Americans and the Rest of the World
I keep hearing about the supposed “arrogance” of my fellow citizens when it concerns the way we act in other countries, but I also keep coming across situations like this:
A large number of foreigners across the world are convinced they are
very knowledgeable about America. Every time I travel overseas, the
locals tell me all about America, despite the fact that they have never
lived there. And most of what they know about America varies from
shallow to misleading to downright wrong.The converse is partially true - many Americans are quite ignorant
about the rest of the world but are not afraid to admit that they are
ignorant and ask elementary questions. This, unfortunately, is
interpreted to reveal the stupidity and ignorance of Americans, instead
of the honesty that it actually is.
So who’s being arrogant here?
I found this ignorance especially bad during the saga Katrina. What was most worrying was all the journos pontificating who knew sod all about either American or Louisiana law/history.
Comment by Andrew Ian Dodge - October 30, 2006 3:47 am
I hear this canard a lot, and frankly, I think it is crap. I find that Americans may not know much about other countries, but most of them know something, and like you say, will at least admit that. It seems to me that most foreigners are abysmally ignorant of American culture especially.
Let’s face it, we’re the big dog, and if you want to run with the big dog, you’d think you’d want to know something about it’s habits. We don’t care about other countries because they generally don’t affect us much. That may not be fair, but that’s life.
Comment by chunt31854 - October 30, 2006 10:31 am
Well, I had fun in Hokkaido in the 90s. I had to explain to people that not every American had a gun, and most certainly not all of us liked drinking Budweiser.
Comment by meep - October 31, 2006 6:01 am
I was traveling on a bus in Sinai, and they had a video going (intermittently). First there was an Egyptian movie, which I tried to follow without subtitles (unfortunately, they didn’t finish it), then some bellydancing highlights, then “Breakdown”, with Kurt Russell. I remember thinking at the time, if this is the only exposure to American culture these people are getting, then what do they think of America?
Comment by chunt31854 - October 31, 2006 10:17 am
Chunt, if they take their worldview from Hollywood movies they only have themselves to blame. I don´t believe that Indians are going into a song-and-dance every ten minutes or that Chinese really can fly across buildings or that French chicks are all annoyingly self-absorbed and capricious (though the last one is an open question).
Comment by werner - November 1, 2006 12:08 pm
I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but some Germans can never forgive America for bringing them democracy, prosperity and peace, and then flying to the moon and all that. The idea that Americans have no culture and education is therapeutic.
I must have heard every prejudice there is about America. An interesting offshoot of this particular one is that many Germans believe they know more about war and hardship and suffering because they lost WW2 and were bombed and had millions of refugees. Whereas Americans are naive because their country was never destroyed. You get smug idiots born in the 60s and 70s who tell you that we Germans are wiser because “we know how it is”. Which is why we didn´t go into Iraq with the divisions we don´t have.
Of course, there is hardly a German under 70 who has seen war, while there are millions of Americans. Interestingly, the militant pacifism and anti-Americanism is strongest among the post-war generation now in power, those who wanted to opt out of the cold war, and who are still living in cloud cuckoo land when it comes to security, the economy, or anything else really. It is all just a cheap way of reclaiming some moral high ground after losing a genocidal war, and abdicating responsibility for the here and now as well. “We have sinned but seen the light and now we are better than you”. Very convenient. (Although the Jews suffered much worse, and at the hands of Germans, nobody here ascribes the highest wisdom to the Israelis. We feel entitled to lecture them as well)
That is my answer to the question who is being arrogant and naive.
1f62Comment by werner - November 1, 2006 3:21 pm
Wow! These Germans sound a lot like some (American) Southerners I know. Of course the Southerners have even less excuse, their country having been defeated more than 140 years ago!
Are there Germans driving around with Nazi flag license plates on their pickup trucks?
Comment by Ken - November 2, 2006 1:41 pm
No, that would be illegal and most of them would not want to, I´m glad to say. I don´t think there are many parallels between Germans and Southerners. my point is, we reject the past but the holier-than-thou attitude and the pacifism (which only gets applied whenever the US is doing something) seems like a way to get back at the victors of WW2. Get back at the US who brought us democracy, but not the Soviets who divided the country and turned millions into refugees. Completely irrational. My compatriots still have an enormous hang up about having been liberated by those “unrefined Americans”!
Too bad I´m too old to leave now.
Comment by werner - November 6, 2006 6:04 pm