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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Except I'm an actual and whole Irish person born, raised and currently living in Ireland who hates potatoes. And who is also a non-fighting hippie unless she is really pressed. And doesn't drink very much either. Sorry Chris!

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Except I'm an actual and whole Irish person born, raised and currently living in Ireland who hates potatoes. And who is also a non-fighting hippie unless she is really pressed. And doesn't drink very much either.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Not the US, the PNAC; please pay attention. Big business/old money, represented by particular administrations. (Shadow Government, if you go for those labels)

Laying it out Chrisisall

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Call for PirateNews. PirateNews, please pick up any house phone.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Sorry Chris!

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Originally posted by Geezer:


Call for PirateNews. PirateNews, please pick up any house phone.

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Originally posted by rue:
Just a short note before getting back on topic: 'ugly' was in quotes and referred to "The Ugly American", probably a sideways reference and too far back in time for most people here, hateful was in the spirit of that book.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
[BAnd your point is...umm, what? There IS no PNAC? They're far from hidden, Geezer.

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Originally posted by oldenglanddry:
I'm not sure if I would say that is is sad but it is certainly true that most of America still does'nt realise just how much their nation is vilified by people in supposedly "friendly" countries all over the world.
I live in a relitively small seaside-town on the east coast of England that happens to have a large foriegn -language school in it and almost all of the students that i host in my home from all over the world declare a dislike and even hatred of the USA. Most of them see you as war-mongering arogants who are out to bleed the world white.
So, how are you going to prove them wrong?
For myself, I only have to read some of the threads on this board to cause me to heave a sigh of resignation at your country's innevitable future.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Except I'm an actual and whole Irish person born, raised and currently living in Ireland who hates potatoes. And who is also a non-fighting hippie unless she is really pressed. And doesn't drink very much either. Sorry Chris!

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The Irish are also known to be consumate liars.

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Originally posted by Causal:

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Originally posted by rue:
"I do like the conceit that you display in thinking you can describe all the 300 million people ..." As do you, and the author of the piece:

about the French (In their heart of hearts, many French people still believe that to be true.); about everyone not American (A pattern of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion); about intellectuals, specifically of the French persuasion (The kind of anti-Americanism fostered by French intellectuals down the centuries revolves around intense dislike of what America is - not what it does.) and even about the US (The US represents, I suppose, a set of ideas about human conduct which makes approval or disapproval of its behaviour much more important to Americans).

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Not to get all overly philosophical on you, but it seems like the trouble is that one can't accurately talk about a large group of people without some amount of generalizing. The danger to that, of course, is that there will obviously always be people who don't fit the generalization. But if one doesn't engage in some degree of generalization, how can one ever talk about a large group?? It's a quandary.

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(Everything DTH posted)

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I think a large part of it is that the rest of the world KNOWS we are capable of better, and therefore holds us to that standard.

And becomes annoyed as hell when we don't bother to hold ourselves to it.

Just a thought.

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
Okay, with nothing but love for the posters here and a huge amount of generalisation and in no particular order, here are some of the issues I have with the US as a whole:

You consider yourselves to be more important than the rest of the world. You don't even realise that you do, but you do. If it's in the best interests of America, then it's in the best interests of the world in general. You just don't seem to grasp that different cultures and countries work in different ways.

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With this attitude you have, for decades, interfered in the affairs of other nations, often with disastrous consequences, because you wanted to make things "safer" for the you "The Free World."

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You consider yourselves to be the champion of democracy and the leader of the "free world". In reality you actively support monarchies and...snipped because I don't want my post to be too long...to erupt into civil war and/or general chaos. Lately anyway.

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I also think it's pretty crappy that anyone who doesn't agree with the Iraq war has to make a song and dance about supporting the troops. Disagreeing with a war is NOT a personal attack on the men and women who dedicate themselves to protecting your country.

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Invading Iraq had nothing to do with protecting your country. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. You've wasted thousands of lives and won't admit you made a terrible mistake.

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The whole anti-France thing made me sick to my stomach - and once again proved that your ideas on democracy are the weirdest I've ever come across. You're fighting for democracy and freedom but vilify a country that genuinely believes you're making a mistake and exercises it's democratic right to vote against you???

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I also despise the fact that you've labelled the French as cowards. Why? Because they were invaded by the Nazi's in World War II? Do you know what the French people went through back then? The sacrifices those in the French resistance made? The horrors they faced on a daily basis?

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Nothing seems to be important unless it happens in your country, or effects your country in some way. You think that the world changed when 9/11 happened. It didn't. It just landed on your doorstep.

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And I can appreciate how it's a horrific tragedy for your people and how you will never forget the events of that day, but it is nowhere near the biggest tragedy the world has ever faced.

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More than 2,000 people died that day. More than 500,000 people died in Rwanda in 1994. A *lot* more than 2,000 are dying right now in Darfur.

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Your military is huge, aggressive as hell, everywhere it shouldn't be and nowhere it should be.

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You have absolutely no separation of Church and State. Most of your country is up in arms (literally!) at the very thought. You froth at the mouth at ideas like secular government

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free health care and social welfare

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and conveniently forget that many progressive, democratic countries (including your biggest ally - the UK) have all of those things and haven't devolved into some kind of communist 1984ish nightmare.

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You think "liberal" is an insult. I will *never* understand that.

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You have held yourselves up to be fair and law abiding and yet have justified acts of absolute savagery and lawlessness because you're "protecting your nation."...snipped again...But of course the American media don't mention it. Ever. That would be unpatriotic.

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You assume that America is a great place to live. It is - if you're a multi-National corporation. You care far more about money than you do people.

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Which I guess is why you pass out at the thought of free healthcare. (Hope you're not one of the huge percentage of Americans who can't afford health insurance!)

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I could go on but all this negativity is disrupting my karma. Again, I really don't mean to upset anyone

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and I fully expect to be flamed

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and this is not aimed at every man, woman and child in the United States. I just wanted to let you know how things look from this side of the Atlantic.

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
You think "liberal" is an insult. I will *never* understand that.

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Originally posted by yinyang:
"All generalizations are false, including this one."

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
The whole anti-France thing made me sick to my stomach...

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

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I also despise the fact that you've labelled the French as cowards. Why? Because they were invaded by the Nazi's in World War II? Do you know what the French people went through back then? The sacrifices those in the French resistance made? The horrors they faced on a daily basis?

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Because they have lost every war since Napoleon, it is insensitive and really pointless but it is true that they have done horribly in protecting their country for a very long time.

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Originally posted by DesktopHippie:
You have absolutely no separation of Church and State. Most of your country is up in arms (literally!) at the very thought.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:
...the majority of the people who have these undesirable traits are the conservatives, the conservatives who believe that the U.S. can do no wrong, who believe that the Bible should be the law of the land, who believe that the rest of the world should bow before our greatness and bend to our whims.

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SignyM quotes factoids, which have no meaning in and of themselves, but are meant to lead one to believe that the US is all about military takeovers.... We spend a lot of money on high-tech weaponry to reduce our own casualties and reduce civilian casualties when we're fighting people who don't care about, and in recent cases actively cause, civilian casualties.

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manipulation of the world economy...

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and our complete control of the UN

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
On a related topic: I find it very interesting--and correct me if I'm wrong, far-flung foreign browncoats--that Americans are the only folks on earth calling other American's un-American. Nobody's getting on British tv and calling other englishmen "un-British." No frenchman would dream of calling another frenchman un-French. In other countries, as I understand it, there's a basic sense of solidarity. But we American's accuse our fellow Americans of hating America at the drop of a hat. What is it in our national character that makes us so willing to divide our nation into "real" and "false" Americans? Perhaps if we can deal with so-called anti-Americanism at home, the perspective of the rest of the world would become clear.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:
[B...the majority of the people who have these undesirable traits are the conservatives, the conservatives who believe that the U.S. can do no wrong, who believe that the Bible should be the law of the land, who believe that the rest of the world should bow before our greatness and bend to our whims.

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Originally posted by rue:
Causal,

Some people call that type of person FredG was talking about Bush's 'base'. It's not like they don't exist. If anything, they have elements even crazier than that. So, yes, there is a part of politics that does resemble what FredG was describing, and yes, they are ultra-conservative, AND - they even vote republican ! Imagine.

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The only nation to use an atomic weapon yes, the only nation to use a WMD no. By our current definition the British, French and Germans did in WW1, and Iraq did more recently.

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Originally posted by rue:
Causal,

And yet, there is a 'base' Bush panders to, even he apparently thinks they share those characterstics (on the whole).

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Originally posted by Causal:
I consider myself socially conservative, and abhor the Bush administration.

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Originally posted by rue:
And I wanted to address the 'categorization' thing. Because categories are arrived at through the human form of 'fuzzy logic' they are fuzzy. But without categories language would be impossible. The word 'bird' could never exist - each and every thing would have its own name. The issue is to make meaningful generalizations rather than throw out the whole notion of generalizing. So a 'bible-thumping conservative' category might include a bunch of war-hawks, a few rapturites, a portion of homophobes, and so on. It doesn't mean everyone matches on every descriptor.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:

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Originally posted by Causal:
I consider myself socially conservative, and abhor the Bush administration.

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That's the thing, it's not about liberals or conservatives. There's plenty of virtue in both camps (at least as far as voters go), but those who lust for power only use those ideologies as a means to an end.

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The neo-cons hoodwinked conservatives, through fear and sleight of hand, into supporting their grandiose plans.

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To be fair, they fooled the liberals just as effectively, basically cowing them into submission from 9/11 on. Only recently have a few of them begun to re-grow their nerve.

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The fact that more and more 'real' conservatives are coming out against Bush is promising. Maybe soon we'll wake up from this national nightmare.

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Originally posted by rue:

"SignyM quotes factoids, which ... are meant to lead one to believe that the US is all about military takeovers" etc

See, I didn't read that into the posting. It pretty straightforwardly explains why the US gets so much focus. Lots of military spending, lots of troops and bases, lots of economic and political leverage exerted all over the world for all to see ... no wonder people notice.

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Originally posted by clarkent913:
As an "American" living in Canada, which someone here referred to as being similar in culture (and they would be right, but don't mention that to any Canadians...they don't like that )I've found myself in some heated conversations. Usually because some, and I can say this, stupid American did something stupid (in example, one conversation was over a gated community asking for one person to remove their Christmas wreath, that was in the shape of a peace sign, because they thought it was anti-war and, so, disrespectful to the troops) In my friends eyes, the Canadians eyes, it was an "American" thing. I had to remind him that gated communities happen here too, in Canada, and that with over 300 million people living in the States and 30 million living in Canada you're just bound to have more stupid 'People' scenarios happening in the States. It's just the odds are in that favor. Just after that conversation a man in Vancouver had to take down his Santa, while living in a gated community, because he'd placed a crown of thorns on it's head.

And, also, like someone said here. America's a huge country, separated by water and another country (The Pacific Ocean between Hawaii & Canada between Alaska) And, to be honest, it still hasn't formed into a cohesive whole yet. Gay marriage is legal here, but not there. One school in the south had their very first non-segregated prom the other day. There's many of these issues and they differ wildly, dependent on where you are. So different parts of America are at odds with each other, let alone the rest of the world. A person from New York is, most likely, going to be a different person than one from Okefenokee, Georgia. (But, there, I'm making a generalization. Cultured and open minded people live everywhere, there's just more of them in certain areas)

I was sitting in a rec room at a hostel in Ireland when the first bombs started falling on Iraq, a few years ago, and people, from all over the world were sitting with me. And not one of them made the generalizations to hate me, or, as they say, hate on me, because I was American. They understood that I didn't make policy for my country. And they also understood how divided my nation was. That America was, and still is, at a crossroads.

I'm hoping, with the new election coming up, we make the right choices. Because that seems to be where the major faults lie. Our foreign policy. And, to be honest, I'm not sure how we can fix that. You vote one person out, but the next one seems to play the same game. Though, and not to make this political, I don't remember Clinton inspiring such animosity, over seas, that Bush seems to garner.

Anyway, long rant, I'm sorry, but I've been a lurker here, posted a few things, a long time ago, but this issue just bugs me. As soon as the world sees we're all just people, and by all, I mean the world over, subject to the happenings of our governments, things might get better.

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Originally posted by rue:
But given that it is mostly a two-party system, you can't jettison the extremes b/c they, in effect, define the party. So if you are to take middle of the road environmentalism to its extreme you'd have the span of the democratic party. If you are to take middle of the road pro-business profit-seeking to its extreme you'd have the span of the repubican party. The extremes do buttress the moderate stance and can't be hived-off.

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Originally posted by clarkent913:
I don't remember Clinton inspiring such animosity, over seas, that Bush seems to garner.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
How can those fact possibly be meaningless?

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Or put it another way, imagine that we have several Chinese, Japanese, or Russian military installations within our borders. Under what circumstances would you consider that "meaningless"?

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Then, in context...

I just saw an interesting movie, called Trinity and Beyond which describes in detail our pursuit of unassailable atomic superiority, and the 330+ tests we conducted - often using soldiers (and sometimes civilians) - to achieve it. The point is not that we tested more weapons or tested them under egregious circumstances, but that it is documented that we were looking for absolute supremacy.

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And don't forget that so far, we are the only nation to have used WMD on a civilian population, not once but twice.

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the Panama Canal, the price of oil

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or saving various nations from "communism"

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I didn't say we HAVE control, but even now we have veto power through our membership in the Security Council. We may not be able to make the UN do what we want, but we can prevent them from doing what we don't want.

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Originally posted by Causal:
Maybe you could simplify the conservative ideology as something like "I want the governement to leave me alone as much as possible" and the liberal ideology as something like "I want the government to address social problems".

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Originally posted by rue:
How is it that I read the thread and think I'm caught up, but when I get back to it posts have been inserted where I thought I already read? Not a complaint 'cause I thank Haken and friends MOST sincerely for making this site and keeping it going. And this little thing that I think I notice every now and again is no big deal.

But it's making me feel like I'm slipping in my younger old age. Does anyone else notice this? Or is it me just rushing through carelessly?

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Originally posted by Causal:

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Originally posted by clarkent913:
I don't remember Clinton inspiring such animosity, over seas, that Bush seems to garner.

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Nor do I. It may have something to do with starting an aggressive war against a country who did not attack us first. That's not just a betrayal of Bush's supposed conservative values; that's downright (gasp) un-American (in the sense of being contrary to what had hitherto been accepted as standard American values).

Interestingly, the criticism of America has mostly to do with the war in Iraq, not the one in Afghanistan. I've done some speculating as to the cause of that. I suspect that when push comes to shove, most would say that we were right in attacking Afghanistan after 9/11. The Taliban clearly had a connection to Al Qaida in general and bin Ladin in particular. But the same can't be said of Iraq. Although I disagree with the majority of the "Bush lied" arguments, I do agree that Bush wanted to go to war, and used every justification at his disposal to make that happen. And that's enough for me to want him the hell out of the Oval Office.

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I do remember Clinton getting a lot of grief over Milosovic. A similar scenario,tyrant, slaughtering people, etc. His motives were questioned then, like Bush's are now. There was even a movie about it "Wag the Dog". But, whatever the case, it didn't garner the American people animosity from the rest of the world. And he also got grief for bombing Iraq, as well, though there were no troops involved, we did drop some bombs. But, again, no animosity was given. Or even his early attempts at getting at al qaeda, in Africa, bombing, what appeared to be, schools and such. Still, nothing.

But, you're right. Afghanistan seems to drop out of view, when people demonstrate or just disagree with the war. And there's more than just Americans there, there's Canadians, British, Australians...on and on (The coalition of the willing, remember ) And it, too, seems to be a losing battle, the Taliban coming back, troops being killed, no end in sight.

The truth is, America will pay for this, in the long run. For every family, in Iraq, or Afghanistan, that suffers a death, who knows how far that will reverberate into the future. If Bin Laden, in his reasoning for 9/11, referred to the Crusades, then where will this war take us?

Back on subject...

The thing is...If Americans think they're better than everyone else, and everyone else thinks they're better than Americans...is anyone really the better for it?