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I think people who comment on news sites are some of the most negative people there is.
Just browse around random facebook pages for different news networks.
My point Exactly as I said in a previous post Australia like every other country has loads of both patriotic and pessimistic people. I certainly know their are a couple of x Aussies turned Americans in this forum who think Australia is hell on earth.
That's quite ironic coming from an American. American news outlets are notoriously provincial.
They're notoriously provincial in UK/ Australian conventional wisdom perhaps. Television gets "wire copy" from other global agencies as NPR can't afford foreign bureaus and the big networks lose money on them. The best US newspapers and political magazines, etc. aren't at all provincial and arguably practice less demagoguery than their UK/ Aussie counterparts.
I see it exactly like JedlaRoche. A lot of people don't have anything against regular American people, but sure against the nation as such, its politics, etc.
Obama's election was also a shock to many white people in the US, not just Aussies. Some Americans have still not gotten over it. Not that I am defending Obama, he has turned out to be an a****** as well. That is why there is no lie. Obama enjoyed a lot of good will initially. Only when people realized he was just another prick, did that more benevolent attitude go away. And since Snowden the US' reputation has suffered a whole lot more.
I'm an American living in Europe. I read this again and again on C-D forums regularly, usually by Americans, about something like what is here called "the general atmosphere of anti-Americanism one experiences in say Europe."
In my experience it's complete bullsh*t. I think this "general atmosphere" is a figment in the imagination of a few American jingoists. And now it seems to have found a convert. I would have to venture that it is the people you have met.
I've not seen it in action in fifteen years of living and traveling around Europe. And I certainly have not come across any Americans "embarrassed about being Americans." In the Lisbon hotel where I stay while visiting Americans in the large morning breakfast room are usually shouting greetings and having conversations with other American tourists way across the room with not the slightest evident embarrassment about who they are.
As for Bush II...I think many non-Americans think that the Bush invasion of Iraq was one of the worst international screw-ups since WW II, but then so do many Americans. I've not met any Europeans yet who make the absolute equation that GW Bush=All Americans.
I notice that. Its quite funny.
When we go to causeway that always happens. Don't know why.
The thing is, if a person goes abroad, they should not display patriotism no matter where they are from but admire the host country and culture. Else people might wonder why on earth you have not stayed at home if you find it so great there...
Good points Jedla. Funny you brought up anti-French attitudes because I was thinking of that.
There are Americans who have never been to France, or never known a Frenchman, but are sure that the French hate Americans and smugly walk around with berets, poodles, and white flags. These people call the French "racist-arrogant-smelly-cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys". You can show them polls showing that the French have more favorable views of the US than Germans or the British, or you can inform them of a slew of French military victories (ever heard of a guy named Napoleon?) but they will dismiss it. amazingly, the same people claim they don't have a problem with French people. It is baffling because the French have helped us more than any other European country in history. We never had a war with France, unlike Britain, Germany Spain, Italy, etc, and France has been our ally on and off since our independence. Yet incredibly many Americans perceive the French as the most dubious and untrustworthy of Europeans - the embodiment of all that is wrong with Europe.
What would prompt a Canadian at a house party (in Toronto), maybe an hour after meeting me, to start quizzing me about Cuba and S. America? When I answered, he looked right at me and said something like "wow you are not like most Americans are you".
Canadians stereotype Americans much?
I did not and would not condone that type of behaviour.
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