Setanta wrote:Then i suggest that you are falling for the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. Which is to say, when you see a post which confirms (or perhaps, simply seems to confirm) your thesis, you respond (figuratively): "See, see how they are?"
Heh. Well, I certainly recognize the reaction, lol. But no, I'll have to lay this one aside, in this case anyway.
The thing is that the impression I've gotten about how many Americans, more so than Europeans, tend to succumb to black-and-white, us vs. them thinking, with a lesser inclination to criticize others within what's supposed to be one's camp or its leaders, is not one that I arrived here with as presupposition at all. It is not an impression that I would have instinctively sought to confirm, since I initially did not
have it. It actually grew
from my interactions with American posters here (and follow-up readings elsewhere). (I realise that board posters tend to be a particularly strident lot, though.)
I do think that the existence of a long-standing two-party system provides a plausible enough explanation for how such inclinations could have formed over time. Here, with our many left- and right-wing parties who spend as much time criticizing end delineating from each other as lobbing at the other end of the spectrum, "internal" criticism is much more of a standard instinct, overly much even perhaps.
Its certainly been an observation I've heard echoed by enough Americans themselves (though I realise that such an appeal to authority, or whatever that fallacy is called, doesnt in itself prove much either).
You would disagree with that impression then - about a greater tendency to black/white, us/them thinking, I mean?
Setanta wrote:I grow weary of Americans being portrayed as illiterate, uninformed rubes
But note that I didn't say any such thing ... I don't consider "the Americans" to be illiterate. Uninformed, perhaps - but only in specific areas. When it comes to international news - news that reaches beyond immediate domestic US concerns - the tendency here in any case is that any thread about it attracts always again the Europeans, Aussies and Canadians, and only the occasional American (hi, Soz, Lash). But generally illiterate, nah.
I do have a distinct bone to pick with American
media, obviously, and have outlined it in cumbersome detail various times - and I cant help wondering, watching CNN or reading about Fox, what effect that has on the general level of political awareness of their audiences. But then we're already talking specific complaints rather than broad pejorative brushes.
Damn, I must be breaking my personal record in terms of derailing a thread, here
