Posted on 11/13/2008 11:06:15 PM PST by Dawnsblood
I'm delighted that Barack Obama has been elected president and that foreigners are delighted, too. But I never viewed eliciting delight from non-Americans a reason for choosing a president, including one of color.
No other people so fervently seek the admiration of others as do Americans. On the left, that tendency is obvious. There has been much talk of Obama "rebranding" America as a liberal land of race-blind equality. It is remarkable how many Americans, young people especially, yearn for an "openness seal of approval" from people in countries whose records on racial integration is worse than ours.
The right suffers its own hypersensitivity, though that gets manifested in different ways. If a Frenchman claims that the cheese is better in his country -- much less goes off on a general anti-American tear -- the super-patriots launch a carpet-bombing attack on everything that has happened in his country for the last 20 centuries.
The left tries to please, and the right tries to hit back. Either way, it's an overreaction.
America is a land of ideas, not ethnicity. That's its strength. If a change in how America deals with the world is what voters wanted, then a president of any color could have done it. On this score, John McCain would have been a vast improvement over the current White House occupant. Obama's job is to offer a sage foreign policy -- not heartwarming proof that Americans will elect a biracial leader with a Muslim middle name.
Europeans do like to critique the United States, and Obama's election has them responding with awe. That's fine, but their acclaim is based on an outdated notion of American race relations.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
One of the grossest things to me is being in another country and seeing Americans trashing their own country to seem “cool.” It has the air of, “Oh yeah, Americans totally suck. Except ME of course.” Meanwhile, their audience is laughing at (not with) them for being such easy marks to sell out their own country...but the speaker thinks he/she just impressed the hell out of ‘em.
The group can be "race", as in Hitler's right-wing application of socialism, or "class" in Marx/Trotsky/Lenin. Either way, the identity of the individual is subsumed into the collective.
Wow, I like a Harrop column for once. I find the need to get “approval” from foreign citizens downright whacky. What does it serve?
I honestly like her. She is right at least 5% of the time... That beats most of the left :)
> One of the grossest things to me is being in another country and seeing Americans trashing their own country to seem “cool.” It has the air of, “Oh yeah, Americans totally suck. Except ME of course.”
Whenever a Yank does that around me, I ask him/her if they really travelled half-way around the globe to Bad-Mouth their country to foreigners. Then I use words like “self-Respect” and “Traitors” and “Benedict Arnold”. And then I always add that they will never hear a Kiwi bad mouth his country to anyone. Ever. Or a Frenchman, for that matter...
There is a NZ Herald Columnist who is an American transplant. She has spent a fair bit of column-space telling us all how ashamed she is to be American, and how she tells people she’s Canadian instead. I’d post her column except the Herald is on the Do Not Post list.
I can completely understand why you Yanks export people like this: it would drive you nuts to be in the same country as they are, whinging and moaning about how ugly America is. But next time do me a favor: teach them that its even better in the ChiComs or in Somalia or Zimbabwe. I don’t need any more of ‘em here in New Zealand: I’ve had a gutsful!
Good points. Never quite thought of it like that. Thanks.
As someone who is not an American, I think it serves to salve a national feeling of cultural inferiority.
Why Americans should have such a feeling is harder to understand - you certainly shouldn’t have one judging by the way your own culture is so dominant in the world today. Its probably related to being a young country, not having all these centuries and centuries of history and tradition and ancient architecture everywhere. But, the point that’s often forgotten is that America is no longer a really young country. As a political entity, the USA is actually one of the oldest nations in the world today.
American cultural inferiority could be due to America’s ignorance of it’s culture. If you look abroad and see Dostoevsky, Dickens, Kurosawa, Fellini, Adam Smith, the Beatles, Beethoven, Newton, etc., but don’t consider that America gave the world John Ford, Ansel Adams, Buster Keaton, Kubrick, Melville, Friedman, Frank Lloyd Wright, D.W. Griffith, rock and roll, Edison, Vonnegut, etc., then you can feel like you haven’t earned your hegemony. :-)
It is remarkable how many Americans, young people especially, yearn for an “openness seal of approval” from people in countries whose records on racial integration is worse than ours.
Perhaps thats because all the Ford, Keaton, Adams, Kubrick, Disney, Friedman etc...tends to get masked by Springer, Barr, Couric, whoever thought of “you’ve got it made” and all those drossy soap operas that you have inflicted upon the world :)
I have always had the impression that the USA (and not only the leftists) rather desire to be admired than accepted.
People with leftist tendencies always bad mouth their home country. The will eventually also bad mouth the other country, but the self critizism needs to come first so you appear unbiased...
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