I wrote this for another forum but figured that given I spent almost three hours writing it that it might be useful here, if for nothing else then as a timewaster or an actual debate, so feel free to contribute as much bile about loving the US or not loving it as you like.
Someone mentioned that American's don't have a close connection to other cultures so they don't understand them which affects their ability to deal with them when they travel overseas. Thats how is started, I then kind of went off on a tangent. Also the guys on the forum were kind of dicks about how great they thought America was, mostly ignoring every point along the way. I tried to cover every idea I could think of, and went on a few tangents here and there. Also my facts were based on about ten minutes of trying to remember stuff from a few years ago so I'm probably about half right for most historical stuff, but its not like I'm being graded on this. So enjoy....
Australians are in the same position as Americans, because outside of South East Asia(dictatorships in every direction) travelling around the world from Australia is even more difficult than travelling from the US, yet we've got a decent view of other cultures. I think it might be in part because our history is so boring, Australian history is essentially taught as First Fleet arrived, LOL Sydney created, Woot Melbourne Created, Brisbane found by idiots(some guys got shipwrecked and thought they were south of Sydney so they walked north for a few weeks, they were very far north of Sydney when they were wrecked), Federation, No Blackies are allowed in (first law in Australia was the White Australia Act), World War 1/Gallipoli, Donald Bradman playing Cricket, World War 2(when the Americans showed up and stole our women), the Sixties and then the dismissal. It leaves a lot of time for world history(aka European and American history, Asian and African History doesn't count and south America is non-existent) because our country's history isn't all that complex, its got a lot of interesting parts to it, but there isn't much you can sit down and talk about for a long while forming differing views about the various cultural forces and groups interacting with one another.
America has an arseload of history to its credit, early settlers, revolutionary wars, wars with everyone and everything, civil wars, immigration, both world wars(although WW1 was a bit of a whitewash), cold war, civil rights and a few thousand other things, each of which could be discussed and examined forever and ever in an educational environment.
Its a complex interesting and detailed history but it leaves little time for a deeper understanding of the history of the rest of the world. I'm not sure if thats how it happens(given that I'm not an American student and have only been over there once(it was nice, you're country is very nice)) but thats always been a bit of my understanding as to why some Americans don't seem to have much of an understanding of the rest of the world outside of the few times they've gone to war against/with them.
Also looking at the US geographically, your country is freaking massive. You've got several distinct cultural areas(not sure how close I am here but East Coast, The South, The Mid-West, The Pacific North West, the West Coast and Idaho are the cultures I think of when I think of geographical diversity in the US its probably a lot deeper than that but I'm talking from an outsiders perspective here) the only major distinction between these places and the nations in Europe is that you all speak the same language and are part of one country, you've got your distinct cultural areas, its just the borders are a little blurred unlike Europe where a line in the dirt drawn two hundred years ago shows you where the German speaking people stop and the French Speaking people begin.
America has an insane amount of luck when it comes to Economics. You've got enough viable land to feed an ungodly percentage of the population of the planet, you've got decent mineral reserves to feed industry, you've got nearly flat country right from the Atlantic to Pacific which makes moving goods easier(and is great farmland), you've also got a standard rail gauge(Australian states all have different rail gauges so none of our trains are inter-changeable which means that no-one travels by train outside of their own state and no freight goes out of state by train its all by truck or by sea, and because of the Great Barrier Reef in QLD(preventing sea freight to a degree) and the sheer distance between most major cities everything in Australia that has to be transported comes with additional expenses that we shouldn't have but do because our States were run by idiots back in the 1800s) and your industrial bases are pretty safe in times of war(until ICBMs were invented obviously), in Europe and Asia pretty much their entire industrial base was destroyed(by American, German and Russian bombs, but I'm pretty sure no-one minded at the time as they were being liberated, not that Asia had much of an industrial base at the time outside of slave labour camp construction firms) and America had a head start on the rest of the world, to your credit the US helped Europe rebuild, restock and retool, you sent food, supplies and aide to the Europeans for years after the War(some might say for political reasons due to the cold war, but thats only half the argument).
You dominance of Science(R&D) and engineering wasn't luck, that was due to hard work, a diverse population and some of the best education options on Earth, I don't doubt that even without its other features that the US wouldn't be high on the list of most powerful countries, I just think that you guys had a good base to start from and that you've used it well and wisely to your advantage, it would be a reason to hate you if you'd have wasted that opportunity instead of admiring the sheer level of achievement made by the US scientific community, even if a little to much of it was from military research(which thankfully almost always has some secondary civilian applications).
Europe also had a large degree of luck, most of their cities were demolished in WW2, so they could rebuild them better and more equipped for the modern world instead of having to Jerry-rig a solution on top of existing infrastructure, thats why their public transport grids are so fantastic, thats why their cities seem so picturesque, everything worth rebuilding was and everything that they didn't want they destroyed. They had the advantage of re-building most of their governments from the ground up so they don't have the two hundred years of laws and regulations stacked on top of each other that you do.
Most of their cultural divisions are across national borders, so if Germany was against Gay Marriage but France wasn't then France could allow it, Germany wouldn't and that would be the end of it, unlike the US which if the South(or East Coast or West Coast or Idaho) is against it and can rally enough federal support they can get it banned/outlawed in the rest of the country even though no-one else minds all that much(see laws about weed or Abortion in the US for a less Gay Marriage example).
And for those that are being smug about US culture being copied in European cities, I'd say part of that was the dominance of US entertainment around the world. Its almost scary to think about it. Kids are raised by their TV sets, all they see is American shows, dubbed in German, they're going to come off with a lot of US ideas, not all of them bad(freedom of speech, freedom in general, democracy being vital) but not all of them good(guns are good, dressing like a whore is empowering(note: I'd love to meet the guy that convinced women of this, he's a perverted genius, I don't like that little girls are doing it however but the teen-bar-skanks around here look scary-fine for it), sleeping around a lot is safe) I hope, honestly that the good stays around a lot longer than the bad because your country has so many good things about it and those good things can only improve the rest of the world by being shared out.
European countries, like America have a lot to be proud of and I think they resent the US's apparent ignorance of their achievements. I'd say this is mostly because movies from the US focus almost exclusively on the US contributions to anything, no matter how small. Remember most of peoples understanding of the US comes from the news and US movies.
The news media around the world are all the same, they want ratings(except the BBC and the ABC in Australia and a few other non-propaganda Government Sponsored Networks here and there) so they pick the news based on what gets people in, and a story on "Why you should hate Americas military might" will get better ratings that "The American military's new portable medical facilities can be used during recovery from natural disasters and flood, and will save thousands of lives this year, good for them."
Does anyone think that the media in Europe is any less muck-raking than the American media?
One area that everyone feels smug about when it comes to Americans is guns, thats a whole debate in and of itself, but essentially... we think you have too many of them and its stupid. You probably agree that too many of the wrong people have guns, its just that non-Americans agree but think that "the Wrong People" is probably twice the number of people that you'd think.
A lot of my friends have the attitude, hate the U.S but love Americans, we don't like your government. I know you're proud of it, I know that a lot of you were raised to believe its the most near-perfect system achievable in political history, but it doesn't mean that they always do the right thing. It doesn't mean that people not raised under it are going to just fall over and love it as much as you do.
Theres a reasons that people outside of America are sick of your flag, because sometimes it feels like Americans think "We're number 1! And in no way or form will you ever even aspire to be this awesome unless you assimilate and do things our way." Now I know this isn't the case with almost all of you, but it can feel that way a lot of the time. On TV shows and movies where your flag is almost a character in itself, where your country is talked about like its the promised land, when you actually like living in your own country having a TV show tell you that the US is the best country on Earth can be a bit annoying, and I know that its only partially your fault, we don't bother to make our own shows, we don't have our own content and thus deserve to be a little put off by the fact that American shows are going to be very much pro-America, but after a while we begin to resent it, and ignore our own countries part in it(on an unrelated note trade negotiations with the US are bollocks(on both sides), lowering tariffs on TV shows and movies makes it cheaper to produce local content but the US and local media who want cheap easy content lobby to get rid of it so they can pump the airwaves with freaking "The OC" and "Californication" instead of at least trying to make decent Australian programming).
What you guys export culturally reflects on your country and McDonalds and a lot of your TV shows/movies/Dane Cook are a bad reflection on your country and thats sad because America has made some amazing contributions to arts, dining and world wide culture, its just the worst lowest common denominator shit gets pumped like a sewerage pipe on top of the rest of us and that one nugget of gold can slip by before we know what we've missed.
So to sum up this impossible to comprehend rant: I don't really like your government, I don't like having your countries patriotism shoved down my throat, but I accept that my own country is as responsible for letting your stuff in as you were for giving it to us, I respect the achievements you've made because they are staggering(the FUCKING Plane, the FUCKING ATOMIC BOMB and Internet! in just under 80 years) but also understand that you did have some luck with it, I love your people, I never met an American I didn't like while I was over there(and I'm sure that a only a really small part of it was that the people I met in Restaurants and hotels and tourist spots were in jobs that required you to be nice to people, because the people I talked to on Trains and just looking around were universally helpful and friendly) and I've never met an American over here or when I was in Europe(I was nine at the time so memories are blurry) who wasn't nice, friendly and open.
The fact that some people in Europe don't like America shouldn't worry you guys so much, it makes you look insecure in your own identity, you should be able to just shrug it off, let it be and move on. Jumping up and down screaming "HOW FUCKING DARE THEY! DON'T THEY REMEMBER THE NAZIS THAT WE and the soviet union SINGLE-HANDEDLY DESTROYED AND SAVED THEIR ARSES?!!! FUCK THOSE FUCKING SURRENDER MONKEYS AND THOSE NAZI CUNTS, I'M GOING TO PISS ON THEM FROM THE INTERNET, WHICH WE INVENTED!" just proves their points.
Actor.
_________________ "Why can't we go back to living like cavemen? I know it was a rough and ready existence - the men where always rough and the women were always ready! " - Santa.
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