Quote:
Originally Posted by LML
It is the egocentric behavior of our current administration that has made the U.S. a piriah among the nations. Nations that were once our friends now think of us as a bunch of dangerous cowboys with whom they do not choose to align themselves.
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I love it when people activate their selective memory.
To claim that our "friends" didn't look at us with disgust until Bush took office is the height of dishonesty.
Hell, during the Clinton Administration the French foreign minister referred to the United States as a hyperpuissance, or hyperpower; this was not said as a friendly compliment.
The U.S. has been hated throughout the world since there was a U.S.
Sigmund Freud on America - "a mistake, a gigantic mistake."
George Bernard Shaw - "an asylum for the sane would be empty in America"
Such leading 18th and 19th century scientists such as Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, and Georges Louis LeClerc, among many others, subscribed to a theory known as degeneration, which claimed that there was something inherently wrong with America that caused animals to be smaller. I kid you not.
Famous and
extremely influential 19th century author Francis Trollope claimed that the difference between England and the US was a "want of refinement" and that in the US "that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of." (Sounds like we were being called unsophisticated, simpleton cowboys back then too)
Charles Baudelaire, a famous French poet, complained in 1873 that the world was hopelessly and unfortunately Americanized.
In 1900 the British government passed a resolution denouncing denouncing the demoralizing effects of American plays on the British stage.
German philosopher Richard Muller-Freienfels - technology is our servant, but in American it has become a despot.
Jose Enrique Rodo wrote in 1900 in
Ariel - the United States is the "spirit of vulgarity".
Mexican writer Carols Fuentes - "It was France that gave us culture without strings, and a sense, furthermore, of elegance, disinterestedness, aristocracy, and links to the culture of the classics solely lacking in the vagabond, unrooted homogenizing pioneer culture of the United States."
The American Cancer and
America's Conquest of Europe - two very influential books published in France in the early 20th century.
Alain de Benoist, a French intellectual, making a comparision between the USSR and the US during the Cold War - "The Eastern variety imprisons, persecutes and mortifies the body, but at least it does not destroy help. Its western counterpart ends up creating happy robots. It is an air-conditioned hell."
After World War II claims were made in Italy that the American drink Coca-Cola would turn children's hair white, because it was from America.
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Claims that the United States is hated world because of Bush, and that this wasn't the case before he took office is an outright lie. The US has been hated in Europe ever since the first settlers left European nations filled with oppression, aristocracy, totalitarianism, and hopelessness to come to our shores to find, and achieve, a far better and more successful life then they could have ever dreamed. Don't try to tell me that this is some sort of new phenomenon that began sometime between 2001 and today.
If we spent our time, since the first settler set foot on this continent, trying to please our so called "friends" we would still be a collection of European colonies. Frankly, when looking at the very types of people who hate the US and its actions, I have to say that I couldn't be more pleased because we must be doing something right.
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Don't people care??
What's even more disturbing is that no one on this side of the Atlantic seems to care.
I have never seen a candidate so seemingly smug as Obama and McCain to a lesser extent as to assume that the election is already over and that they're assuming the role of statesman before a single vote has been cast in this country. Or is it that our election process doesn't matter anymore since we have free trade, no borders, NAFTA super highway (again no borders) and more of concern with that: people here don't care. Just make sure Susie or Ben get to diving practice on time and that I can afford to put enough gas in the tank to get to work.
