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Born in the USA

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18:31 / 12.03.07

LMAO. The responses in my introductory thread (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/26822#post683844) are a great example of how so-taken-for-granted it is to bash someone because that person dares to admit that he/she is an American. If I had said I was british or filipino or whatever then the same comments that "welcome" me to this group could and likely WOULD be construed as mean-spirited, ageist, sexist, and prejudiced-- but since I'm an American: Flame on!

Prejudices are incorrect and/or inaccurate assumptions, and severely limit our ability to function in reality. Any prejudice is crippling, no matter who or what it's aimed at.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:20 / 12.03.07

Where exactly are you bashed because you "dare to admit you are American?" I've read that thread and I see some people reacting negatively to gun-enthusiasm, and then explaining why, but I don't see any America-bashing per se.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

20:05 / 12.03.07

Following up a bit:

In fact, only one person really questions the gun thing, too; that's followed by a couple of jokes and a rather reasonable conversation on the perception of guns in the UK vs. America. Everyone's being very nice, really.

As far as this thread goes, though, if you could take a break from L'ing YAO and provide some insight into why you felt that you were being "bashed," that might be very helpful. As a Canadian, I often feel that there's kind of a default defensiveness in my discourse with some Americans, where they expect me to be snarky with them even when I'm not.

And the automatic conflation of anti-gun with anti-American is interesting. I imagine if you were an Australian, or a Canadian, or a Mexican and listed guns first in your hobbies, you'd have gotten the same question from Olulabelle. And yet the identification with the question seems to be "anti-American" rather than "anti-gun."

If you'd like to unpack any of the above, I'm sure you'll find people here are actually quite nice and not so anti-American as long as self-examination and courtesy are available discussion options.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:50 / 12.03.07

Interesting.

I can't see anything in there that smacks of sexism or ageism - mean-spiritedness is trickier, of course, because yet more subjective - or that would have been identified as such without the added datum that you are American (which, incidentally, you don't actually give. You tell us where you live, but not your nationality). What do you think inspired you a) to feel that this was happening, b) to identify it with your nationality and c) to decide that the appropriate response was to L your AO - that is, not to register that you felt this was happening and to attempt to work through it, but to start laughing. Was there something that made you feel that dialogue was not going to be productive?

00:14 / 13.03.07

To be fair, I think Scarlett's A may have been LO from the previous post by Nocturne which contained, among other things, Americans seem to have little respect for other nations. Canadians don't bomb people for oil, they don't write nasty letters to other nations about previous war crimes, and they like to send peacekeepers for the UN.
I think the idea that the initial response to Scarlett's introduction in Conversation was anti-American (as in US of American) is way off.

02:57 / 13.03.07

my take on this (apologies for only reading and towards the end sort of skimming the first two pages of this thread):

i'm american. i'm sitting in a photo lab at a good sized northern east coast university that i graduated from and that is giving me lab access in exchange for a few volunteer hours a week, which is a pretty good deal in my book. i have a liberal arts degree and an art minor, and i'm a few years out of school and i can only seem to get shit jobs. the same seems to be true for most people i know. one of the few people who got a decent job (at a newspaper, the #2 paper in a two paper town) is getting downsized to the point where her job is miserable and she wants to quit.

being american is embarrasing. i have a hard time reading a newspaper without getting pissed off, and i have a hard time sitting through five minutes of fox news without wanting to yell at the screen. a few weeks ago i went to montreal with a few friends, and under five minutes after crossing the border, we high fived and shouted "we're not in america anymore! we're not in america anymore!".

a few caveats, though. in the state of MA alone, driving under an hour will take you through noticeable cultural shifts.

eg i was in a coffee shop in cambridge, MA, when news got out that rumsfeld was out. everyone in the coffee shop was ecstatic. and we could hear the people in the next building being excited about it. on the other hand, drive less than an hour to the blue collar suburb that my dad's side of the family came from. they're in some ways poster child boston irish americans - my dad had six siblings, one uncle is a cop, one aunt drives a school bus, etc etc etc. the last time i was at a family event, i got into a fight about global warming. i've gotten into fights about relatives suggesting i become a military embedded reporter. i've heard tons of casual racism and homophobia and they seem to all believe that a woman's role as an incubator is more important than a woman's role as a human being.

and MA isn't the rest of new england, and new england certainly isn't the rest of the country.

in short, not every american is an asshole, but the ones who aren't feel like they're living on some sort of tiny island. and i consider myself anti-american.

09:28 / 13.03.07

Random side note: The Long Now Foundation has a seminar by a guy named John Rendon (July 4th, 2006). In it, he claims that the BBC is the most watched news in the world, with more viewers in the United States than NBC and FOX. I couldn't find any numbers to back him up.

09:30 / 14.03.07

I don't know about most-watched, but you have to remember things like the World Service, which mean that the BBC's news coverage is available to an almost staggering proportion of the world's population, often in their local languages. You can see some of them here.

23:02 / 14.03.07

I'm not really clear about the anti-American feel in Scarlet's intro thread either. I would be keen to understand whereabouts this happened.

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