Everyone hates us
I just spent three weeks travelling around New Zealand staying in hostels with people from all over the world. I’ve heard for years that the rest of the world hates Americans and it was interesting to here it first hand from almost everyone I met. They definitely hate us. I thought I’d share some of the thoughts and opinions I heard while travelling.
First of all, because we are represented by George Bush who is universally considered both an idiot and a thoroughly evil man, we are all considered likewise to be evil idiots. Many people think we are doubly so because we actually elected him. They think we all support him. Little do they know that only 28% of the voting aged population actually voted for him in the last election. I guess they may be right about that 28% .
They also think we are all a bunch of religious extremist akin to those in the Muslim countries. Again, this is probably do to Bush. His making comments on how Christian he is before he pulls the trigger on innocent civilians doesn’t help matters. It probably also doesn’t help that that religious extremist are very pro-Bush.
They are all thoroughly pissed off about the United States doing whatever the hell it wants without a care for the rest of the world. We break treaties at will and won’t get involved with anything that might hint at respectability. As the world’s leading polluter, we won’t even touch the Kyoto Protocol. There was also talk of several humanitarian aid treaties that almost all of the other countries signed onto and the United States shunned. With that we basically sent a message to the rest of the world that helping others doesn’t fit anywhere in our agenda.
I also found it interesting that those people that I talked to who hadn’t visited the United States were rather afraid of doing so. They think our people will treat foreigners the way our government does. Those who had visited were very shocked to find out that most Americans were actually nice and occasionally helpful. It sounded like they expected us all to spit on them in scorn for not being Americanand would possibly lynch them if they looked at us wrong.
Another fun fact: If you live outside the US it is very cool to hate America. If you don’t hate America, you are something of a social leper. At least we’ve managed to unite the world in something even if it is universal hatred.
May 10th, 2006 at 3:12 am
I can see why the muslim world doesn’t think much of the West, as if you only see what gets broadcast via TV from the states, without any of the more sane representations of what Joe Average is actually like, it would be easy to believe the country is amoral, dangerous to be in, and materialistically shallow.
American foreign policy does it no favours at all in winning friends. The Americans I’ve met online, and in person aren’t as rabid as the ones on TV, but it was interesting to find that there was an item in the news about how americans can make themselves less aggravating when travelling overseas.
http://www.businessfordiplomaticaction.org/index.php
It also blows my mind how little many Americans know about the outside world. The states may be very large, but there is a lot of insularity.
I’m an educated individual, and when weighing up places that i’d like to live, my working definition was “anywhere that speaks English that isn’t the USA”.