December 7th, 2003

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Politics
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Talking About Americans

Lately I’ve been trying to broaden my online reading to include some more conservative sites. If I only read opinions that I agree with, how am I ever going to learn anything? For example, you’ll find a discussion I’m having about spending on the Canadian military at All AgitProp, all the Time.

I’ve read and rejected several frighteningly right-wing propagandists, but have found some other sites that seem but thoughtful and moderate. I’m not sure which camp this site falls into, but I was curious to read Don’t Tread on Me’s Myths That Some Americans Believe. It’s fairly misguided, but one of the myths–’We need to learn what it is about us that makes other cultures and countries hate us’–piqued my interest. I wrote the following tretis on why Americans are unpopular in Europe:

I’m Canadian, and thus I usually happily bash the States at every opportunity. However, I lived in Ireland for two years, and the States-bashing over there was so bad, I actually found myself defending your nation.

For European nations (I discussed the subject with the people of several western European countries), it had nothing to do with prosperity (they’re pretty prosperous over there). Universally, it was two areas: foreign policy and cultural export.

They complained that US foreign policy was expansionist and inconsistent. I’m not arguing for or against this, just reporting what they told me.

Cultural export refers to all of the music, movies, fast food restaurants, etc that gets foisted on them by the US. They bemoaned the Americanization of the planet. While, obviously, cultural governing bodies around the world are as responsible for this trend as the US, individuals were frustrated by it.

Additionally, they couldn’t get their head around things like American attitudes toward capital punishment or firearms. These attitudes often struck them as barbaric.

Generally these people knew and liked individual Americans–they just took issue with the society at large.

Comments: 5 Responses so far

Jay Currie
December 8th, 2003
2:43 am

Having knocked about with Euros of various political types over the years, I’d add a couple of elements to their perception of America.

First, they cannot quite grasp that there is a large, beautifully educated and highly cultured class in America which is delighted to make money rather than dispair. Second, and this is more recent, the Euros are beginning to realize that their own nations have made horrendous mistakes post WWII. In particular the rock in a sock birth rates, unaffordable pension schemes, declining productivity, unintended immigration consequences and technological implosion have all left the Euros wondering how the hell the cowboys could have got so much, well, right.

You don’t have to love Americans to realize that America has done rather better since WWII than Germany, France, Italy or England. And that bothers the Euros more than they can say.

America winning the Cold War has meant that these former Great Powers are now middling at best. Nice to have onside; but trival compared to China, India, Pakistan or a host of other nations. The triumph of English as the language of technology, commerce, and movies the masses actually want to see, even though this was really the fault of er, English, has not been easy to take either. The shrillness of the Euro’s denuciations of America as barbaric, uncultured and plain ignorant seems to be the inverse of the importance of Europe in the scheme of things.

The truth is that the opinions of a bunch of washed out, aging, anti-technological, semi-socialist, militarily impotent, ex-Powers don’t matter much and the Americans are not in the least shy about pointing that out.

Success is envied not popular. The failed statists of Germany or France are clining to the happy thought that the cowboys - most of whom are better educated than their critics - will somehow fatally shoot themselves on the way to the corral. When they don’t….then they are unpopular, even hated.

Worst of all, the intellectual and political elites in Old Europe seem utterly unable to stop their own ignorant populations from watching American movies, listening to American pop and, quelle horreur, filling up at MickyD’s. In the trans-Atlantic clash of civilizations, the Yanks keep winning where it counts: in the popular cultures of Old Europe.

[Reply]

KevinG
December 8th, 2003
3:30 pm

I haven’t spent much time in Ireland but I would add one other general observation. In my work in Australia and various parts of Europe two other characteristics were generally derided: the ‘apoplectic American’ and the amount of time spent working.

Europeans, it seemed to me, treat work more as a means; their job is much less integral to their view of self and self-worth.

The apoplectic American is and Aussie urban myth. The story is about the screaming incomprehension that overwhelms some people when confronted with a different sense of urgency. The story most often told is of the hapless hotel desk clerk who handed a U.S. executive a fax from the evening before explaining that she didn’t wish to disturb his rest after a long day traveling.

These are two quite minor things compared to foreign policy. Certainly no-one need concern themselves with ‘understanding’ these cultural differences. In fact American, in it’s current position of strength, need not take heed of anyones notion of their nation.

Unless of course that ignorance is slowly galvanizing resistance in the rest of the world ? Rejecting trade policy bullying seems the most benign manifestation of this growing resistance.

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Justin
December 8th, 2003
3:44 pm

Whoa, Jay — nice conforming-to-stereotype screed, there.

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Arthur
December 8th, 2003
7:14 pm

The truth is that the opinions of a bunch of washed out, aging, anti-technological, semi-socialist, militarily impotent, ex-Powers don’t matter much and the Americans are not in the least shy about pointing that out.

You killed me right there where the italics start. You’re funny!

[Reply]

Todd
December 9th, 2003
9:35 am

Success is envied not popular.

Hogswallop. America’s success is dubious at best, and their standing in world opinion reflects that. Internally they have an horrific handgun death rate, a psychotically patriotic populace, a frightening integration of right-wing morality with the machinery of politics and a bankrupt awareness of the world at large beyond their borders. There are neighborhoods in numerous American cities that ambulances will not travel to because they get shot at. Success, indeed.

For a long time I’ve had a hard time reconciling the great individual Americans I’ve met with America. Separating the two allows me to find the good in the people there and still shake my head at the misguided childishness of this raging adolescent of a nation.

[Reply]

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