Anti-American sentiment in SL forums

I like Floriduh! And since my votes didn't count either, I feel entitled to beat a dead horse for all eternity

Well he's kinda little and easily overlooked. Australian politics? All you need to know about it, is if interest rates are low, you stay in power.

What is holy (i.e., holyday) about a week of drunken debauchery on S. Beach? Don't all you people, er Brits, wind up in Florida at least once in your lifetimes? It's like your unholy mecca or something. And what's up with equating my people with burning tobacco sticks (read:fags since you don't speak Merkin)? We should just annex the UK as the 51st state. Oh wait, make that 52nd (after Mexico). And have you ever tried to sit through an entire episode of Masterpiece Theater? (Better than counting sheep, though.)

</tongue in cheek>

Well Lewis has a point though.

Historically, some of the top US comedy shows were direct copies of English shows (All in the Family, Threes Company etc.) yet were never advertised as such or even willing to admit it. Also you have to admit that US entertainment in general (another sweeping generalisation ), is suffering from a huge lack of originality lately.

And I find his opinion on Marmite is spot on. The Australians, (likely because of their ass-kissing relationship to the Americans) eat Vegemite instead and that's likely half of "their problem."

Please take our lunatic!

I for one am none to pleased with the nut in the big house and more and more I keep hearing most americans aren't happy with him either.
Sooner or later we as citizens will have to step up and take our country back.
I'm personally not holding my breath on that ever really occuring but then again we Americans tend to be full of surprises.

We don't bloody want him either!

In a basic sense, I don't care what the world thinks of America overmuch. Both because, as a matter of course, I tend to agree with Machiavelli and what he had to say in chapter 17 of The Prince(Not that Bush is particularly living up to Niccolo's standards, but in general), but also because, frankly, I think rabid country-bashing says far more about the practitioner than it does about the target.

The only thing that annoys me is how quick the "That's not cool, man!" crys would be raised if, for example, I started to give an honest critique, from my perspective, of, say... France. Or Australia. Or whatever... If I started to bash those countries, I would quickly be called out. Indeed, you can see it happen - It's not secret that a lot of American's have little use for France, but time and time again on a message board I see people called all manner of names for expressing this opinion - racist, crude, ignorant, fascist, bigot, idiot, whatever the word dejur happens to be. These comments from the same people who will, in another thread that same day, proceed to happily bash every facet of American culture without a second thought.

God Bless America.

You're all just jealous.

I love my gas guzzling SUV

Nice try, Cris.

Down with Earth! Earthlings are stoopid, borish and wasteful. A total waste of Universal Space.

You have broken cover before X Day Lippman, report to the mothership for debriefing and reprogramming

I completely agree.

I hesitate to jump in here because it seems at least in part Christiano is directing his post at "people like me."

I too found the reaction of some people to your other thread you referred to was much more negative and nasty than most of the general comments made about Americans elsewhere, and it certainly is a double standard at least on Christiano's part IMO.

Then when you point out his double standard, he replies with another (very weak) barb at you? Greeeaaat!

The way I see it, *everyone* generalises. It's part of the operation of the human brain to group things into general categories and ascribe qualities to them and ... well good luck trying to stop it. The only thing one can do is to try to see the individuals within the groups and remember that it is just a general statement that you are making.

Personally, I know that I make some of the kind of statements that Christiano is talking about, but I *try* to take great care in presenting them just for what they are, as general statements about a group, not about individuals, and I try to make them as factual as possible. I don't make generalised statements about "races" as there is no basis for that kind of grouping but I think it's a perfectly valid thing to talk about a "country" doing this that or the other thing, or acting in a certain way. If a group of people all get together and say "Hey, we're the the Americans!" how else can one talk about that group except in the same vein?

Typically, when I say something like that I try to frame my remarks or flag them right in the post by using such terms as "in general" or "this is a generalisation but," etc., so people can take it with the grain of salt it deserves.

I understand that for many Americans this is "Anti-Americanism," (when such generalised statements are made about America), but from what I see, similar statements are made about other countries by the Americans as well. As non-American I have to read tons of stuff by Americans where some implicit insult is made about Europeans or anyone who "isn't American" day after day. Sadly, most of the people making these kind of remarks are not even aware they are doing so. Yet if as non-Americans we point them out, we get viciously jumped on for having the temerity to suggest that Americans are not thinking of anyone but themselves.

There *is* definitely a widely held perception that the Internet for example is "American," or that on the Internet for "American" read "World." You see it every day and on many sites and bulletin boards. It's implicit in most things you read IMO although again, if you are American, you probably don't even notice it.

I see a big double standard here when these kind of threads are made. Not only are several of the people that generate these kinds of threads from time to time also guilty of the same kind of generalisations about *non-Americans*, IMO they are also some of the first to jump in with racist remarks or not to care about those kinds of sweeping generalisations either.

If people are going to be so sensitive about the rest of the world not liking "America's attitude," then maybe they should check the mirror themselves once in a while.

Let's see... Anti-Americanism or America-bashing in a forum created and owned by a US-based company ... wow. Freedom of speech allowing the expression of the most base human emotions? What a concept!

I seem to remember from my school histories the British, French, Dutch and Spanish "empires" having been quite colonial in their airs of superiority over the centuries. Since the demise and decline of the global influence of those empires, especially since in the post-WWII era there has been a simultaneous rise in the influence of US-based global influence, it seems to be quite predictable that those from the cultures once seen as influential would resent the new upstart. This attitude was written about and predicted during the pre-American Revolution era as the colonists searched for a separate identity.

But let's not forget the resentment of the "native Americans" - not only the Lakota, Cherokee, etc, but the descendants of the Incas and Aztecas who have seemingly transferred their resentment of the colonial Portugese and Spaniards who destroyed their cultures and populations to those crazy Americans north of the Mexican-US border. This transference makes perfect sense because to continue to blame the Spanish and Portugese in today's political landscape would be like blaming an ant for the wind blowing. One needs to hate a powerful enemy to mobilize emotional reaction, not something one can merely swat away. And of course, there's the resentment that the US calls itself "America" while implicitly excluding all those outside its political borders as such.... how arrogant, no? "We must hate the US for that" -- but let's sneak across the border so that we can partake of its benefits...) .

Anti-Americanism in the Far East is equally obvious to understand. From Iraq to India, US "foreign policy" has - for whatever reason - stepped in to fill the gaps left by the collapse of the British Colonial government and the re-emergence of religious polotical power. Since those US policies do not parallel those of the increasingly radical Islamic leadership(s), to pine for quietude and neighborliness between two groups whose leaderships (even if not the populace itself) view each other as "opponents" is to waste time and effort. That Laotians, Vietnamese, etc., despise or resent the US dates at least back to the 1800s .... "emerging"/agrarian economies ruled by autocracies must come into conflict with democracies at the levels of governmental leadership - think about it, democracy challenges the very basis of the autocratic ruler's right to rule simply by existing -- nothing else needs be said. This creates tension at the highest level despite any diplomatic words to the contrary.

Japanese and Korean anti-Americanism is intertwined, in my view. Koreans resent the Japanese for things long forgotten and resent the US for not wiping the Japanese from the face of the Earth when "we" had the chance and the "moral justification" to do so in WW2. Japan's own history is that of class division and inter-class conflict --- aka power struggles within its own society. As such, an enemy must be defined and focused on... the very presence of American military power in Japan is its own impetus for continuing resentments. That the US had the temerity to actually rebuild a destroyed "empire" like the haughty Japanese only rubbed salt in the wounds and bred more contempt for a country and people too "weak" to deserve to rule the "valiant warrior elite" that is still so revered behind the scenes in Japan.

Ex-Communist states on the Eurasian landmass --- well, it's a strange combination..... Suffice it to say that nearly all "change" is resisted by nature and it's to be expected as a new generation of havenots matures and begins to look past the curtains their own former governments threw up around their cultures/geo-political borders.

So.. I expect anti-Americanism here. At this point in time, the US is economic, military and political "top dog" in many ways - some disputable, most not. Philip's stated desire to create a "one world" mentality implicitly encourages others to express their disquietude with the real world so that this virtual fantasy becomes the safe place to escape to. By actively discouraging any sort of "braggadocio", by "encouraging" acceptance of diversity, etc. Philip invites others to swallow his liberal-Utopian vision of the "global village" in cyberspace -- while he eventually makes money off of it.

One of "mainstream American cultural mores" tends to be that strident voices are tolerated. The US was created by strident voices! So, it's simply not surprising to me that anti-Americanism is present here... even encouraged.

Hey! You do know Vegemite is an Australian invention? It's only US now cos Kraft bought it!
Ass-kissing???? Mr Blair's nose is pretty brown if you ask me...
And what exactly is our 'our problem'?

Don't worry, the Vogon demolition fleet is on the way any day now, and it'll be cleared. Gotta make room for that interstellar bypass, y'know.

P2

Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals.

Think "psycho-historian" ala Isaac Asimov's conception. While one may fairly accurately "generalize" when describing the behavior of a group, that generalization or description may not be accruate concerning the behavior or a particular individual ostensibly part of that group.

Really, that's amazing.

Er... I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I just said, isn't it?

See? That's just what Cristiano was talking about. One person speaking for their whole country as a whole as if they are the Borg Queen speaking for the drones. I was just in Austrailia two weeks ago, and I spent my time around people who weren't anti-American, and in fact was at a conference where there were about 50,000-60,000 Austrailians who were NOT anti-American.

In the past two years, I've spent some time in Canada with Canadians who aren't anti-American, in Mexico with Mexicans who aren't anti-American. A buddy of mine served a tour in Iraq, and believe it or not, brought home video of Iraqis who are not anti-American. Last year, my parents took a trip to Uganda, and had a wonderful time at the Uganda Independance Day Celebration in a stadium of 500,000+ Ugandans, including the country's president, who actually prayed for America to continue to prosper. I've had conversations with people from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas who are not anti-American.

To be fair, I've had conversations with people from all those placed who are anti-American. But that's my point. Fade, sorry, but you don't speak for Australia. Nor do I for America.

Just don't pretend that you do. Like Cristiano so, we are not a hive mind here, just as you Australians don't all think alike either.

I'm 100% of the same view as Cristiano.

Not to be a sterotypical American, but what exactly does Uganda celebrate its independence from? I'm not particularly familiar with their history.

Yes.. well, not "exactly"... and I kinda felt the "need" to type...

http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiRIOTAFR.html

They're Rioting in Africa (The Merry Minuet)
(Sheldon Harnick)

Well... I am Canadian, so.. yeah.. we dislike the Americans' foreign policies, but in the end we're tailing behind the US armed forces and pelting pebbles going "And take that too!"

However, taking a look at the current administration, the majority of people dislike what's happening. Everything from the Abu Ghareb torture scandal, to the CIA's Black Prisons, wiretapping their own citizens without a warrant, attempting to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife reserve, illegally collecting tariffs from Canadian softwood lumber DESPITE the NAFTA agreement, the formation of an FBI anti-porn unit (which doesn't restrict itself to kiddie porn, it focuses on shutting down legitimate 'consent between adults' porn as well), to the gay marriage issue. There are... a LOT of problems going on with this administration that doesn't really sit well with Canadians.

I'm not speaking for everyone here, but I'm simply pointing out the fallacies that make the trust of the current administration dubious at best. Granted.. the choice was kinda crappy, Kerry, or Bush, but the simple fact that only 21% of Americans voted as opposed to.. say.. 62% in the Israeli elections, it kinda brings the addage of "democracy begins at home"

How is that resting your case? Lewis entered the thread by saying that American culture is an oxymoron. Surreal pointed out that SL comes from the US, and he sure doesn't seem to mind that.

Is this a political discussion.