Americans can’t even fricking speak English properly, don’t get irony, I think you have to start paying attention to what the rest of the world says for once.
Most countries really dislike you, some just mildly dislike you and some utterly loathe you atm, this is because of you, your actions, and your lack of respect for anything you sign or agree to, or any country but your own. no one likes a count
ry that acts like a count. You want to see it through rose tinted spectacles fine, but spare us your confabulations.
I’m sure wherever you go in the world everyone sucks your cock and pretends the sun shines out of your arse, that’s kinda what happens when you are in the customer service industry though. What people really think is likely to be very different.
Most people though don’t hate Americans as in hate people individually, they are aware that most of the fault for your decline in both wealth and popularity is due to piss poor excuses for leaders.
It would be polite not to use eye roll, when you have put forward a statemen that could be misunderstood, further it would be nice if you could specify to whom you talk, instead of useing genral terms. Replace “you” with a better and more accurate word please, that would allow other people like myself, to better drop in to a discussion, instead of wasting time to find out about what/whom you are talking to/about.
Er not my problem. I explained, if you don’t like it take it to the judge. By which I mean you as in you personal pronoun denoting a single person as opposed to the more formal forum you that refers to a group of people or the OP or topic generally.
Calrid - one of the problems you are having is that you have never been to America. TV in america is lame, to say the least. Besides Two and a Half Men, I don’t know of a funny sitcom on US television.
The thing about Seinfeld is that it’s a very american jewish “You never get away with anything” type of thing.
A synopsis of part of one episode - "Jerry’s arch-enemy, Newman, catches Jerry and his current girlfriend making out during “Schindler’s List.”
Just that line is funny, if you like american self-hating jewish humor. It’s not if you don’t.
I don’t think people hate the US because of its television. It’s amazing and frankly puzzling to me just how widespread the distribution of american TV is. The facts seem to be working against you, here.
Many foreigners, in my experience, hate the US until they get here. Until they see Walmart. Or the mind-boggling amount of open space. Or until they experience some of the basic freedoms we have. And this not just from people from third-world hellholes.
When a friend from the Netherlands visited me, he was impressed by the fact that we could have an open fire in the backyard. I love campfires. Can’t have them where he lives. On forums, I hear a lot of people from Britain complain that they can’t have guns, or most of the knives we have here. I have both - I have never shot or stabbed anyone, by the way. Friends from Romania marvel at the array of consumer goods we have available, at prices that are unheard of over there.
America is and always has been something of a noncountry. While we have been restrictive lately with immigration (in a way - in a way we have not), america will always belong to the world. We are you. If we lack an identity, it’s okay. And we’re very materialistic - how could we not be? From the beginning, people came here for political freedom and economic opportunity. But it was you who came here.
My maternal ancestors were English - mostly Manx. Mongrels. Methodists. Poor people. My paternal grandparents from Italy - peasants. Shoemakers. Socialists, protestants, anarchists. They couldn’t flourish in Italy. They did, here. That’s what we are. We are not cultural geniuses like the Czechs. Nor geopolitical giants like Churchill. We have never had a Churchill, and we may never have a Churchill. We’re not artistic geniuses like the Russians or the French - but we were a place to thrive when the War started or the artists of St Petersburg truly were starving.
We are what we are. We’re good at what we’re good at. We can make decent wine now, which we couldn’t even forty years ago. We’re not as arrogant as we are ignorant and uncaring. We’re superficial, mercurial and materialistic. But the american dream is still very much alive. People still come here from nothing and nowhere and make fortunes. That’s what we are.
the english speaking countries need each other bad.
lets forget the european union for now.
cal–how can england help the usa.
sniv----how can the usa help england.
from
turt(arent i a nice reptile)
It’s hard to hate a nation you identify with so much and its people accordingly. Some of my best friends are from the US.
You are what you are and you are good at being what you are, your government is good at representing what you are not. I hope you get over that stumbling block.
I really don’t have a personal grudge against any person or people therein, although the whole arrogant asshole thing is kinda wearing thin. What I do have a problem with is morons who run their country into the ground because they are self righteous cocktards and they smell of sulphur.
Luckily the US is learning the hard way that not everyone is in it for the greater good no matter how patriotic they seem, some people are just twats.
Criticise everything about politics if it is a sink hole, because that is that is the only true democracy.
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!”
Albert Einstein
“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”
George Washington
"
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
“Do not… regard the critics as questionable patriots. What were Washington and Jefferson and Adams but profound critics of the colonial status quo?”
Adalai Stephenson.
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.”
Mark Twain
Dismiss them as trite or way behind your values, but they were true patriots not sheep.
“What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
I would change this quote from they do not form a class to they do not have any class.
I’m highlighting why the world distrusts America and why it is currently so unpopular not trying to establish that my country is all that popular. Wouldn’t even try I know we’re not that popular, but not in the same league as the US atm.
Ultimately I think we are quite similar. I see more of the blame on them because I know more about them. I do not (try to) place all of them blame on them.
Meh. We can return to this. I’m going to think all this over for the time being, though.
This is great stuff. Should be in the wikipedia article for USA.
I just started appreciating 2 and a half men now that I saw it in english - I got to know it in Austria, where it was dubbed. Charlie Sheen in German - although that’s not half as bad as Forest Gump in German.
I think youre right about Seinfeld, that kind of stuff is always stressy to watch when you know that, whenever someone comes up with an initiative, it is going to backfire.
Last year I decided to just make a firepit in my parents garden, by the way. I dug a deep hole and walled it with pavements tiles and bricks, it looks like an archaic oven. its inside a large courtyard, people dont seem to mind if we have a barbecue there now and then.
To Calrid:
American leaders have not generally been the worst of leaders, have they? No Churchills, but then, neither was Tony Blair or is Angela Merkel or Sarkozy, let alone Berlusconi, Putin or Ghadaffi -
American leaders are held up to high standards - higher than all others. And Obama is far from a dimwit, I’d say. The only one real relative dimwit, the only American president who was clearly inferior in intelligence to many of his foreign colleagues, was George W. Bush. Its not reasonable to judge all American leaders by the standard he set.
Yeah Bush was a saint. Reagan sold arms to Iran and the Mujahadeen now known as The Taliban et al. IIRC under Nixon the CIA funded drugs cartels to pay for the war in Vietnam, not to mention his almost impeachment. Iran had its democratic government overthrown for oil concessions in Iran in the 1950s. The list is endless. not to mention breaking the UN convention torture and illegally invading Iraq. they behave like a bunch of bullying assholes with no common sense or decency. Fully prepared to lie openly in a bid to avoid the worlds courts, and riding on their veto powers to implement unpopular and dangerously short sighted political goals.
Higher standards? Moderate standards would be good. Some sense of integrity perhaps? I haven’t even started on the coups launched in South America where dictators were ousted by the CIA and replaced with little more than mafia style drug dealers.
Standards what standards?
I’m fully prepared to admit my government has sucked for the last 40 years, but that doesn’t make it any better does it really?
Thanks, Jake. And I’m glad to hear about the fires.
Interesting that you’d mention Forrest Gump. I abhor that film. It’s offensive in many ways. And I suppose that there are people who will think that it somehow describes america. Gump is brave and loyal to a fault, but also quite stupid and subject to the dumbest of luck. Sure, it’s a cartoon character. But people used to think all americans were cowboys.
And what part of such practices is exclusive to American politics?
With America, it has suddenly become an issue. Which is good. I like that America is held to higher standards than the rest of the human race and its politics, which were never in the entire written history decent.
I cant’ imagine that it does. What country are you from?
I like the film, but not because I think it represents America. It represents happy-happy-joy-joy Hollywood filmmaking, and does so efficiently. When I go to the cinema, I want to be manipulated into suspending my thinking.
It is not a great happy-happy-joy-joy film though - it just does the trick in a weird way that is kind of funny, and translates very badly into German. I can certainly understand that if even the slightest suspicion arises that it is supposed to represent you - or where you live, that is sickening. Just be glad you dont have to watch Dutch films.
I love the firepit. Life is just not the same without a fire now and then.
no just 
