1 post tagged “if ever i could stop thinking about music and politics”

The latest Pew Global Attitudes survey showed a slight uptick in favorable attitudes towards the U.S. from other countries since the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq. That being said, what is it about the U.S. you think other countries dislike so much? 

Ummmm, let me just say this:  I don't think that people in other countries always dislike the U.S. for precisely the reasons they claim to dislike the U.S.  For one thing, in my vast experience, many of the people who seem to really dislike the U.S. know shockingly little about it.  I understand that it is not the responsibility of the world's citizenry to know everything about the U.S., and certainly the citizenry of America knows reprehensibly little (on average) about the history of the U.S. or any other nation, but if you're going to vehemently criticize something, you ought to know what you're talking about.

I remember a while ago, some French guy traveled around the U.S. for, I don't know, 6 months or something, trying to revisit Tocqueville's great journey through a young nation.  And he comes away, of course--because he's French, yo--with all these great observations that speak directly to the American soul.  Or some such shit.  I couldn't believe The Atlantic published that nonsense.  If I traveled around, say, France...or Japan...or a country that was as racially and geographically heterogenous as the U.S. is for, say, 6 months and then professed to have special insight into that culture, people would call me an asshole and a fool.  Traveling around for 6 months and hitting up all the freak shows you can find doesn't teach you much of anything, except that you're the sort of person who thinks you can learn a lot about a nation from its freak shows.

But it's typical.  Everyone thinks they know everything about the U.S. 

Also, I find it amusing at times that Europe and Japan now try to claim some kind of moral high ground in which they, as nations, have done no wrong.  The Japanese are keen to tell people that they are a peace-loving people who have no nuclear weapons and are constitutionally unable to start wars; they fail to mention that the history of Japan until their defeat in World War II is, as with most nations, fairly well filled with war and was a particularly nasty bloodbath in the run-up to WWII, and that they are only peace-loving and unarmed now because, essentially, MacArthur made them be.  And those fair French and good Germans who dislike the U.S. sometimes seem to have forgotten their own countries' roles in the fucking up of the world; despite the fact that Africa and the Middle East are still reeling from activities that are attributable to those nations (not to mention the bloody Dutch!), it is the U.S. that is responsible, and it is the U.S. that "doesn't care about other countries" because we have so far failed to fix them (and in places, the U.S. has undoubtedly made things worse, even before the Iraq War).

Listen, it certainly isn't that I have some rosy vision of the U.S.  I have a very thorough understanding of what the U.S. did in Indochina (and, ahem, what the French did, although apparently that is no longer noteworthy--it sure made for some beautiful architecture, though) and in Mexico and Central America and even South America.  I know the CIA invaded Australia, and I still find that hilarious ("hand over the Tim Tams, or we shoot!").  I know.  But I also know that the U.S. is not actually responsible for every single problem that exists in the world today, although you would think that every individual American is literally responsible for every single problem in the world today from listening to some of these people ("yes, yes, I actually bombed Hiroshima all by myself, now fuck off or I'll do it to you, too").

In the current election cycle, which will go on forever and ever, I find it especially ridiculous when we're accused of being too racist or sexist to elect whichever one of them.  Uh, right.  I look around the developed world and, oh, yes, I certainly see an impressive racial and gender diversity in the leaders (oh, especially France).  I always manage to forget somehow that the U.S. is the only nation where racism still exists.  Just like I always manage to forget that the U.S. is the only nation in which slavery existed and that this was the last place where it ever existed.  Right? 

I was suddenly reminded of the videos we had to watch in French 101, some telenovela kind of thing that was supposed to give us "cultural insight" while also teaching us how to order aperitifs.  In one of them, a poodle is fucking yapping away, like poodles do, and one of the main characters says to the dog, "Oh, are you talking Arab talk?"  I about shit my pants.  Listen, Frenchie, that kind of thing is not acceptable in America.  Also, you might think about wearing a bra, especially on days like this that are apparently VERY cold.  Because between the racism and the nipples, I'm having difficulty focusing.

*sigh*  I'm just not drinking the right Kool-Aid.