump everyone into one group, *I* hate it when I am lumped into a similar group that involves me sharing space with other inferior asians, of which there are many.

Exactly.

 

[redcaimen]

Originally Posted by eg1

Oh dear, where to start? This is not an issue of geography, culture, or race, but one of ignorance. Certainly the USA has no monopoly on that.

The USA is a great country. Great does not mean good. It means wealthy and powerful. This makes it a large and handy target for less wealthy and powerful groups to snipe at, a very old and universal human psychological ploy by which the weak distance themselves from their own weakness. Frankly, it is probably healthy up to a point, after which it simply descends into pathology. For instance, right here at home, lazy Canadian psuedo-intellectuals use it as shorthand for "I don't fall for the FoxNews fair-and-balanced line".The USA is not the first empire, military, economic (viz WalMart), or otherwise to face this sort of thing, nor do I expect it to be the last.

My experience of Americans has been very positive. I find them generally to be well-meaning, decent, hard-working and generous people. As a traveller in the USA itself, however, I have encountered some jarring circumstances which do not square with my provincial upbringing, particularly with respect to race relations and wealth disparity. I will not pretend that I was not disturbed, but I am also not naive enough to believe that these particular problems are uniquely American.

Any group needs outsiders in order for there to be insiders. We are essentially pack animals, and it's at the boundaries where things can get ugly

+1

 

[fatty]

despite knowing lots of normal and intellegent American people, this is the impression I get of americans from culture and the news: CNNNN vid

Sad but true.

 

[muelleran]

Originally Posted by *****

despite knowing lots of normal and intellegent American people, this is the impression I get of americans from culture and the news: CNNNN vid

Sad but true.

Q: Which countries are in the "Axis of Evil"?
A: I know Germany is one of 'em.

Since I went to university in the US I always end up defending the American educational system, but I don't need to do it here.

Americans are great people, but there is so much propaganda in the American media, I think someone has taken them for a ride.

Here is a story: A fellow graduate student of mine, Yale Graduate and Harvard grad student, who came to Switzerland when our advisor took a position here, asked me questions like:
How many times does the Mediterranean Sea fit into the great lakes?
If Missoury switched to a war economy, could it defeat Italy?

 

[LabelKing]

American textbooks are full of propaganda. It's especially obvious in the elementary school and high school texts designed to engineer a sort of blind patriotism which seems to be working judging by those questions.

Of course, this may be true in other nations, but I don't really know for sure.

 

[muelleran]

Also it's the omnipotence of the American military that is so often portrayed, as well as the notion that American law holds everywhere.
The same graduate student believed that you get arrestet in Switzerland if you send offensive emails to the White House.

A while ago there was a movie on TV (Delta Force (number something)), where a group of special forces went to some country to seize the local president. When they caught him they yelled: "You are under arrest".

 

[Bandwagonesque]

Originally Posted by *****

despite knowing lots of normal and intellegent American people, this is the impression I get of americans from culture and the news: CNNNN vid

Sad but true.

Ahahahaha... I like this one: Firth in the USA visits the Westboro Baptist Church, hits on Freddy Phelps Jr.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by vanity

That's an awesome song. And video to boot.

Here -->

I always loved that video, partly cause Trent Reznor's in it and I'm a huge NiN fan. NiN is pretty much the only thing I still listen to from highschool.

True story: My father used to manage a band in England that David Bowie played sax for briefly. He drove him home in his mini a couple times. He probably picked the worst time possible to travel to India for a year because when he came back Bowie was famous.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by LabelKing

American textbooks are full of propaganda. It's especially obvious in the elementary school and high school texts designed to engineer a sort of blind patriotism which seems to be working judging by those questions.

Of course, this may be true in other nations, but I don't really know for sure.

The Europeans all have their own nationalist histories. In fact, one of the great challenges of a historian is trying to reconcile them all. Norman Davies does a good job in his history of Europe. It's not exactly light reading, and it can be a bit dry, but it's very comprehensive and the author does a lot right. That means he gives the influence of religion a very thorough treatment, which some histories gloss-over as they focus on the individual the conflicts and not the underlying motivations and root causes.

As soon as I finish Gibbons' it's my intention to read separate histories of all the major European nations to see how they differ. My father has an eight volume set on the history of england, but I may go with something a little shorter. ;p

And this should be of no surprise, but i had an english teacher that had a set of encyclopedias that pre-dated Stalinization. Of course, they differed considerably from those that were published after the Stalin legend was created.

 

[Joffrey]

Originally Posted by RJman

Sounds like he made it to Nigeria. Did Mrs. Eko transfer you her late husband's money yet, Jodum?


Not yet. I just sent her $500 she needed to take care of the wire transfer. She said I should be getting it within a few weeks.

 

[globetrotter]

Originally Posted by Bandwagonesque

I'm not sure if Sikhs are allowed to consume alcohol, .

occording to scripture, no. I've never met a sikh who didn't drink.

 

[Alter]

Originally Posted by Jodum5

Not yet. I just sent her $500 she needed to take care of the wire transfer. She said I should be getting it within a few weeks.

May as well start maxing out your credit cards now.

 

[DeSica]

Originally Posted by eg1

Oh dear, where to start? This is not an issue of geography, culture, or race, but one of ignorance. Certainly the USA has no monopoly on that. The USA is a great country. Great does not mean good. It means wealthy and powerful. This makes it a large and handy target for less wealthy and powerful groups to snipe at, a very old and universal human psychological ploy by which the weak distance themselves from their own weakness.
No, the US doesn't have a monopoly on ignorance...or rudeness, which is basically what Vanity was asking. I don't think the OP meant Americans were ignorant per se, but rather self-centred and somewhat aggressive(almost as if might makes right, with a certain lack of empathy, making them come off as ill manered. Stupid is a whole oher thing. He was noticing a trend, and wondered if it was cultural. As for how you define "great," fine, you get to define it. So you're saying that America is not good, but rather wealthy and powerful, (never mind the national debt and half a trillion dollar defecit), and that other countries are jealous, because they are not as wealthy and powerful. So when someone in a country with a higher HDI ranking (like Norway, Japan, Sweden, Canada, Australia, according to the UN) criticizes something about America, even when they have good things to say in general, they are doing so because they are poor and jealous? And what is your explanation of why an American might criticize another country? Is that that the benign and all knowing shedding light on the great unwashed? Were you one of the people trying to lynch the Dixie Chicks for having their own opinions? Dude, if you're going to be pretentious and condescending, at least make some sense.

 

[vanity]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

I always loved that video, partly cause Trent Reznor's in it and I'm a huge NiN fan. NiN is pretty much the only thing I still listen to from highschool.

NIN is releasing a new album in April and should tour for it this summer. I am also a huge NIN fan.

 

[eg1]

Dude, if you're going to be pretentious and condescending, at least make some sense.

DeSica, it was not my intention to be either pretentious nor condescending. I realize that electronic communication is not ideal for nuanced and/or complex topics, so I will make a better effort to be clear.

I was thinking more of Americans as individual people rather than in terms of their foreign policy. I do have grave concerns about certain aspects of the latter, which is why I tried to make a distinction between "good" and "great". I think any deeply considered and/or thoughtful criticisms are normal and healthy -- it is the reflexive stuff that strikes me as unfair and leads me to question the source. Of course that leads to the question of how to distinguish between the two, and I have no handy answer for that other than to suggest that dialogues are preferable to monologues.

Were you one of the people trying to lynch the Dixie Chicks for having their own opinions?

No, though you must understand that my age makes this particular pop reference a little awkward -- I knew very little about them until the controversy was in full swing. I was swimming very much against the tide of my friends (mostly Toronto bankers and engineers) in my opposition to the Iraq war in late '02 early '03. But then, as the token "artsie", that is a not uncommon occurrence.