Not to get all political on you, but really: The speed with which the US lost global goodwill and sympathy from 9/11 to the present day may be unparalleled in human history. Nobody has lost that much goodwill so quickly before.
At the same time, Europe is awash in blind anti-Americanism. Go to a dinner party, and for light consensus-building conversation, people discuss either the weather or how much they hate the US and how all Americans are fat and stupid. Nobody lifts an eyebrow. And the US is blamed for everything now. It borders on a mass psychosis.
Well, US deserves anti-americanism fully, those days…
Everytime I go overseas I spend a large majority of my time talking with locals about this issue. If you think light conversation centers around anti-Americanism, it’s even more pronounced when there’s an actual American present.
I don’t support the current administration in the least, but I do try to explain why so many Americans (remember, there are 280 million of us) do. The idea isn’t to rationalize, but to try to give a sense of the “logical consistency” many Bush supporters in America are banking on.
Sadly, most American’s who would be trolling Denmark, the UK, or anywhere else in Europe probably have a different perspective on the world than the landlocked Americans, many of whom have never left their rural county in Texas or Mississippi.
Anyway, to my European friends, 280 million people is a lot. There are what, maybe 5 million Danes? It should be very hard to generalize with those kinds of figures. Most of us are as nervous as the rest of the world about this election.
After all the things that have happened in the last 4 years, you are about to elect George W. Bush. What do you expect? (I had written re-elect, but I’m not sure about the first one)
Just joking.
I, as European, don’t think people hates America or think you are all dumb and shit. When people talk about America or Americans they are actually talking about Bush and his supporters. Just like when Americans talk about “The French” when they talk about the government.
And they reasons are not just “blind anti-Americanism”.
I don’t blame any US soldier for following orders, or having faith in a fake mission. I just can’t figure out what has happened to Saddam, why nobody is protesting against the ongoing US invasion of Iraq, why nobody asks compensation for the fake war, for the killed husbands and sons? Why there is a man, still standing and saying that bombing Iraq made the world safer, and being proud of mudering a lot of american and iraq people? If I would hear Bush saying “I’m sorry! I’ll do anything, to correct my mistakes!” – well, I think I would give the nation electing him another chance…
“Not to get all political on you, but really” …..I like that opening. I, for one, have witnessed the growing anti-Americanism in Europe. But I do not promptly accept the notion that it relate solely to the war in Iraq and the post 9/11 hysteria. However, I am quite confident that what made the final blow to the bond between Europeans and North-Americans was the aggressive discourse set out by Bush after 9/11. (Right now I refer to the bond between people not governments). Pretty fast George Bush came up with the concept “you are either with us or against us” (Think in nov. 2001?). While this, in the eyes of Europeans, was considered rather harmless, making him (Bush) look like yet another “American cowboy president” there were more to come. I clearly remember the chills I got down my spine when I heard Bush junior mention the axis of evil on January 29, 2002. Why..? Because it signalled that the US was prepared to take pre-emptive action towards anyone who was in its way. I talked to some friends just afterwards and we agreed that something was happening that we did not like. I think (I don?t know because I was not in the states at the time) that these speeches are quite irrelevant in the US political discourse at least in comparison to the echo they produced in Europe. The declaration of war, or to put it mildly, war-like tone in the axis of evil speech made the Europeans wake up. This leads me to my point namely that many Europeans do not buy into the dichotomy of good or bad, the evil vs. good-doers and so on. We have seen it way to often around here. I don’t mean to suggest that Bush and the old European dictators resemble one another, (a comparison that I find both unfair and stupid), what I am saying is that some of the statements triggered a collective European anti-imperialism. We simply don’t like empires, especially an empire that acts like one. The Iraq war, in might eyes might have triggered anti-Americanism, but the strong “wartime” discourse from the Bush administration certainly prepared the grounds for it.
It might be a clich? but I think Ian is right. Bush might be the cover of ?the book?, or the director of ?bad US branding?, but Europeans on the other hand has to wake up and accept the multiple identities of the US. If Kerry should win the election, I think that an equal amount of ?attitude adjustment? is needed on this side of the ?dam? than in the states. On the other hand if Bush gets re-elected?Hmmm I?ll leave that for another blog.
Regards
Jon Froda
BTW in the same period of time Condoleeza Rice made the famous remark “we don’t believe in the international community” as a hint to the UN to stay the f… out of US business and interests.
I also think that there are a lot of things going on apart from the purely political. In a way I think Europeans use the idea of the US to define their identity. It seems we forget that all the imperialism, and even much of the problems in the Middle East was the work of Europeans. But somehow now there’s a pervasive idea that since we are not the US, we must be the good guys.
Bush thinks he is doing God’s work by invading Iraq. Yet thousands of people, many of them innocent, have suffered and died on both sides of the conflict.
My conclusion is that either:
1) Bush is not actually taking instructions from God, and is insane / running rampant.
2) The God that Bush is hearing is a very real but very evil God.
Either way, I will be doing my part to get him out of office tomorrow.
Please don’t hate American people for what Bush and his administration have done. Many of us are just as sick of him as the rest of the world is.
Bush supporters, well, I dunno. If you hate them I won’t protest. They can defend their own arguments.
Interestingly, people claim to be anti-american when they are, in fact, anti-Bush, and at the same time people claim that europeans are anti-american whenever there is a criticism in any US governement policies. Like with Israel and anti-semitism, the confusion is used both ways.
On the other hand it is time for the 280 million unheard americans to stand up and vote (as long as they are able to), at least once. And even if Bush gets re-elected, there are a lot of things one might decide to do to oppose a regime that crosses the lines. But does it cross the lines enough to get the comfortable citizen out of his armchair ?
What is a European? Does it include Turkey, Cyprus, Iceland, Greenland, and how much of Russia?
A great deal of Plato came down to us from the Middle East, the Finns from Asia (and maybe the Greeks), and Tunisians have asked me why Greece is considered western (apparently Hellenism was a propaganda tool) so I am still confused by ‘European’, ‘Western’ and even ‘American’.
For there is no proper term for people from the US of A, Canadians are North Americans, Columbians are South Americans, but the USAers have the audacity to be _American_ when surely anyone from North or South America is _American_.
And does this mean the anti-German stereotyping will be replaced by anti-Americanism? I believe that the goosestep is only understood by Germans watching non-German comedies. There was a study done on British children asked to rank the ‘evilness’ of photos of German and non-German people. You can guess the results–of course the Germans singled out weren’t actually German at all, and this crazy anti German feeling is sixty years out of date! I am not sure if it is due to Hollywood racial prototyping but there is definitely a thesis there somewhere.
Regards America, could someone please blacklist ‘shock and awe’, a Nazi term that hides the deaths of 100 000 people as collateral? Regardless of political sides, murderous euphemisms should never be left unchallenged, IMHO.
Digression and rant over!
I’d like to comment on the question of how people can possibly support Bush. This is the day after the election, a very sad day. But: in the week before the election I read a newspaper article about thinking processes among Bush and Kerry supporters. I found more on the web (try http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html#1). A number of points are made but the one that stood out to me was that about 2/3 of the Bush supporters still subscribed to beliefs which facts—even facts admitted by the administration itself—have proved false. The administration (except for Cheney) has admitted, several times, that no substantial connection has been found between Saddam and al-Quade or between S. and 9/11. Bush danced around this in the debates, and I saw at least one spokesperson outright lie about what the 911 Commission Report said on this topic, but still, the administration is on record. Yet Bush supporters still believe it.
Here is a bit of explanation from another site about the psychology of it…
“Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you?already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become “open” to them. Neighbour (1992) makes the generation of appropriate dissonance?into a major feature of tutorial (and other) teaching: he shows how to drive this kind of intellectual wedge between learners’ current beliefs and “reality”.
Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go “over the top”, leading to two interesting side-effects for learning:
* if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know ? particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge?? they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget’s terms.??????????
* if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are not likely to admit that the content of what has been learned is not valuable. To do so would be to admit that one has been “had”, or “conned”.
Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger and associates, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult which believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members ? particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult ? when the flood did not happen. While fringe members were more inclined to recognise that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience”, committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).”
source of the quoted paragraphs above: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/dissonance.htm
Afer reading this about the Bush believers, my first thought was that what Kerry had needed as a campaign manager was a psychologist, not a political advisor. He needed to change the thinking of a large group of people who in effect suffer from a mental or personality defect. Addressing them like ordinary cognizant beings was doomed to failure. Even shocking them, as in Fahrenheit 911, with actual scenes of Bush’s betrayals and ineptitudes, was not effective (assuming that such folks would go to see that film anyway, not likely). Knowing that our troops were sent to Iraq without the body armor, protective vehicles, interpreters, etc., that they needed to be as safe as they could be, even that didn’t do it. I thought that even if you supported the war you might get angry at Bush for waging it so ineptly, particularly if you had loved ones there. But in fact I think that military families hold more tightly to pro-Bush beliefs (the war was the right thing to do, it has been waged competently, we avoid civilian casualties, we can impose democracy upon Iraq, Bush is an exemplary commander-in-chief) because to admit the contrary would be to admit that their loved ones were suffering, perhaps dying, meaninglessly.
As regards another poster’s request that ” someone please blacklist ?shock and awe?,” we can hardly expect that, when the term “winning the hearts and minds” is being recycled, both by those old enough to remember the debacle of VietNam, and those who should have learned about it in school. Having learned nothing, we are trying the same thing in Iraq, whilst every midnight we are breaking down doors to drag off people denounced for insurgent connexions, handcuffing, hooding, and humiliating men before the women of their household, barging in upon sleeping families. I am no traitor, I want our troops to be safe and I understand that they are caught in an impossible situation with incompetent civilian leadership, and in that situation they follow orders, and seek to control the environment in any way they can so that they may live to come home. The fault is not theirs.
And I wonder, how long will it be before publishing comments such as this will be cause for my arrest?
blame me for rant digressions and for an attempt to get back to the original question: do you think we all need a bogeyman, an evil black sheep? Or can we all be quite happily pro people of any nationality?
Some research indicated black hats were used in Westerns and the white – black clothing distinctions even influence audience preferred sports teams in (no better not mention the country). If true, do we have, gasp, colo(u)rism, and is it used in game design?
My opinion is that this is a typical form of “not in my backyard syndrom”.
I come from Holland, and we are well know with this phenomenom.
We want everything better, and the whole world has to do better, but we don’t want to change our own lifestyle.
I think (a littlebit) the same is happening when we look to the US.
We all want Bush to go…(ok ok not everybody..), but we don’t know in what kind of situation the US is. When I look to Spain, after what happened in Madrid. Most of the civilians made a 180degrees turn and want their country to fight.
My point is that in my opinion it is totally normal that the Bush won the election. The US wants a strong leader, somebody who stands up for them. If that person makes the right decicisons…..lets hope
yes Joost, the problem could now move to New Zealand’s backyard instead.
” A website that allows Americans to apologise to the rest of the world for the election victory of President George Bush has been overwhelmed after a report about it on CNN.”
I don’t know the URL but “And the US is blamed for everything now. It borders on a mass psychosis” is beginning to sound truly prescient.
I grew up in Berlin, lived much of my life in Latin America and now live in the United States. Many of my family in Germany seem to think that Americans are ignorant of the world. Surprisingly to many Europeans they are not ignorant of the world. In some cases they have a much better grasp of it. However their culture is different. Theirs is much more of an independent mentality. They are not as worried about consensus as Europeans are. Whether it was Reagan moving short range missiles into Europe, Bush I intervention in the Kuwait Iraq issue, Clinton unilaterally bombing Serbia or Bush II going into Iraq, the US has generally sought to change the paradigm when they felt they had to.
It does not make them evil, or stupid, or even wrong. However as long as Europeans are ignorant of US culture, they will proclaim those labels without understanding why.