When They say "I hate America", what do you think They mean?

Walter, I know it's obscene, but that's the reality of the world today. What it will be like in the future is anybody's guess. I think the far east is gonna be up there some place in leadership positions - economically and politically, and probably far out-pacing Euroland.

Since when does the richest and most powerful nation 'owe' anyone ANYTHING.

If you make more money than me, are you obligated to give me some because you are richer than me?? HELL NO

It is that sort of 'expected involuntary wealth redistribution' that gives rise to anger among Americans.

If you don't like America, next time , don't ask for American help. If Americans offer help, don't accept. Happens all the time.

We Americans are a generous people, we give a lot of our time and money to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We do this with very little pressure or encouragement. Yet when people like yourself seem to look upon that help as an 'entitlement' is when you cause Americans to close their checkbooks.

Keep in mind just how difficult it would have been after WW2 for Europe to rebuild itself without America.

How difficult things would have been in Japan without massive influx of American money.

We are now competing economically and politically with those nations and they can now spit at us after they grew strong on the economic backs of the Americans.

We give because we want to ... just remember, we can turn the money tap off if we wanted to, then you would see worldwide suffering the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the Dark Ages. I would like to see Europe feed all of Africa. I would like to see Asia provide disaster support during a crisis.

I would like Africa to do ANYTHING for itself.



Just my rant for today.

By the way, your figures are innacurate, the us doesn't consume 40% of the worlds goods and services.

Fedral
Gee, I guess all those homeless people I use to see were homeless by choice.

Give me a break!

Aright, homelessness is not exclusively an American enterprise. Some countries do more to address it, many do less.

We have many institutions that do a lot of good around the world. We also have many corporations and governmental policies that do a lot of bad.

The thing that gets me most (as an Amreekan) is the degree to which we (and, historically, many other world powers) have manipulated other parts of the world to our own benefit, disrupted the local socioeconomic fabric, and then done nothing to rebuild.

Again, this is not just American habit, but we are very culpable. Africa, fer instance, probably owes many of its present problems to the invasion and subsequent withdrawal of European colonial powers, who exploited nations for natural resources and left little infrastructure -- political, economic, or real -- behind. We have done the same thing in the Middle East, shifting our allegiances as we see fit (a couple of decades ago, Saddam Hussein was our ally) with little regard for the ongoing consequences of those actions. Not exclusively our fault, but we are perhaps a little behind the curve of many other nations in being more conscious about how this happens. But why the (perhaps) disproportionate animosity toward the USA? Well, as has been pointed out many times, we are highly, highly visible.

A little story, lacking in narrative and punch: I am a Californian buy birth, and growing up it never occurred to me to hate Los Angeles -- at least, not beyond the generally good-natured ribbing that is typical of us northern Californians. Now, though, I live elsewhere, and have spent very little time in California in the past five or six years. All I see of it is what's on TV -- and, I gotta say, I'm really starting to dislike LA and the rest of California. It's not just the Governator, though that's a big part of it; it's my reaction to seeing the glossy, shallow celebrities of the TV-LA (not the real LA, but the one that's packaged for us on the boob tube). The vanity of it, the self-infatuation, just disgusts me. I never liked it, but that used to be balanced in my mind because I spent time in LA, I knew people there, and so I knew that it wasn't really the way it looks on the tube. Now, rationally I know that it's still the same way, but my emotional reaction -- triggered by television imagery -- is not positive. And that's how the rest of the world sees us. Most people haven't been here, most people in the world don't really know any Americans. They just know about whatever news gets to them, they know what beams in through the satellite (or whatever their source for images and information is), and they know that we frequently exploit and bomb people outside of our borders. Sure, some people get helped out, but the vast majority of the world's population never receives aid from anyone.

Anywho, that's how I sees it. I've got some thoughts about differing opinions of Europeans and Americans about war (nothing original, I promise), but this post has gotten long enough.

This is the best I can find for now. "USA alone accounts for 6% of the global population , but consumes 30% of its resources. Source: World Wildlife Fund" I know I have seen in the past (proly many years ago) that the 5% population and 40% consumption was in a report I saw. With so many changes in the world population and economies, I'm not surprised by this shift.

c.i. I've heard western countries consume 80% of the world resources, and Canada uses the most per capita.

Western Countries ie, Europe, N. America and Australia.

Well, the US also says Mexico is a high risk for letting terrorist in, and that our immigration is much too soft, meaning we pose a threat to the US... Mexico also didn't back the US in their war and the US government has also been pointing fingers at us ever since.

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Now, on the subject:

hatred is a harsh word. Imprecise, too. But I'll stick to it.

First, yes, there is an element of envy among some people who hate Americans (mind you, not only the government or the corporations).
Whoever was born American hit the affluency jackpot by mere luck. So s/he is some times seen as a person who may work hard and have some skills, but anyhow is inmensely richer than people born elsewhere who work as hard and have similar skills. Yet s/he acts like if the riches were only natural, and not a privilege.
On the hands of this comes the "I got money and can make you dance" attitude. Be it on business, politics or tourism, it's a stinking attitude.

Another terrible American trait is peer pressure. You go the States and find a society which in many senses is exemplary. You talk and have social intercourse with individual Americans -or small groups of them- and they're often charming. You find a bunch of Americans -be them a team of businessmen, a group of spring breakers or the members of a retiree community- and they're obnoxious, more often than not.

Certainly, popular opinion tends, somewhat irrationally, to identify the people with their government. The US government's popularity has a lot to do with the acceptance of the people.
One gets to think: "their government is so ruthless but it gets voted because it delivers the economic goodies Americans live for".
It's really a good guys/ bad guys stuff. I wasn't born then, but I bet Americans were more popular in the late '40s.

Finally, there is this sense of Americans (the bulk of American society) as absurd children.
They go crazy about smoking, but sell cigarettes to the whole world.
They go crazy about drugs, but are the world's top consumers.
They go crazy about some breast showing, but control most of the pornography industry.
They defend democracy, but only if the people vote for friends, not for foes.
They are the easiest jailers. And don't mind executions.
They really do care if the candidate inhaled, if the President had sex with the intern, if his son is gay or his daughters drink.
They never do wrong. And have somebody to blame (better is it's an alien).
They rule the world, but most of them don't want to understand it.

That is a very telling statement right there. For the leader of one country to tell the citizens of another country who to vote for is quite audacious. It is situations like these that contribute to the overall dislike of Americans and to view them as pompous and arrogant.

That's my observation anyhow.

Ya saying we're seeing the nose hairs up close?

That may be part of it, but not all of it.

fbaezer I think you bring up another important point. There is this sense around the world that Americans don't understand other nations and cultures and don't necessarily feel the need to understand. I know that is a blanket statement, but I think this viewpoint may explain another aspect of why Americans are viewed less than favourably.

Having traveled through a few dozen countries around the world (and having lived in at least 4 of them) I can tell you that most people in other countries don't understand people in the US very well either. There are plenty that see movies and American TV or listen to music from the US and assume that that is what the US is all about.

It'd be like someone in Dallas, TX watching CBC TV in Saturday evening and assuming that everyone in Canada does nothing but play hockey all day long (I know you folks take an hour or two a day to quaff a few LaBatt's Blues though! )

When I lived in ME the could see the US-Canadian border markers just by looking out my living room window ad I can tell you that no one could tell the difference between the Canadians and the Mainiacs unless they saw the license plates on the cars.

Stereotypes are part of not understanding each other. And yes, they exist everywhere. (I somehow remembered this militant left-wing Italian girl who believed Americans made lousy lovers; the 3 Mexicans in our party said almost at once: "You're soooo wrong!").

One aside about Fishin's statement. The world gets the misconceptions about the US from the US media. The US gets the misconceptions about the rest of the world from the US media.

How many Americans do you know that do not watch foreign films?
How many non-Americans do you know that watch only their national films?

Ahh, fbaezer, I agree with your sense of the reaction to americans/america completely, I see thinking all those things you listed and could probably add a bunch.

I am not my government, but many "I's" elected it and don't modify its ways very easily. We in the US pride ourselves on our government being representative, and in the end, it is -- even this minute, with a controversially positioned president. To the extent any government can be an arm of popular will or lack of it, ours is, though we do have ways for one person/one vote to not obtain, and most don't vote.

First time I noticed antipathetic reaction was back in the sixties in Guadalajara, in the hotel my friend and I stayed at. I include my friend and I in the grossness. She and I stayed at the Hilton. She had arranged the trip, the interest stemming from her desire to be a stewardess and travel. We got to Guadalajara and she had some kind of fit about it being just like Hawaii, why did we come here, let's leave tomorrow, as we taxi'd to town. This was back when I was a little ball of smart and shy, and was plain old stunned, loving every minute of going to the city and completely confused by her reaction.

As we waited to check in, there was a bunch of loud people, with apparent Texan accents, sorry Texas friends. Loud, loud, loud and demanding, their voices filling the rather large lobby.

My friend got over her wish to leave quickly. Over a week we felt comfortable there, and were shown around by an egyptian medical student and a mexico city businessman - they were courteous and fun - and then by a grad student I knew from LA who was in the history department at the Autonoma. This was my first trip outside of the US, short of a visit to Tijuana with my smart ass group (sag) girlfriends to stay with the family of one of them. Anyway, low level american lab tech that I was, I was a person of amazing privilege then, and saw it. That was the start of a lot of eye opening.

As US citizens, what e'er our good points, we are very solopsistic. So are lots of people in other places, but we seem to revel in our selforiented rays more noticibly.

I don't hate the US, my country. I can understand vast resentment to the tourist I was in the sixties - and then when you add all the world violence for questionable ends we have fostered, plus some other matters, I can understand hatred.

I don't personally know how to fix all this.

fbaezer

Excellent post.

There was a wonderful piece which I linked some months ago, written by a longtime BBC news writer, which sought to address this question. It will be hard to find, as I don't recall his name, but I'll try.

I'll make a point here which I've made before. There is not, in Canada, nor in any other country I know of, a corollary to the term and notion of 'anti-americanism'. The term 'anti-canadianism' simply does not exist in discourse - I've NEVER seen it. Have any aussies bumped into 'anti-australianism'? Anti-Dutchism?

An element to the complaints above, I think, relates to this oddity...the US really does NOT like to be criticised, even from within. It is of the nature of (and fedral reflects this above), "How DARE you?" It's a tad snooty.

If you do a Google search you'll find a few hundred pages that use the term "anti-Canadianism" and a few thousand that use the term "anti-Canadian" bernie.

Certainly no where near the numbers for "Anti-American" but there a bit...



Probably true enough. Our daily programming is a lot more heavily tilted towards "fictional entertainment" than it is in most other countries. That's a bit of an odd-duck to try and tackle but...

Sofia, in my post I was trying to make the point that the US isn't alone in its greed, but that because of our size, it is far more apparent than it is in other countries.

I've heard a few Europeans complain about Germans being the most obnoxious and demanding tourists. I have to admit this pleased me no end, being so used to hearing about the ugly American.

I really do think the size has most to do with it, because human nature is universal, with greed and altruism abundant in everyone. If other countries had the power of the US, I'd be willing to bet that they would fall into the trap of using their power in unjust and ugly ways. This isn't condoning the US and its uglier side, just saying that I think human nature comes to the fore fairly predictably, depending on the situation.

So size matters, diane?

(The matron of a Greek campground once ran down Aussies to me, but I didn't understand enough to make out what her specific complaints were.)

There was an absolutely wonderful issue of Granta called "India!", that went into the complexity of that country and how hard it is to quantify. I think we are getting a bit too simplistic about America with things like,



Of course that exists, but the opposite side of that coin exists, as well -- see Farmerman's response on the "bamboozled" thread just now for an example. We Americans are often criticizing America, and vociferously. We're too damn big and contradictory to categorize so easily. (Will go get that issue and see if I can find some of the choicer quotes...)