Yankee Go Home

Why are Americans or is America hated?

What is it about the USA that seems to annoy everyone else in the world? Have you ever wondered? What first springs to mind is that as a nation we are rich, powerful and influential beyond our numbers and everyone else is jealous. Despite the fact that America is a polyglot nation of mixed ethnic and racial pedigree we are generally considered to be culturally challenged, overbearing and aggressive. Probably all true.

Outside the USA and getting very little media attention in the US is covert action by the CIA. This is also true, we meddle, and it isn't all that covert. Then we like to go on "crusades" or some other unfortunate choice of words to make the world safe for democracy, to protect the American way of life or to right wrongs. All worthy goals of course, but not something that the rest of the world wants to have rammed down their throats. I think it was a Japanese writer that coined the phrase "Pax Americana" to sort of describe the current political, social, economic world situation. As the term implies, we will eventually follow the course of history and our time will come as it did with the Roman Empire.

In a way we have to put all of this in perspective. The USA is now unequivocally the most powerful nation in the world and we don't have to share. We like to get world opinion on our side before we act, but at the moment, we don't need it. The USA has really grown and become this world power only since World War II and (at least from a historical perspective) is a newcomer to the stage. We've obviously made great strides since the industrial revolution of the late 19th century, but it was only in the last that pieces have all fallen together in our favor.

Even when we try and help another nation out without military intervention, we are often misguided or disruptive and consequently disliked. One argument is that if you feed poor people, they survive, breed, increase and then have the same needs for basic rights and sustenance as you and I and that someone else is supposed to provide it. Obviously these folks are on the lower rungs of the social scale and the folks on the top rungs feel uncomfortable. Refugee camps are not great places to live your life. They are supposed to be temporary. The other thing is that we do not always understand all the issues and what needs to be done to improve the quality of life of other people so when we try to help we just foul it all up. Basically you can't please everyone and there are no simple solutions.

It is hard for us at home to comprehend, but the "American way" of which we can be justly proud is not the only way. A group of American tourists in Paris can easily be picked out by the way they dress, they're generally overweight, generally loud, generally obnoxious, generally competitive and generally unable to speak the local tongue. But we do have the cash, so we are generally welcomed if not warmly. Not to mention the fact that a group of drunken Germans might just be able to make us look meek in comparison. Anyway, the fact is, there is more to life than McDonalds, Disney World and wide-open spaces. That's why we travel.

To some extent we are also not completely understood ourselves. Like the rest of Latin America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand we are a land of immigrants. Most other countries have centuries of history and have evolved in ways that we have not. Arabs think the USA is European and run by Jews. The Chinese can't believe we survive on a diet without rice and obviously we over consume. Most everyone thinks the United Nations is a tool of the US. Gringos, Yankees (which really annoys our Southern friends), Missionary, (what was the British term for Americans during the war - "oversexed, overpaid and over here") are all ways to describe an American that you don't know. Unfortunately we are better known for our smart bombs than we are for our automobiles or our soccer team, although a few people outside our borders have heard of the dream team or Mike Tyson. An immigration officer in Manilla once asked me if Michael Jordan was the guy with AIDS.

Of course I have the answer to all of this: join the Peace Corps, elect Nelson Mandela as our next president, give our military to the Dalai Lama and give all our foreign aid to France and let them take care of it.

(by Marc Adami, )