I am not adverse to light anti-American banter. But generally, I find the rabid anti-American agenda not only overwhelming but exceedingly unintelligent in it's nature. It is impossible and irresponsible to lump together all 'Americans' into any singular describable character. There are 295,734,134 people in the US compared to 60,441,457 in the UK. That's almost five times as many people. The US is 9,161,923 sq km compared to the UK which is only 241,590 sq km. For those of you without calculators that means the US is about 38 times as big in area.
The United States is geographically isolated in a way that most other countries (save places like Australia) are not. It is unfair to criticize 'Americans' for not getting out to see the world more. First of all, most Americans only get 10 vacation days a year. Some of those days will automatically be earmarked for Christmas and Thanksgiving. So the reality is, most Americans have less than 10 usable vacation days a year. These are often then broken into small bits tacked onto weekends, because if you used it all for one trip, you would have no other vacation for the entire year. So, if you only had 4 days to go on vacation, would you spend eight hours in a plane each way? Or would you spend a couple hours in a plane, or just drive yourself to the beach, the mountains, the desert, the swamp, or another major metropolitan center you've never been to before? Because you can do all those things without leaving America- and it's wrong to criticize people for it.
People seem to get caught up in Americans seeming lack of global interest. On the other hand, aside from being more educated, I don't see issues of 'global interest' running most countries political decisions (although it's fair to say the UK involvement in the Iraq war had a detrimental affect on the most recent vote, it still didn't kick Labor out of power, did it?). People vote about issues that they see as affecting them. Taxes. Jobs. And perhaps unfortunately, moral issues. Because when it comes down to it, most people (American, European or otherwise) are self-interested. It's not wrong to be self interested. It is wrong however, to throw stones at glass houses.
A friend of mine S imparted a Belgian saying to me recently, "The tallest trees get the most wind". I understand that America is an easy target, and people dislike what they see as globalization and the exportation of American values and corporations. My argument? If there was no market for such things, they would not make it. If people didn't desire the things they professed to hate, there would not be the continual demand that fuels the corporate economy. Things like Starbucks and McDonalds.
The current global power structure and economy is not a simple thing. It is wrong to call a country 'expansionist' and then 'isolationist' in the same breath. It would be better to get the story straight. If the criticism is towards the US government, fine- I'm sure you'll find that 50% of the American public probably agree with your view. If the criticism is towards multi-national corporations and conglomerates, then fine, do your part to not purchase those products and reduce the demand for the things you don't agree with. But leave the American people alone. Every country has it's share of retarded backwater cousins. They don't represent the sum total of the population, and for every five of mine, I'm sure I can find at least one of yours.
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