The US is the single most hated country in the world right now, the economy is fucked up and Americans are ridiculed everywhere they go
i do believe you on this.... but i also believe that it shows that a great many people in the world are just as simple minded as they believe Americans to be. since when is it good for anyone, much less an entire country.... never mind a country that is responsible for the freedom of over half of Europe... to kowtow to the lowest common denominator. Our current govt. has sucked, and some tourists are jag-offs.... sure, that means we all suck right?
I've met German tourists that came off as quite arrogant. there's currently a TV commercial for a particular Credit Card that outright ridicules the arrogance of German business people who visit the US, showing them laughing pompously at an American that just paid for the German's lunches at the end of a business meeting with the "wrong" card, and arrogantly speaking amongst themselves in German so they couldn't be understood by the Americans. so.... should all Americans now think that all Germans are pompous, arrogant elitists?
i saw your later comments that mitigate some of what you said above, but i still thought those statements needed addressing.
In case you don't believe in what I just wrote: look at Bush. He's the exact opposite of what Obama is. And look where it led ...
this type of statement is an example of the type of faulty logic that you sometimes see as the plot premise for a shitty sit-com on TV. By this logic, since Americans were despised under Bush, it's a certainty now that we will be revered and treated as gods under Obama... woo hooo, i can't wait!!! :Smug:
Hey Joe,
everything is cool. As long as nobody resorts to name calling and pointless insults, then all is good in my book
werd.
My observations are based on the reactions of people who thought I was American (due to my accent) and their much more positive reaction when I told them I was actually German. This has happened so often I can't even begin to count it. It also showed me that it had little to do with my personality but with the pre-conceived notions that people simply have.
again, i believe you... every word. And again i think it's a worse reflection on the people wielding such poorly aimed hatred than it is on their mostly innocent targets. if i were to travel anonymously to Europe right now i would be more than happy to expect people i met to express their anger about my govt. during a conversation on the subject. I would laugh and agree with them..... but to have them level that anger at me personally?? i can barely imagine the ignorance level required for that to happen.
I did not mean to say that individual Americans are hated in general, but most people I met simply have no respect for Americans (due to a very low average standard of education and due to some very brash attitudes that you see from US citizens abroad again and again). Also many people really, really despise US foreign and environmental policy.
do you mean that Americans have a low standard of education? true, on a percentages basis there are a lot of poorly educated Americans... conversely there are still many highly educated Americans, just fewer of us, but this ratio is not entirely dissimilar to many many other countries... we're just bigger than most of them, so thus we have more poorly educated citizens... but not many of those people are traveling to Europe or any other continent. they live in trailer parks and govt. housing and can't afford to travel anywhere, much less overseas. And those attitudes regarding Americans in general seem to speak poorly of the education of those that have them.
"Brash attitudes" are universal.... I refer you again to the general belief of people in the US that Germans are arrogant. You gotta love stereotypes.... i'm not on a high horse here, because Americans hold a LOT of stereotypical views about people of other nationalities: French are arrogant and smelly. Italians are smelly and dirty and untrustworthy. Chinese people can't drive. Polish people are stupid... etc etc. those are just some examples of the stupid stereotypes that some ignorant people in the US have.... and everything you are saying to me about the way people in other countries view Americans amounts to the same thing. stupid stereotypes.
One thing Americans do NOT typically do though is to hold people from other countries responsible for the things their native governments do. Russians, for instance, may well be viewed stereotypically as vodka drinking, fur hat wearing, dummies (though only by stupid, uneducated people).... but no one here will hold Putin against them... and Putin is hated here.
i guess the bottom line i'm trying to get to is that it's just idiotic to blanket hatred over an entire country based on the policies of it's government.... stereotypes exist the world over and that sucks, but politically based hatred leveled against innocent citizens is far more disturbing. Even those idiots that voted for the fucked govt. were mostly duped.
I know that goes against everything US citizens usually believe (manifest destiny and all) - it just doesn't make it less true. Justified or not!
Manifest Destiny was the belief and policy of the US govt. that the nation should expand it's borders from the east coast of our continent to the west coast. we accomplished that, by hook or by crook, many years ago. sure, some dirty pool was played to accomplish it, but no more so than any other world govt. has committed it the furtherance of it's own sovereignty and security. anyway, it just sounded as though you have a misunderstanding of that concept. it is not currently a policy.... hasn't been pretty much since California was annexed.
but just last night, the majority of the world sighed with relief thinking "Thank god those moronic US citizens didnt vote for someone like Bush again!".
now there's a sentiment i can whole-heartedly agree with.
