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I thought this might be a worthwhile companion to my other thread of European ignorance of American body politic and the domestic policy debates that drive American foreign policy.
Were the thread above to be restricted to Americans only, there is no doubt that a large % of Americans would be the first to turn Europhile and champion the superiority of Europe over anything American. It is something I have always found very curious.
I came across a classic example of this in Hong Kong in 1988, when I was traveling. I was in a hostel when I overheard a group of Europeans battering this American kid over US foreign policy (yawn...a recurring theme among European youths). Ronald Reagan was President...all the more interesting...
They were peppering him to justify everything from the Middle East to Anti-Communism. This American cat just took it! I could not believe it from these Europeans, reps from countries who have simply destroyed any semblance of normal life all over the world through the centuries of plunder and claims to cultural superiority. Yet despite the historical reality of European destruction, particular in the Middle East, this American folded like a tent and said "Yeah, I know, we suck." I was blown away.
So I ask you, why the self-loathing? Why the hatred of Self?
I would ask you to please stay on this line of questioning and reflection. An internal deconstruction, if you will, of our own psyche.
I do not hate myself or my country. I really like both although each of us has done some marginal things in our past. I do not even hate the conservative religious fanatics that value the one right way above all sense of decency.
Hate is too consuming. I just despise the people that put the values of Mammon above the values of humanity.
What one might consider "self loathing" (especially when it involves finger pointing, as in this case), for another, it might be way to learn and appreciate others' strengths to improve self. It takes a grown up to be able to appreciate and learn from other people. Those, completely drowned with self-righteousness, however, that they are perfect in every way and never wrong or lacking, need not apply.
As they say... "Start at home". Finger pointing is easy... leave it to the kids.
Grass is always greener? I really believe that a lot of people who laud the superiority of any country in Europe vs the US would have the mother of all epiphanies should they actually live in said countries. After all, there is no paradise, no eden and it would be a massive shock to some peoples systems to realize that.
Now, it is perfectly good to look at other countries (and why just Europe?) and see if we could utilize some of their better ideas in our own country. It is completely juvenile to say 'such and such is way better then the US'.
Well I think there's plenty to loathe in American policy - particularly foreign policy - in recent history. What makes it worse is that the US presents itself as the 'guy in the white hat' and sort of the moral compass for the world. But of course we're not all good. the US has done bad things as well. So then we end up looking like a bunch of hypocrites.
It's self-loathing when you can't defend selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages so that you can then bypass Congressional mandates to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua??? It's self-loathing when a nation the size of the United States invades a country like Grenada to "rescue" students who knew they needed rescuing until the invasion put them in harms way???
That's self loathing? That's liberalism? Hell that sounds like being self-aware of reality!
I don't know that Americans are any more or less prone to self-loathing than any other nationality ... but I wouldn't base any conclusions on one incident with one American in Hong Kong.
Well, I can't speak for the guy at the hostel, but personally, I'd be upset and argumentative simply because they were giving me crap...whether or not I agreed with my country's foreign policy. How hard is it for foreigners to understand that 50+% of Americans disagree with whatever our country happens to be doing at any given time and that for most of us our own opinions are--for lack of a better word--irrelevant?
And yes, gven the histories of many of their own countries their whining is ironic.
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