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Born in the USA

  
  

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Benny the Ball
07:59 / 15.02.07
Listening to radio 4 yesterday, somebody mentioned that anti-american sentiments seem to come across as accepted racism, an irony as most American's are x genration immigrants fleeing persicution of some kind.

There are moments when ye olde world mocks the notion of racism and puts it down to friendly banter (english vs scottish being a very good example) but the anti-american sentiment doesn't seem to stem from this?

Do people confuse disagreement with a ruling party's policy with disliking a nation, or is there a sense that people find it easier to tut and say 'those american's are so....(enter insult)'? For example, I don't agree with President Mugabe, but would never think of calling Zimbabweans evil, saying that Zimbabwea is a terrible country or 'those zimbabweans are so....'

Is there a double standard involved?
 
 
Quantum
08:33 / 15.02.07
I think it might not be racism, because Americans aren't a race, and I think it might be tolerated because the U.S.A. is the most powerful country in the world, occupying the place in global politics that rich white old men occupy in western society i.e. priveleged at the expense of the marginalised, and I think the cause of foreign countries feeling bitter about them is because of their disastrous world wrecking foreign policy.

The killer point for me is that all the americans I know (all of whom I like I hasten to add) are appalled by their own government and readily admit it's fucked beyond recognition and leading toward armageddon (see I'msorry.com) and often remark that the majority of the country seem to be fundamentalist jingoists who can't point to a map. Backed up by statistics like the literacy rate, literal belief in the book of revelation and attitude toward the rest of the world it makes it very difficult not to have a slightly hostile attitude toward the nation as a whole. See Guantanamo bay, WMDs, Afghanistan, Florida, New Orleans, slashing welfare to fund war etc.
If a particular group of people were doing what the USA is doing, I'd be prejudiced against them too. Luckily, because the country is so ginormously huge, there are millions and millions of really nice americans, which is the reason I restrict my anti-US jokes to Bush&chums. How do you stop GWB drowning? Take your foot off his head.
 
 
werwolf
09:23 / 15.02.07
add to that the way popular american media characterizes the 'american' - starting from hollywood macho-bs action productions down to things like mtv's 'date my mom' (i can't think of anything quite as perverted and symbolical of the way american culture is being perceived).

of all the americans i know, sadly most of them fit the general prejudice of the uneducated, machoist, heedless and careless loudmouth with severe ego issues. of course there are also many that are very pleasant human beings and i really don't want to say that the majority of americans do actually fit the description above. as a matter of fact i am pretty sure that this is not the case.
but the things i see and hear about the u.s.a. and the persons i meet from there make it really hard for me to remember that.
 
 
Quantum
09:37 / 15.02.07
the persons i meet from there make it really hard for me to remember that.

IIRC, only one in six americans owns a passport, so the ones you meet outside the states are hardly a representative sample. I'd say most of the americans I've met have been great TBH, except for some stereotypical tourists and some dudes who threatened to beat me up for criticising a crazy street preacher.

Anecdote- two friends of mine moved to California recently, but moved back after about a year. One reason was the people, they said, and the example they gave was people asking where they were from. They got sick of saying 'England' and people asking them 'Is that in London?'
I kid you not.
 
 
Tsuga
10:12 / 15.02.07
Quantum:all the americans I know...remark that the majority of the country seem to be fundamentalist jingoists who can't point to a map.
werewolf:most of them fit the general prejudice of the uneducated, machoist, heedless and careless loudmouth with severe ego issues
While I understand the justified frustration with many Americans and some negative commonalities shared by of many of them(let alone nightmarish foreign policy of the government), generalized prejudice against any group is still prejudice. It's much like the shit you hear within the country of people in the north talking about people in the south, or vice-versa. This sort of thing happens everywhere I've ever been, I'm sure it happens where you live. I think the only fair thing is to have negative views against all humans in general or specific individuals only.
 
 
Dutch
12:47 / 15.02.07
America bashing seems very fervent these days. In some ways, it borders on the language used by racists. By that I mean it is very common to hear people saying: "those americans are so: [insert slur]" Here in the netherlands I've come across many people who speak about the U.S. in very general and negative terms, often failing to distinguish between the people of the united states and their government. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is the image presented in the dutch media, of the U.S. being a country in which the people as a whole are so patriotic, that they have themselves become identifiable with the (actions of) their government.

Mostly, I feel people react to what they perceive to be the "bullying" or "imperialistic" aspects of American foreign policy. Also, because ther U.S. represents the leading global power nowadays, they catch the blame for many of today's global trends: globalization/americanization, rampant (unethical) capitalism, worldwide pollution, war, and polarisation.

That having been said, I think the actions of the U.S. government are deserving of (informed) criticism. Yet I feel it is dangerous and unhealthy to continually foster uneducated anti-american sentiment in this day and age, the same way it is unhealthy and dangerous to foster such sentiments towards the muslim community as a whole.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:28 / 15.02.07
Well, the use of the term "racism" is interesting here - if America is indeed made up largely of immigrants (although in a sense you could say the same of any country - of more recent immigrants, let's say) from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds, then a critique that encapsulates them all is unlikely to be technically racist. So, the question becomes what is meant by "racist" here, and what the intention is of using the term.

Also, what is meant by "American"? Perhaps my favourite usage of the term is a quote from Anthony Stuart Head in an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", when his character sarcastically says to himself.

"Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead. Americans."

In fact, he is talking about one specific American, and more broadly about a white American middle class that expects the world outside America to act according to their expectations - in this case, for ethnic souvenirs not to raise the dead. This sort of standing-for, I think is in evidence of a lot off the crtiticism aimed at "America". However, it is not complete - when criticising America, people are not only criticising the leadership, but also the people of America, often for letting the leadership pull things which have massive implications for other nations.

For example, in 1982 the United States, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, refused to sign a UN charter on the grounds that it did not believe that people, in general, had a right to food. The US also refused to accept the judgement of the world court over its behaviour towards Nicaragua, while insisting on the right to define what constitutes terrorism not only for itself but for the global community.

So, there's a strange double bind. The American people are trapped in this careering jalopy win one sense, and in another they are seen as willing companions on the journey. Neither, it seems is particularly accurate. However, while reason would seek to split things out into issues, segments, reactions to specifics, the sheer weight and power of the US tends to nudge people into unwise generalisations, which are often unhelpful because of their imprecision and the possibilities they open up to divert from the criticism by calling out alleged racism against Americans.

"Why Do People Hate America?" by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies is an interesting read on this, although it is rather of the charabanc school.
 
 
Quantum
13:34 / 15.02.07
it is dangerous and unhealthy to continually foster uneducated anti-american sentiment

I absolutely agree, informed and erudite educated criticism of the govt. policies and the groups perpetrating the behaviours and policies I find abhorrent is the way forwards. It's not *Americans* that are to blame, it's *some Americans*. The ones like Ibis' cubemate.

On the other hand, there are other areas of unexamined prejudice I'm inclined to tackle first, like racism sexism homophobia classism transphobia disablism ageism and frankly geekism before I leap to the defence of the poor hard done by citizens of the USA. I can't see many americans having their quality of life infringed by the negative feelings of non-americans. You nice yanks on the board, am I unfairly characterising your population? Am I right in thinking most americans don't get much news from the outside world and what they do get is horrifically biased, and even then they don't really care much about it? That's the impression I get from the Switchboard threads I've read, the americans I've talked to and the media I've come across, that they just don't care what the rest of the world thinks.
 
 
Quantum
13:35 / 15.02.07
I thought "Why Do People Hate America?" was mediocre- in a nutshell it said 'Because Americans have to ask that question'.
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
13:44 / 15.02.07
only one in six americans owns a passport, so the ones you meet outside the states are hardly a representative sample.

but i would think they might be a more liberal sample, generally speaking--assuming that the one in six is someone who has the money to travel, and therefore is less likely to be from the bible belt, and also more likely to be educated and have *some* idea of what's going on in the world (although we're mostly pretty crap at that, myself included). Many Irish people have told me that most of the Americans they've met are East Coast Democrats, who get pained looks on their faces at the mention of Bush.

yeeks, Quantum, where in California did your friends live?
 
 
Quantum
13:51 / 15.02.07
they might be a more liberal sample

s'true. Terrifying, innit? I'd agree with your friend most of the visitors are east coasters, in fact New Yorkers and those around there are often considered honorary UK/Europeans by my peer group. Strangely, San Fran and environs are viewed in a similar light. I think big city residents are viewed more sympathetically than bible belters, but obviously it varies wildly.
I don't know exactly where they went in Cal, somewhere with mountains I think (one of them is a snowboard instructor so they may have interacted with the richer end of the demographic).
Here's an interesting contrast- we mostly love Canadians. They're geographically next door, culturally pretty similar, and yet nowhere near as hated. Why is that I wonder?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:14 / 15.02.07
Not a major nuclear power. Not prone to wars on foreign soil. Heavy contributors to UN peacekeeping forces. And nobody really cares about what Canada thinks, most of the time.

Am I right in thinking most americans don't get much news from the outside world and what they do get is horrifically biased, and even then they don't really care much about it?

Way-ull. Next question would be whether the American people are the aggressors or the victims, there. One might think about people who vote BNP in the UK, say, or who don't mind the curtailing of their liberties in the name of the War on Terror. In many cases, the BNP campaign in areas where other candidates either fear to tread or are just not that bothered about. So, yes, people are lied to, but if the other voices fail to get their own voices heard, how much of the blame is that of the person at the bottom of the chain and how much is the responsibility of the people who are failing to put their own side of the story?
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
16:23 / 15.02.07
depends. if you grew up with parents who take FOX news as the Word and never knew anything else, and in addition to that were never encouraged to expose yourself to anything else, and in addition to that were brought up to believe that anything else was Evil Satanic Leftist Lies, I'd say you're unlucky but that's not really your fault.

If, on the other hand, you were born in San Francisco to socialist parents and you can see for yourself that the American news is shit, then you could go online and read BBC or Al-Jazeera at your leisure. Lots of us still don't do that. My theory is that this is due to a combined feeling of responsibility and helplessness for the world's ills, that expresses itself as apathy.
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
16:25 / 15.02.07
PS Quantum--do you find the "liberal" sample of Americans you meet to be conservative by your standards?
 
 
symbiosis
16:50 / 15.02.07
We overstayed our welcome. We believed our own hype. We kept the marketing propoganda McDonald's M-16 blitz going for too long. We weren't the new thing anymore. The entire American persona that developed over the last half century is played out. Only the American underground has anything that would pleasantly surprise any self respecting person anymore.

In other words, it isn't just allowed to bash America anymore, it is in style and rightfully so.

In the global high school, Britney Spears' popularity only remains among the most ignorant. The intelligent people with depth, those who really create and enjoy culture have turned counterculture.

I am ashamed to be an American, something I never let my Republican parents forget. This shame is a badge I would have to wear if I were to be taken seriously by serious people anywhere else in the world, and rightfully so.

You can't run around like a jackass for decades and then expect your pr operation to be able to overcome the fallout, as if truth no longer existed. Propoganda has limits, but noooo, the American aristocracy just wouldn't pay attention to history or cultural criticism.

Imagine that. Headline:

'Icarus Ignores Warnings During Risky Flight'

So Americans, get used to expensive imports, high interest rates, and everyone pointing and laughing at your decline. If you can. I don't have any choice, so I'm going to have abortions and ruthlessly mock anyone who voted for Bush for at least a couple more decades.
 
 
HCE
16:51 / 15.02.07
Well, why don't we care? Do we not care because we're all assholes, or is it to some degree that we don't know how to care, and what to care about? There are an overwhelming number of important and compelling things to become informed about, and if you haven't grown up in a culture that organizes that information in a way that enables you to bring an order to it -- an organization that makes information from outside of your own neighborhood intelligible -- it's hard to know where to start. Certainly the feeling of being unhappy with the way things are and not really knowing how to effect change can make you stall out. To point out the obvious, about half of us are women, and the gap between the poor and the rich means that here, too, there are a lot of poor people, even if they're rich relative to people elsewhere. So that's another way to look at -- most Americans are either poor or women or both.

Of course, I'm not saying that this precludes being informed, as obviously this is true elsewhere and not all other countries are like the US -- but I do think it does mean that we're not all conservative tourists, either.
 
 
symbiosis
17:03 / 15.02.07
I like this from Tgua:

I think the only fair thing is to have negative views against all humans in general or specific individuals only.

Yet still, we must be prepared to deal with the real world, despite it's faulty ideologies.

I wonder who will be the next wunderkind state(whoever liberates america after it goes insane and tries to take over the world?), or if we will realize that states are all pretty much shams.

And here Ill mention Derrick Jensen's book Endgame again. There is something the matter with the general consensus concept of what 'Civilization' means. And the U.S. currently leads the charge on this while actively blocking to whatever extent it can, progress.

Progress itself has become Anti-American. I'm glad people are ticked off about this, I've been predicting/expecting it for a while. (but kindof quietly because anti-americanism has been a touchy subject around here...)
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
17:15 / 15.02.07
I am ashamed to be an American, something I never let my Republican parents forget. This shame is a badge I would have to wear if I were to be taken seriously by serious people anywhere else in the world, and rightfully so.

Are you serious? You have to hate your nationality to be "taken seriously?" Wow.

In other words, it isn't just allowed to bash America anymore, it is in style and rightfully so.

Right, because we are TEH EVAL. Got it.
 
 
Quantum
17:32 / 15.02.07
do you find the "liberal" sample of Americans you meet to be conservative by your standards?

Yep. By way of comparison though, in Sweden their right-wing party is in power and their top income tax rate is 60 percent, so I'd be pretty conservative by their standards. In my economics class at school they used America as an example of capitalism, and Britain as an example of a mixed economy (with USSR as the communist example natch) so I've always conflated my dislike of capitalism with the USA. I can't help it.
 
 
Quantum
17:35 / 15.02.07
Symbiosis- could you perhaps avoid the rampant soapboxing and consider your point of view a tad more carefully before ranting in the headshop? ta.

My friend just read the thread summary (why is globalised racism against the USA, or American-bashing, seemingly allowed?) and commented;
You could just as well say the same about North Korea. Fair point, I thought. He's American BTW.
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
17:50 / 15.02.07

erg. much as I feel shame and frustration when I hear Bush's latest statement or see shitty American programs on Irish, saying "I'm ashamed to be American" feels too much like...I don't know, the guy who dons a kente cloth and will only date African women because he is so overcome with white guilt. Ideally, rather than disassociating myself from America, I should be trying to change it from within.

Failing that, at least I can try to be an American who's not an asshole. Then, if people still won't listen to be because I'm American, i'll tell them I'm Canadian. So far though I've never had to do that.

I haven't experienced anti-American attitude as a bad thing. A lot of Americans really honestly have no idea why anyone would be against American policies, and it's good for them to hear those reasons if and when they travel. Sometimes the people talking to me here are more informed about American politics than I am, and I always find such conversations edifying. If I'm embarrassed at my ignorance, hopefully I'll do some research so that next time I'm not embarrassed.

The difference between anti-American racism and anti-North-Korean racism is, a European is likely to meet an American at some point in hir life, and vice versa, and they can talk about why they think x y and z and hopefully learn something. (I've never met anyone so anti-American that ze wouldn't talk to me.) On the other hand, as things are right now you're not that likely to meet a North Korean outside North Korea, so you could hold your prejudices unchallenged indefinitely.
 
 
ibis the being
22:41 / 15.02.07
It's not *Americans* that are to blame, it's *some Americans*. The ones like Ibis' cubemate.

Here's the odd part, that guy said to me (among his other sexist and xenophobic comments) that he doesn't much care about or follow politics, but probably his chief political concern is how hated America is by the rest of the world right now. It's hard for me to reconcile that statement with the rest of his ideas... I'm curious to hear his thoughts about the whys and hows of that but I just couldn't get into it at the time.

I'm uncomfortable with characterizations of Americans, conservative Americans in particular, as ignorant, macho, selfish, apathetic bullies. Not because we/they are not those things, but because it seems to me a sort of lazy characterization that fails to consider why we/they are that way. American-bashing certainly is popular and widely tolerated, and I think the reasons why are somewhat obvious (and in many ways justified)... it might be better to ask why this shouldn't be.

I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that conservative Americans are such because they're 1. unworldly, and 2. frightened.

Americans do accept at face value and regurgitate much of what we're told about how the world works, how the nation works, and how things should be... and a lot of those ideas come just as much or (probably) more from previous generations (parents/grandparents) than from any news media outlet. It's a popular, but I believe false, notion that Joe Q. Public gets his ideas from Fox News and the like... I think JQP is just participating in an unbroken line of family politics.

Conservative family values means, in part, close (and sometimes quite isolated) nuclear families. Right now I live in Nebraska, and here the (nuclear) family is everything... this is suburban life at its most typical, and the world seems almost literally to revolve around these nuclear family units. Within these units there is a set of common knowledge that everyone agrees on... usually - God is your creator, Jesus died for your sins, Dad earns a living, Mom stays home to raise kids, kids listen to their parents, their parents listen to the church & the government, hard work is the path to success, etc etc. When no one breaks away from these units, those ideas are never questioned, never rejected. It's not really about being a conformist drone who gets his ideas from Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly's appeal, I think, is that he publicly validates what people already believe to be true)... it's, often in a deeply personal way, about family tradition and being loyal to the ones you know. I know that probably sounds like pure bullshit to a lot of people, but I think that (despite the influence of pop media) a lot of American suburbs are still throwbacks in this way.

Coastal urban Americans have a different lifestyle in which they tend to leave home earlier and travel further geographically for education/career... they experience a wider crossection of people and places and are less tied to the traditions and values of their particular family units.

Americans generally don't travel much, abroad or even within the US (hell, some people never stray far from the city of their birth). It's not just as issue of having passports or being interested in the world... I think it's that a lot of Americans get 2 weeks vacation at the most and live paycheck to paycheck. Because of that, most Americns haven't seen very much of the world. Most typical conservatives I know... don't personally know any immigrants, any Muslims, any homeless people, any gay people, any women who've had abortions (or so they think, I'm sure), or any of these people about whom they tend to have such fixed opinions.

What they know is what they have... their tight little families in their safe little suburbs. But life in the US is very unstable and uncertain. Massive layoffs have done a lot of psychological damage to Americans. People here depend completely on their employers for their paychecks and all of their healthcare, and yet job security is hard to find. So a lot of Americans are really frightened of losing what they have, their families, their homes, their safe suburbs... and the easiest people to blame are the othered, dehumanized boogeymen with whom they have no real world experience. I think the reason patriotic xenophobia has exploded so much in the last 6-7 years is because of the way Bush & Co have exploited that natural American state of fear & uncertainty so ruthlessly. All you have to tell an American is "[X] is going to take away life as you know it" and you've got their attention. Americans are not hateful and stupid so much as we/they're scared, insecure and desperate... an unstable state that leads to hate and stupidity.
 
 
Benny the Ball
06:43 / 16.02.07
Raising the issue of North Korea, and indeed Iran for that matter - I'm sure the percentage of a) passport holders able to travel b) those getting their news coverage on the outside world from a balanced source (sorry, this is a clumsy statement, I mean following news on events not of their country, but can't think of how to put it - it's arguable that all news is subjective and therefore not from a balanced point of view) is on a par if not a lot lower than the US - and yet I get the feeling that the language of hate towards these debatably dangerous and globally important nations is aimed more at His Glorious Leader and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - it's almost as if there is, in my experience, a kind of pity towards the peoples of these nations, trapped in a world where they have no rights and no voice etc - yet the same could be said of large chunks of the US - yes 6% have passports, but I'd imagine that only 20% of the nation has the money and time to travel to other countries. Large numbers of the populace are unable to vote. Are we more critical of the US because of its constition and notion of freedom? Or because of it's position as a world power? Its influence on other countries? In media, for example, it seems to me that there is no clear deliniation of country and head of state for the US.
 
 
Quantum
10:23 / 16.02.07
a lot of Americans are really frightened

Well yes, but that is a state fostered and encouraged by the powers that be (TODAY YOU ARE TERRIFIED THIS MUCH: ORANGE!! BUY CANNED GOODS!!) and relatively unopposed by the populace. If you've ever read 1984, with the media spin, constant war, terrified population, informing, betrayal, brainwashing and a big face representing the state you might find some parallels in the double-plus good Land of Freedom.
It's one thing to be afraid, it's another to allow your corrupt government to seize control of the country to such an extent that they give all of it's money away to a few rich businessmen, kill loads of poor people and fuck up the rest of the world to boot*. It's not like the facts are hard to find- Fahrenheit 9/11 and An Inconvenient Truth were played in pretty much every movie theatre and are available to rent right now, Americans probably have one of the highest internet access rates in the world, the BBC world service is available to anyone with a radio etc. etc.

There are 240 million people in the states, all under the thrall of a select few who are happily making money off a slow global apocalypse. Who are we going to blame, the evil lying fucks in charge or the people who vote them into power again and again? I know millions of people protested and still do, the Democrats have finally got a toehold and so on but America is controlled by Americans and tens of millions of them firmly believe that their government has their best interests at heart and don't ever question the bizarre and evil shit that is done in their name*.

When people say all Americans are stupid, I say to them "Bill Hicks was American." Now it's like he never lived, his standup show about the old Gulf War is still eerily precise (People say "Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world"...), you can rent or buy it cheap cheap cheap. The only problem is he heavily criticises Americans- "Looks like we got ourselves a reader!"

Was Bill wrong? Was it mean of him to criticise the poor helpless americans? People are bringing shotguns to UFO sightings in Fife, Alabama. I asked a guy, "Why do you bring a gun to a UFO sighting?" Guy said, "Way-ul, we didn' wanna be ab-duc-ted." If I lived in Fife, Alabama, I would be on my hands and knees every night praying for abduction.
Naughty Bill! Leave the poor folk alone you prejudiced hatemonger! Americans are poor hard done by waifs trapped in a system they helped create, oh the terrible irony!
if that's the way you think then fuck you too. You either love all people of all ages or you shut the fuck up.
He has a point there I think.


*these criticisms of course apply to the UK just as much as the US. We also march in our millions in futile gestures that are ignored by the warmongering planetraping fucks in charge and get angry about it.
 
 
Quantum
10:26 / 16.02.07
I'm sure the percentage of a) passport holders able to travel b) those getting their news coverage on the outside world from a balanced source is on a par if not a lot lower than the US

That's great that the states is ever-so-slightly better than the communist dictatorship ruled by an insane midget with one of the worst human rights records of any nation, go you guys!

Did you ever see Team America: World Police?
 
 
COG
12:53 / 16.02.07
The conflation of the population and the leaders of the US seems easy to me as it is a representative democracy and the leaders are chosen by the people (I understand that the choice is very limited). Also, the general population of both political persuasions seems more inclined to get behind those leaders when they are going about their military business. This seems pretty distinct from the situation in N.Korea and many other "evil" countries.

There is a perceived lack of self-awareness, with regard to the purpose of many of the actions, military and otherwise, that the US undertakes. Even after 50 or 100 years there is not much reflection on the ulterior motives of various invasions, bombings and support for unsavoury characters. This, understandably, can be irksome for those on the receiving end of such actions.

The hypocrisy - When you are the biggest power in the world, and you use that power for your own ends to the detriment of millions of others, and this situation has arisen through the successive choices of generations of Americans, and you continue to tell us that you can do no wrong by definition, and we had all better say thank-you. Well, that sticks in my throat, and I can't even say that I've ever been directly affected personally (although people close to me have been).

Obviously, we are all individuals and lumping people together for criticism leads to problems, but can you think of another nation that so often declares that their citizens are just better somehow? I think a little generalisation can be forgiven in response.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:35 / 16.02.07
Calm, Quants. I think we're still at difference of opinion level rather than TA:WP level...

That said, reasons why Iran and North Korea don't get the same treatment. As has been said already, the US is a democracy. Therefore, although many Americans may for one reason or another not be able to vote - imprisonment, undocumented status, youth - the American people do have a greater voice in the selection of their leaders than Iran or North Korea.

There are a couple of other elements here. BtB mentions North Korea and Iran as "debatably dangerous and globally important"... well. One of the things that unites them both is the absence of serious nuclear armaments. North Korea can barely feed its people. If Iran or North Korea decided to topple the government of a nation on the other side of the world and then occupy it... well, they wouldn't, because they couldn't. The global impact of a declaration of hot war on the world by either would, compared with the same impact from the US, be absolutely negligible. Even to use them in the same sentence as the USA in terms of geopolitical weight is to fall into the "axis of evil" trap.

So, the US is vastly more powerful, vastly larger, and a far greater amount of its citizenry, as Quantum says, have the opportunity to seek other sources of information, or indeed to leave.

So, those are reasons. However, it does expose cracks in the idea of "The Americans". As alas often reminds us, there are areas of tremendous, sustained poverty in the United States; there are certainly people who are being done very few favours by the US hegemony, and who ironically often find themselves contributing their own blood and sinew to its benefit. Is it just people who voted for Bush? Just people who voted for Bush even though they ought to know better? Anyone who has not joined a political campaign? Anyone who has failed to attempt to overthrow the government by force? And so on.

So, there are three distinct things going on here, at least. One of those is mockery of Americans as provincial, ignorant, reactionary, shallow, xenophobic and so on. This is a national (although not a racial, and I'm still interested in why that term was used) stereotype, and like all national stereotypes makes it less rather than more likely that individual members of the national group will be understood. This is fuelled by, I suspect, people outside the US thinking they have a better handle on America thhan thhey do, because they are bombarded wiith so much of its media product. If I wished, I could happily watch television and read books and magazines released this week non-stop without exhausting the American media directed at me. However, this still leaves swathes of America massively unrepresented, except when its parochiality is being highlighted as grotesque or mocked by a Bill Hicks type.

Another thing is an unease about how well-informed the people electing the people who decide policy may be, which is exacerabted because America has a power to impact other nations far beyond that of other nations.

A third is a specific issue with American hegemony, which I think often creeps into anti-Americanism more generally, because it's a hard idea to comprehend for many who might be feeling it. This is, as cog says, compounded by a sort of superpower manifest destiny that often seems to claim not only practical but also moral necessity for whatever course of action is taken.

I think there's something else, briefly hinted at by:

these criticisms of course apply to the UK just as much as the US. We also march in our millions in futile gestures that are ignored by the warmongering planetraping fucks in charge and get angry about it.

I suspect that harsh thoughts and words about America are often goaded by a sense of the supine quality of our own nations. This is the douche/asshole distinction writ very large indeed. Whereas US hegemony is an asshole, the international policy of, say, the UK is more like a douche. So, one can see US hegemony being an asshole, and it is easy to make that into "the Americans are being assholes", as a shhorthand of 'the Americans with power and involvement". The UK, meanwhile, is being douchey. Since I know many Britons who are not themselves douches, it is probably easier to think "those douches in Parliament are being such douches" rather than "what a pack of douches we Britons are". And I think there's a frustration about one's corporate ineffectuality against or collusion with US hegemony that back-flavours aspects of it.
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
15:28 / 16.02.07
haus, what's your definition of a douche? I usually use the word douche and asshole interchangeably.
 
 
Princess
16:25 / 16.02.07
Douche is putting water up your bum or lady parts to make them clean. Asshole is a naughty word for bum.
 
 
symbiosis
16:27 / 16.02.07
Went home last night all wobbly-kneed wondering why i felt like soapboxing about this, wondering if my thoughts on this were really just my deep seated self-loathing finding another avenue to deprive myself of joy. Perhaps, but Ill at least try to be less yahoo!answery. These are things I really care about.

It seems there should be a distinction made between [nations when you hear about them in the news] and [nations as represented by their individual citizens]. Nations are easily, but only approximately, personified by their leaders, diplomats, actions, history, economics and cultural exports.(someone told me Hegel used to write about things like this) But individuals are not so easily approximated through the knowledge of their country of origin. (unless they are on the proverbial tourbus, wearing proverbial flip-flops)

Authoritarian nations(and authoritarian traditions within moderately liberal governed nations) are more an exception than the rule. Your Chinese tourist or graduate student is not going to talk with you for very long about Tianmen Square. North Koreans aren't going to know much of anything about the world. Bush voters are going to sound like Bill Orreilly.

But when I meet Europeans, Africans, Russians, South American, and Islamic people I have met, I don't even bother trying to garner some head start info about them from their raw heritage information. Maybe the same goes for America, but the Fox watchers are so strongly represented that maybe you can know these people are going to be the stereotypical macho provincial elitists.

What I wonder is the correct moral responsibility I am ideally supposed to have between myself and the government that presides over these borders.

If I don't feel moral responsibility for America, can/should I still call myself American? Is there any purpose to such a connection? Do I have any measurable, scientific, factual, connection to a 'collateral' damage victim in Iraq?

Or, as I were to be scoffed by some member of Berlin's cultural elite, should I shrug it off, give them the finger and say, either,

[I voted against it, spoke against it, and publicly protested all of these things! I am not responsible for this idiocy!]

or

[You backwards goon, nationality is an illusion and so is morality, you know nothing about me!]

It seems I have to choose either to fight the battle(I am of this nation, but I am not this nation so stop using the nation to assign values to individuals) or fight the system(nations are obsolete so stop using them to assign values to individuals)

I think a lot about what Chomsky always says in these contexts, 'You are primarily responsible for the predictable effects of your own actions.' But where does the secondary responsibility begin? Or does it matter? Or does international shame play a role here, legitimately influencing people to improve their governments? (and thereby transcending crude prejudice and bigotry...)
 
 
Quantum
16:36 / 16.02.07
A douche is a device used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons.

Calmer now. I think the anti-US sentiment can be largely characterised as motivated by fear as well. Fear of intervention, rendition, economic sanctions, subversion, invasion or any of the other techniques the US govt. have used in the past & present to assert their political and financial will. People are afraid of the US, their CIA and bombers, navy, massive economic leverage, thirst for oil and disregard of international opinion (and law).
My main criticism of the United States as a culture would be environmental. The massive overconsumption is threatening us all, and most dangerously is glamourised so heavily that it becomes the aspirational model for developing countries, who want what americans have. Annually americans spend $8 billion on cosmetics, compared to $6 billion spent globally (I think) on basic education for all- source. Although North America has only 6 per cent of the world adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth. The rampant consumerism shows no sign of abating and is spreading, which is leading to climate change and ecological disaster.
Britain tends to follow America but lagging by about ten years or so, which is one reason I'm so concerned. With great power comes great opportunity to set a dreadful example for others to follow. I think it's understandable that critics generalise from the government and culture to the people who live in the country, whether that's fair or not.
 
 
Quantum
17:01 / 16.02.07
Article on a World Wildlife Fund study;

The WWF report shames the US for placing the greatest pressure on the environment. It found the average US resident consumes almost double the resources as that of a UK citizen and more than 24 times that of some Africans.

Based on factors such as a nation's consumption of grain, fish, wood and fresh water along with its emissions of carbon dioxide from industry and cars, the report provides an ecological 'footprint' for each country by showing how much land is required to support each resident.

America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for Burundi, the country that consumes least resources.

The report, which will be unveiled in Geneva, warns that the wasteful lifestyles of the rich nations are mainly responsible for the exploitation and depletion of natural wealth. Human consumption has doubled over the last 30 years and continues to accelerate by 1.5 per cent a year.

So, it's not just the government- each individual US citizen consumes twice as much as us (embarrassingly wasteful and greedy) Europeans. Twice as much! Twelve hectares each! That's 122,000 square metres each! At 9.6 million km2 that means the US can sustainably support 79 thousand people at their current rate of consumption.

The population is estimated at topping 300 million in 2007.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:31 / 16.02.07
Another thing is an unease about how well-informed the people electing the people who decide policy may be, which is exacerabted because America has a power to impact other nations far beyond that of other nations.

I think that's definitely a large part of it. If the American government has a far greater influence globally than any of it's rivals, as it does, then so, by definition, does the American voter. The fact that so much of the US electorate seems happy to exist in a state of what often looks like willed ignorance (just to pick an example, the national reaction to Bush Jr's election to the highest office in the land, and therefore the world, by clearly fraudulent, ie criminal, remains not just bewildering but actively terrifying,) is not reassuring. I mean that was a disgraceful episode in the history of any democracy surely, and yet the Republican Party was allowed to just ... get away with it, pretty much, and not just by the Bible Belt voter either, but by the press, congress, the senate and so on.

For a number of reasons (the environment being the main one) the world can't really afford another presidency like this one, and yet there's absolutely no reason to believe that something very like it, if not worse, won't be along quite shortly. I don't think it's putting it too strongly to say the future of the planet's in the hands of the US voter, so yeah, it's frustrating.
 
 
Leigh Monster loses its cool
17:46 / 16.02.07
i know what a *literal* douche is. I...nevermind. WHINE i'm such a misunderstood american!!!

[I voted against it, spoke against it, and publicly protested all of these things! I am not responsible for this idiocy!]

or

[You backwards goon, nationality is an illusion and so is morality, you know nothing about me!]

are these the only two options? I don't feel the need--or the right--to completely alleviate myself of responsibility for the American lifestyle. I've lived it, after all. I was startled when I saw that the biggest unit of milk you could buy at the corner store in Cork was 2 liters. My politics might not be Bill O'Reilly's, but I was brought up in a mass-consumer culture and I've taken part in it. You might have been better about this than me, so maybe you have more of a right to wash your hands of it than I do. Dunno. I, too, voted against it, but there's always more I could be doing. I'll probably expatriate for good someday but "American" is still going to be part of my identity, and I've got to try and make that mean something positive, no matter what the Berlin cultural elite will accuse me of.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:03 / 16.02.07
I'm quite drunk so I will restrict myself to douches. Apologies. This is an in-joke, which I'd forgotten. In this case, the asshole is proactive, the douche whiny but compliant. The douche allows the asshole to boss the douche around, and even helps the asshole to further hir asshole agenda, but behaves as if it isn't really the douche's responsibility, because what are you going to do? The asshole's an asshole.
 
  

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