 |
| |
|
|
Sprayber
|
 |
Dixie
Oct 2000
time: 23:18
|
|
Here is an interesting article I picked up from a Melbourne AU paper about an outside view of The United States. I thought it was interesting. What is your opinion.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2...7206220400.html
American pie losing its favour
quote:
We all know America, don't we? While we may confess to ignorance about Japan or Russia, or even France, we are confident that we know America. It is, as they say, everyone's second country.
We have seen perhaps a thousand American movies, from Clark Gable to Gwyneth Paltrow. We have seen hundreds of American sit-coms. We know the words of dozens of American popular songs.
We have read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Bellow and Updike. We have a common language, more or less, and by now we are even familiar with American idiom and regional accents.
We know the American landscape about as well as we know our own: the prairies, the Manhattan skyline, the white spires and autumn colours of New England, those dangerous small towns of the Deep South - to some degree they are all part of our inner landscape.
So are episodes from America's recent history: the assassination of John Kennedy, the protest marches and Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Bill Clinton solemnly lying to the camera, and now the terrible images of those aircraft flying into the World Trade Centre on September 11.
Yes, we all know America. The trouble is that many of the things we know are not true, or are only partly true.
One of the things we know is that, by Australian standards, Americans are brashly and complacently self-confident, over-addicted to self promotion and boasting; "full of themselves" as we would say. Yes, up to a point.
Yet it is also true that Americans are the most self-critical people on earth. Everything bad we know about America - its crime and excessive punishment, its corruption, its graft, its racial tensions, its inane political correctness, its vulgar excesses - we know because Americans have told us about them.
Relentlessly washing its dirty linen in public is an American speciality. Americans are seriously and pragmatically dedicated to self-correction. And their optimistic self-confidence is often seriously qualified. In 1988, for example, when the US was on the verge of winning the Cold War, two books that were at the top of the best seller list were Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, that predicted American overextension and decline, and Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, a withering critique of the American cultural scene.
Four years later, when the US had actually won the Cold War, and when it was already being widely accused of arrogance and "triumphalism", New York magazine Commentary was running a lengthy two-part symposium under the title, "Is America On The Way Down?" Many of the contributors, in the main conservative intellectuals and not the alienated left, thought it was. Not much complacency or arrogance there.
Take another thing that we "know" about America: that it is a "young country", usually with the connotation that it is immature and naive in its ways, especially in comparison with an old, more mature and more sophisticated Europe.
The fact is though, that the US is an older country than Germany, Italy, and a dozen other European states, not to speak of Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia. It is the oldest extant democracy on earth, the oldest republic, and has the oldest federal system.
Intellectually, too, the rest of the world is in no position to patronise the US - although, of course, much of it does. The best American universities - Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Princeton - are easily the best in the world. And there is a social club on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington - the Cosmos Club - whose members, over the years, have won many more Nobel prizes than the whole of Asia (28 the last time I counted the names on its wall).
A third thing that we - or some of us - "know" about America is that while it is great at handling success and triumph, it is an uncertain quantity - at best untried, at worse very suspect - when it comes to adversity and setbacks. The American temperament as a nation is considered suspect: they have had it easy, have been blessed with so many advantages that they are not really conditioned, not tempered, to handle bad times well. Their stamina and resilience are questionable. True or false?
Well, it might be worth beginning by observing that American prosperity is comparatively recent.
Whatever its merits and demerits, the frontier experience was not a soft one. At the beginning of the last century, Australia's per capita income was higher than America's. As late as 1930, 50 million Americans lived rural lives. Almost none of them had electricity and 45 million had no indoor plumbing.
Things were so hard for the migrants that a large proportion of them - nearly a third of the Poles, about half the Italians, more than half the Greeks - returned home. America's affluence, as a general condition, was quite a recent, post-World War II, phenomenon.
As for coping with adversity, one could say of America what was said of the 19th-century English statesman, William Ewart Gladstone: that, after a setback, he was tremendously formidable on the rebound.
The US has faced three great crises in the past 150 years: the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the upheaval and turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. In each case it came back from adversity rapidly and with tremendous force. Not a bad record for a country whose toughness and ability to handle adversity are regularly questioned.
A last item in this list of things we confidently know about America is the belief that it is the most materialistic of countries. The US virtually invented modern consumerism, and the American people are notorious for their insatiable appetite for the acquisition of material goods and for conspicuous consumption.
Again all true as far as it goes. And don't we and other Western people enjoy ridiculing and scolding these American excesses - though it has to be said that, once given the chance, we have not exactly proved backwards as consumers.
But as well as being the most materialistic, of modern Western countries, the US is certainly the most idealistic. In the first place, it is the most religious, not only in the sense of believing in God but of actually going to church regularly.
So, how do the events since September 11 fit into this framework?
The great sympathy felt for America immediately after September 11 has quickly evaporated and been replaced by suspicion and hostility. Rosemary Righter, chief leader writer for the British Times newspaper, has observed that "America-bashing is in fashion as it has not been since Vietnam" - and she is talking, not of Asia and the Middle East, but of London and Paris and Berlin. Moreover she asserts that it is not just a case of the usual suspects on the left, but that a "resurgent anti-Americanism" exists across the political spectrum. As she says, "America is never less loved in Europe than when . . . it is angry, determined, and certain that it is in the right".
Let me be clear: After the outrage of September 11, I do not believe that the US could have reacted in any way other than as it did. But doing so will carry a cost.
The long-term significance of what happened some months ago may be that it forced America decisively along a course of action that - by emphasising its military dominance, by requiring it to use its vast power conspicuously, by making restraint and moderation virtually impossible, and by making unilateralism an increasing feature of American behaviour - is bound to generate widespread and increased criticism and hostility towards the country.
That may turn out to be the real tragedy of September 11. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Jon Miller
|
|
hey
we were known as dough boys
Jon Miller
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
DinoDoc
|
 |
AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:18
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Way to showcase your national insecurity complex, guys... |
You haven't seen anything yet! 
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/...pinion/8pol.htm
quote:
Europeans for the U.S.
All of Europe, we are repeatedly told, opposes George W. Bush's policies on missile defense, global warming, and the "axis of evil" and views him as "simplistic." This is oft expressed in the New York Times by writers who obviously agree. Yet it simply is not true. Americans are familiar with the staunch support British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given the United States since September 11 and since Bush's "axis of evil" speech. But support for Bush comes from the Continent as well.
As an example, take Italy, with a population and an economy similar to Britain's or France's. Italy was a founder of and remains a strong supporter of the European Union; it happily ditched the lira for the euro, and the EU flag flies next to the Italian tricolor everywhere. But the Italian government solidly supports the United States and George W. Bush. And this is not one of those fragile coalitions Italy used to have. Silvio Berlusconi's center-right Casa delle Libertà coalition won a solid majority in the election last May and seems likely to remain in office a full five years. Berlusconi, fluent in French, is taking English lessons and has tried out his English on Bush.
When American journalists were reporting that all of Europe opposed the United States on missile defense, Berlusconi's government, like Blair's, supported Bush's decision to scrap the antiballistic missile treaty and move ahead as a necessary step against terrorist states. When American journalists were reporting that all of Europe opposed Bush's rejection of the Kyoto treaty, Berlusconi said he understood America's reservations. After September 11, Italy sent Navy and Air Force units to aid the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and offered to send Army units as well, and it sent more troops to the Balkans to reduce the need for U.S. troops there.
Solid promise. What about future moves, especially against Iraq? "If, as I believe possible, the United States presents a convincing case that Iraq is engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction, and that it has the capability of projecting these weapons," Defense Minister Antonio Martino said during an interview in Rome, "then we can convince a majority of Parliament to support the operation. Even the most reluctant Italian would understand." Since there seems to be little doubt that such evidence can be produced–Blair's government even now is promising a white paper on evidence of Iraq's capabilities–this amounts to a solid promise of support. Martino predicts that Germany and Spain will follow suit. "From a purely military point of view, the U.S. does not need anybody,'' he said. "But the U.S. wants to avoid the private thing and have an international coalition. That kind of support is needed, and we will provide it."
Martino also, like some in the Bush administration, is concerned that the EU's proposed Rapid Response Force will displace NATO and is seeking to get EU defense ministers to define its missions carefully and tailor its forces to those missions only.
On the domestic front, Berlusconi's government also wants to move away from the European big-government model and has Bush-like proposals for lower taxes, more flexibility in labor markets, and individual investment accounts to replace part of public pensions. "More flexibility means more jobs," Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti explained in an interview, arguing for his measure to scale back Article 18, which prevents workers in companies with 15 or more employees from being fired. The plan is strongly opposed by the labor unions, which staged a huge protest rally in Rome March 23; it was the reason cited by Red Brigades terrorists who murdered Marco Biagi, a professor working with the government on labor law, in Bologna March 19. (Security Minister Franco Frattini says there is no evidence of any connection between the Red Brigades and al Qaeda or other Islamist terrorists.) "The unions are very well organized," says Tremonti, "but I'm not pessimistic." He points out that most union members are retirees and that 60 percent of gross domestic product comes from nonunion firms.
So Europe is not monolithically anti-United States on foreign policy nor monolithically committed to the French centralized big-government paradigm. Berlusconi's government in Italy, José María Aznar's similar-minded government in Spain, and Blair's government in Britain all have solid parliamentary majorities and strong job approval ratings in the polls–unlike the governments in France and Germany that may well lose in elections scheduled in the next few months. Europe is more with us, and wants to be more like us, than many American journalists would have you think. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Seeker
|
 |
London Ontario
Jan 1970
time: 00:18
|
|
LOL America's great European supporter is....Berlusconi?! Ay ay ay...
Why does the first article keep comparing America with Australia?
A few wierd things:
-The author seemed to equate Chruch attendance with idealism...WTF? If anything, in most other countries church attendance varies inversely with education levels.
-The author mentions that half of Italian immigrants returned home, and seems to those who returned as 'failed immigrants'.
He implies that this was because of a lack of Yankee 'frontier spirit' or some such nonsense, that the European Italians were 'soft'.
While I cannot speak for the Poles, this betrays a complete misunderstanding of the patterns and motivations behind the majority of Italian immigration.
Italian immigration history is divided into two parts: pre, and post-war.
Pre-war, drawing on a long tradition of travelling families of craftsmen and labourers leaving their home paese to work for extended periods, many Italian families would send the young men of a village or family of en masse for several years. The idea is that they would save their money, and return home to buy land of their own. Note the huge sex discrepancy pre-1922.
While in North America, Italian men would typically send almost all of their earnings home if possible.
So, the basic motivation and pattern we see is groups of related paesan coming over for a few years, working like hell, and then getting the hell out of Dodge.
Of course, plans and situations changed. Most men would marry immediately before leaving, but many did not...often, they lost their shirts to dishonest officials and conartists.
So, the vast majority of pre-war Italians who stayed, stayed because circumstances forced them to change their plans of going home. They were stuck.
The romantic notion of Italians taking the whole family intending to start a new life in America and stay forever was very small, and not at all representative of reality.
I have done a lot of research to confirm this, because of my great-grandparents experience. New York, Chicago, Montreal, and Thunder Bay (thunder bay was a major rail and mining center) pre-war Italian neighbourhoods were marked by: A very small number of immigrant women.
Post-war: Mussolini had outlawed the long tradition of this overseas work, believing that it undercut his dreams of empire.
After the war, was the time of 'la Miseria', especially in the south (which is why most New York italians are the obnoxious Calabrese). Infrastructure was destroyed, so there was a big surge of immigration to the already existant Italian communities in North America.
It was only during this short period that the traditional picture of immigration was valid.....and even then, many returned home as soon as stability returned to the south.
In short, the Italian immigrant was hard-nosed, motivated by practical reasons, and not deluded by some vision of an American paradise.
And their toughness should never be questioned. In the earlier period, they took the jobs that the English speakers wouldn't do, and at less pay. They suffered racial prejudice, and legal racial prejudice.
The author of the first article, in an attempt to imply the softness of a European people, instead just showed what an ass he was.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Sprayber
|
|
Dixie
Oct 2000
time: 23:18
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Seeker
A few wierd things:
-The author seemed to equate Chruch attendance with idealism...WTF? If anything, in most other countries church attendance varies inversely with education levels. |
What do education levels have to do with being idealistic? And what is wrong with equating Church attendence with idealism? Those who are religious tend to be a little more optimistic about life. No?
quote:
-The author mentions that half of Italian immigrants returned home, and seems to those who returned as 'failed immigrants'. |
I took it as him simply pointing out the fact that times were so hard in the US at the times that immigrants actually went back instead of staying. No where does he say they "failed"
quote:
-He implies that this was because of a lack of Yankee 'frontier spirit' or some such nonsense, that the European Italians were 'soft'.. |
Again, I don't see it. Where are you getting that?
quote:
The author of the first article, in an attempt to imply the softness of a European people, instead just showed what an ass he was. |
 Did we read the same article. You get this from
quote:
Things were so hard for the migrants that a large proportion of them - nearly a third of the Poles, about half the Italians, more than half the Greeks - returned home. America's affluence, as a general condition, was quite a recent, post-World War II, phenomenon. |
Whatever bias in this quote is of your own making. In your eyes you say he implies one thing. But all he says is things were so hard that many migrants choose to go back to their homeland.  A very simple statement. Actually of all the things he says, I couldn't imagine this being controversal. 
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Roland
|
 |
Auf'm Jahrmarkt :(
May 1999
time: 06:18
|
|
1. "Yet it is also true that Americans are the most self-critical people on earth." - Whoever wrote that has never witnessed german whining.
2. "The best American universities - Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Princeton - are easily the best in the world." - They are ? Did anyone adjust for grade inflation ?
3. "America's affluence, as a general condition, was quite a recent, post-World War II, phenomenon." - Most estimates put US wages in the 19th century 30-50 % above european levels. Part of the reason for that is the simple lack of labour and the possibility to just go west on some farm.
4. "As she says, "America is never less loved in Europe than when . . . it is angry, determined, and certain that it is in the right"." - I think that's a good point. People who are absolutely certain they have a monopoly on being right tend to scare us just a bit. And it's also slightly annoying to hear the gospel of the world according to dubya.
Nice article overall. Scrap some errors, and some "best/biggest/largest in the world" garbage, and it has potential.
Which is in contrast to the article dino posted. Hopeless crap.
Last edited by Roland on 08-04-2002 at 13:20
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Seeker
|
|
London Ontario
Jan 1970
time: 00:18
|
|
"Things were so hard for the migrants that a large proportion of them - nearly a third of the Poles, about half the Italians, more than half the Greeks - returned home. America's affluence, as a general condition, was quite a recent, post-World War II, phenomenon"
You can't see the implication??
He is relating THIS:"Things were so hard... "
To THIS: "about half the Italians....returned home"
As if one was cause, and the other effect....which is demonstrably untrue, as I have already pointed out.
Second, in the same paragraph, he mentions that:
"America's affluence, as a general condition, was quite a recent, post-World War II, phenomenon".
Firstly, in relation to immigrant source countries that is a bogus statement. America tended to pay a far higher wage, and a generally higher living standard, relative to areas like Apulia, Calabria, etc since after the Civil War, and especially after world war 1.
This is a statement that is true only relative to later American prosperity. By 1950s standards, the depressions of 1890, 1870s WERE the American version of poverty...but compared to the situation of a landless second or third son tenant farmer in southern Italy, it was relatively easier to make a buck.
The question then, is how did Italians prosper, relative to their original circumstances on the average, during times of 'poor' American economic circumstances?
1. Citizens of certain paese had certain specialized, 'recession proof' skills, and were so respected in these fields that they could outcompete the 'natives'.
2. Willingness and ability to do jobs at rates natives would not, plus highly skilled and self-organizing, example masonry, rail road construction, Italians quickly formed little companies of highly skilled labourers at unskilled labour rates--a major reason for the 'racial' prejudice of unskilled english speakers.
So why is this statement in that paragraph (scholars trained in exegesis can follow me here)?
Either the author is:
a) Conflating a statement that is true under certain relative circumstances "America's affluence, as a general condition, was quite a recent, post-World War II, phenomenon", with a restricted meaning, with a (false) conclusion based on different relative circumstances, that conclusion being that Italian immigrants were leaving because they were unable to cope with these 'tough times'.
b) Not aware of the historical context of Italian immigration.
And why is this paragraph in this article? In this part of the article, the author is contrasting the supposed American qualities with an 'other', that 'other' being Italian immigrants.
The author is saying in this section that Europeans believe Americans have never endured hardship on a national scale like Europeans have in the recent past, and that therefore Americans are somehow 'soft' or 'untried'.
This supposed belief of the Europeans is then attacked, by recounting difficult times in American history, and the supposed resilience of the American people during these times (note: a strange, militaristic idea that suffering somehow ennobles or builds character, but I digress).
That's all well and good, America has indeed endured times of national suffering comparable to Europe (such as the 1890s depression)....but then he goes on to talk in this paragraph about European immigrants leaving because they couldn't endure the hard times! Implying that the Americans could endure what the Europeans couldn't.
Why couldn't the author just leave it at the assertion that Americans have endured levels of suffering comparable to Europe as a nation? That is fairly uncontroversial. But instead he feels compelled to go further, and say that in these hard times that Americans endure and triumph over, the Europeans leave?
He is clearly implying that it is the European, in this case the Italian immigrant, who was used to the 'soft life' and could not endure the hardship faced by the tough Americans!
The author clearly felt the need to turn the tables on his strawman European persecutors and say: 'They say we are weak and have never faced real pain? Well, look we have, AND we faced pains that caused these same mockers to flee! They are in fact the soft ones and the record proves it!'
It is the AND part that is untrue. His data is that 50% of Italian immigrants returned home during times of crises in America that the non-immigrating American stoically endured. 50% is actually a low number, and must be from the Depression years when it was harder for the men to return home.
They were returning home because they always (mostly) returned home, the goal (in most cases) was to return home, the whole context of Italian pre-war immigration was young men away from home, working hard, and then returning home to buy land.
The author is trying to interpret this high number of emmigrating Italians during the Depression most likely. I can just hear his thought process "Immigrants come to America because of the American Dream. They want to live here and become Americans. What's this? Why are all these Italians leaving during the Depression? Why are they going back to a silly European country? No one leaves America voluntarily unless they've FAILED or because of spineless FEAR. Those weak kneed Italians! Running away at something we Americans endured."
It would never enter his American thought process that pre-war Italian immigrants overwhelming came for one purpose: To quickly make enough money to buy land of their own back in their home paese in Italy. They did not come to put down roots, or join the American Dream, or because of supposed American 'freedom', or because it was so much greater to live in America. They typically came for a relatively short stay, for purely economic reasons, and then returned. They did not return because of harsh conditions. Any crisis in America STILL paid higher wages than Southern Italy. They returned when they had achieved their economic goals. It was when they had bad luck, and failed to make as much money, that they stayed and became Americans.
See scholar Franca Iacovetta. She is respected in the field. Now, she IS a Marxist-Feminist, but don't let her political garbage drown out her excellent factual scholarship.
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:18.
Apolyton Time is 00:18. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
08-04-2002 07:18
|