Sensenmann said:
This is no hate speech... Just wondering, and it angers me when people say that they, Americans are the best.
Infact, by doing this many who hate America for it's stereotypical hate of ROW. So its the clone of that french thread, but reversed and for America.
So why do you think America is Awesome.
NO HATE SPEECH
Edit: Changed ROE to ROW. Im sure America dont hate ROE.
Well, one thing I think a lot of people don't get internationally is that nobody is more critical of America than Americans. Bashing the US is generally an issue because the people who do it from outside the country do it from a position of ignorance, or in some self-empowering way that puts things entirely out of context. This leads to cases where you'll find even a lot of the more anti-American US citizens going "what?1?!?" and responding with what seems to be a lot of jingoism in response. A good example of this is when you see arguements here where I start talking about the differance between "can't" and "won't" in regards to what someone thinks about America's intervention or potential invervention in a specific matter.
For the most part it's no big thing, I mean the dominant world power is never especially popular with the rest of the globe. The information age has made expressing that lack of approval easier than ever before, and admittedly has also been broadcasting American
culture to the 4 corners of the earth, where a lot of the dislike of America is a backlash to the slow globalization of the planet under American ideas, and the degredation of local cultures and national identity (note the word 'slow'). While dated I remember reading articles from nations like France, Germany, Spain, Russia, and even places like Thailand and Korea pretty much declaring Aaron Spelling the devil, and going on about how they needed to do something about the show "Melrose Place" which was becoming an international phenomena, and had people MORE interested in American trends than those locally, wanting to make things like they are here, and knowing more about the US (through the eyes of that show) than they did about events and locations in their own country. This is part of the entire phenomena where it's been argued that the US has been conquering the world with things like "The Big Mac", "Starbucks", and similar chains and media-based intellectual properties more efficiently than any military could ever have done. While I've never read anything saying so, going by things related to TV and movies I've read, I wouldn't be surprised if the international interest in video game deveopment is *partially* in an attempt to curtail the American slant on all the video games coming into people's homes. Even when you look at the material Japan was distributing, it's been argued for a long time that Japanese popular culture and American popular culture are similar enough to be almost the same thing, especially when you consider how much of Japanese pop culture was taken directly from the US. All together I believe this causes a lot of resentment, even if the general populance doesn't quite identify it that way, their leaders and trend watchers DO view it that way and that influances their attitudes as come through in their news, and the spin put on things, and that does in turn influance the people. Right now the US is in a wierd love/hate position with a lot of the world.
It's also noteworthy that being the world leader on merits of being the last remaining super power, that we also have the entire "world police" thing going. That analogy isn't because we're literally cops, as we were never appointed to that role, but rather we wind up acting that way. Whenever something needs to be done, we're inevitably the people who wind up having to do it, or at least form the backbone. Everyone hates us, much like a cop, when we're sitting there calling people on violating sanctions, limiting their trade (and the money coming into their economy), and other things, but at the same time whenever there is a problem the first thing that ALWAYS occurs is people looking to America for leadership and wanting to know what we do. That's one of the big reasons why there is so much global interest in American elections. During the last presidential race, I remember reading stuff on forums like this about people complaining about how the people in their country cared more about what was going on in the US, than right there in their own back yard.
At any rate, the point is that I don't think your really going to find many Americans who are going to sit there and scream the praises of the US from the rooftops. I mean honestly, we spend most of our rime doing exactly the opposite. Mostly when you see stuff like that it's from out of context, outside criticism. Outside criticisms that are made well and with an actual understanding of what's going on and the big picture, actually join the chorus of internal American bellyaching.
There is a lot that makes America awesome, stepping up despite how people treat us as opposed to just becoing isolationist again (which a lot of people want to), and even as a guy who thinks we need to backpedal on our morality a lot, I think there is a lot to be said for how well we've stuck to our principles even when it's been stupid. Of course for people out there bashing the US, they don't want to concede the morality issue because we wind up inconveinencing them at times. Nor do they tend to look at things from a big picture sense, or put things into the context of what the US can do, as opposed to what it WILL do. Most nations don't like to think about how the US has the abillity to destroy even a united globe, or that we could in theory pretty much conquer and annex any nation we wanted to. Looking at a measured response, rarely do people criticizing the US look at it from the perspective of all the options we actually have n the table (sane and otherwise) and put what we choose to do in that context, rather than the context of how whatever we did affected them right then and there. When you look at the big picture both in terms of acting with less "force" (militarily, economically, or whatever applies) or acting with more force, and what that would have caused, in a lot of cases bad things happen in a bad situation, but we're generally taking the least of availible evils, even from an international perspective.
Probably not the answer your looking for, but this is how I see things.
I'll also point out that you'll notice that while I oftentimes take a very pro-American (and very militant view) in a lot of global discussions, I also tend to be very critical of our own goverment, media, and other aspects of American society. I am hardly a mindless flag waver even if I am accused of being one in some threads. Heck, I'm frequently expressing positions that are in direct opposition to the political party in power and a lot of the desicians being made. People seem to miss at times, that while I'll talk about how I think an issue should be appoached when we're involved, I don't always agree with having been involved to begin with. Also I think people rarely bother to pay attention when I'm talking about short term cost against long term benefits, that could be 40-50 or even 100 years down the road. Doing something realy "bad" and unpleasant now, doesn't mean that in the big picture it's not going to do a lot more good. Agree with it or not, the end results I'm suggesting are usually positive for everyone involved, even the victims of unpleasantness right at the moment.
