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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:21
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This is the introduction to an interesting series of essays in a recent issue of the magazine. Granta. The essays aren't anti-American or pro-American, but largely slices of life about how non-Americans view/interact with America. It's interesting, and you ought to try and read some of the xcerpts that are provided online.
quote:
'Introduction'
Ian Jack
America shapes the way non-Americans live and think. Before the Cold War ended, that had been true of half the world for several decades. Now, with the possible exceptions of North Korea and Burma, it is true of all of it. American cultural, economic and political influence is potent almost everywhere, in every life. What do we think of when we think of America? Fear, resentment, envy, anger, wonder, hope? And when did we start to think it?
By way of introducing the twenty-four writers in this collection of personal story and opinion, I offer two scenes from my own boyhood in Scotland in the 1950s.
The first: a lovely ship at anchor in the firth, perhaps half a mile from our village in Fife. This is the liner Caronia on its annual cruise to northern Europe from New York. Little black launches are coming and going from its pale-green hull to take tourists back and forth to Edinburgh on the further shore. At our feet, strewn along the beach's tideline and soggy with salt water, lie hundreds of half-eaten half-grapefruits. These have been tossed overboard by the Caronia's kitchen crew. This is what Americans have had for breakfast—often neglecting (unbelievably, or so it seems to us) to eat the decoration of glacé cherries, which now also lie so abundantly on the sand. Where have I seen so many decorative cherries before? It must be in the back-page full-colour ad of National Geographic magazine, where they are spiked across something called a York Ham. Possibly some kind of pudding? All these luxuries are coming to us, or to some of us, but not quite yet.
The second: a crowd of boys on another beach, not far away from the first. In the middle is an American boy, who has somehow landed up in Fife. The crowd is taunting him, 'Hank the Yank! Hank the Yank!', and he is red-faced, bewildered and crying. Why are we being so awful to him? Possibly because of some boastfulness on his part, or some argument over whether Britain or the US has the largest number of warships. Impossibly, we insist that Britain has; as a country, we are already living historically (a fact which is illustrated a summer or two later when the USS Wisconsin sails up the firth and drops anchor at the same spot as the Caronia usually does; the Wisconsin is one of a whole fleet of battleships, and Britain by now has none).
I remembered 'Hank the Yank' in the weeks after September 11, when so much anti-American feeling suddenly rose to the surface of newspaper columns and ordinary conversation—and not only in Hebron or Cairo or Lahore. Throughout Europe, even at the supper tables and bars of America's most loyal ally, you could hear (and, let's face it, speak) twin sentiments joined by that dangerous conjunction, but. What has happened is terrible, but it's…hardly surprising or hubris surely or, the most extreme, they had it coming to them. Two months later, the International Herald Tribune reported that in a poll of 275 'opinion leaders' throughout the world—a poll, as it were, of pollsters—more than two-thirds of the non-American respondents agreed with the proposition that it was 'good that Americans now know what it's like to be vulnerable'. More than half of these 'opinion leaders' outside the US also agreed to the idea that many or most people believed that 'American policies or actions in the world were a major cause of the September 11 attacks'.
The pieces that follow are not about that day, nor are they excuses for it. They are about how America has entered non-American lives, and to what effect, for good and bad and both. |
Granta 77: What We Think of America
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Caligastia
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I used to dislike America, but then I moved here and now I love America.
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Lord Merciless
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This is what I'm going to say: every country has its deficiencies, and every country has its share of idiots.
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Bereta_Eder
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the "american way of life" isn't cathcing on.
there is no people with guns, DP is illegal, social security remains strong.
if by "american way of life" they mean elections that's because of democracy nothing to do with america in particular.
if I was to talk about an intrusion of american way of life I would say... consumerism maybe?
that's again harly an american sui generis
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rah
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Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
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Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:21
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My grandfather was a poor imigrant from Italy. All he brought over was his bricklaying skills. He never really learned english, but he tried so hard. Before he Died, he told all of us grandchildren that The US was the greatest country in the world that he had ever been to, including the old country that he loved so well. It wasn't all the apartment building in Chicago that he built and owned, it was because in the basements of each, he had stored all the handmade salami's for curing to later be enjoyed by his family. Everyone has there own reasons for loving their country, For my grandfather, it was the freedom to do what he enjoyed. Unfortunately we were too young to understand why it was important to pay attention when he tried to teach us how to make salami's. His skill passed with him.
Four years after his death, when my grandmother sold one of the buildings, we discovered a stash of around 20 salamis hanging in a back room in the basement. A real treasure, and we were getting old enough to realize what was lost.
God bless him.
RAH
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Caligastia
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Great post Rah.
Without a doubt, the USA is the greatest country in the world.
God bless America.
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Hueij
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Kokonino Kounty
May 1999
time: 06:21
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I don't have to read all the linked articles to give my opinion here... When I was a kid during the late 50's, early 60's, America was some sort of fairy land. We all read the Donald Duck magazine and it was filled with cars, tv sets, refrigirators, tv's etc. Things we didn't have over here. So in our minds we had a picture of some sort of "promised land". I remember the footage of the Kennedy assasination, all those huge black shining cars in a row we never have seen over here.
Then, WW2 slowly disappeared into our unconscience, and the 60's came to full bloom, the trees reached into the skies, we became aware of American rascism. By then we all had tv and we saw what happened to American blacks and we were shocked. Next came Nam. And by then America (to my generation) had really fallen of it's pedestal. We learned about America's doings in South and Central America, J Edgar Hoover, Nixon came and went (Spirow Agnew!!) and that's it.
Since then i'm kind of neutral about the US but I have to admit that some of the US posters here, from their white suburbian middle class ivory towers reaaly get on my nerves sometimes.
Hope this made any sense and that my meaning didn't get lost during all my ramblings 
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Bereta_Eder
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My uncle has immigrated to the US.
He has won the nobel price fo architecture. He designed a very big bridge. I think it was the brisge of Manhattan?
I only have some pictures of him in the family photo albums.
he looks completely american and completely rich.
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Victor Galis
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in exile
Jul 1999
time: 00:21
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quote:
And ask JohnT, GP, etc... if they South is that bad. A lot of people like the South. I found it very nice, which is why I'm going to be living there (let me tell you, the phone service and cable service people are much nicer than the ones you'd get up North). |
-Ah, so you don't live in my neighborhood.
quote:
And ask JohnT, GP, etc... |
-They're all Southerners. They don't see the deficiencies of their land.
quote:
For every bad story like i read, there are many more positive ones. |
-Quite on the contrary, for every good story, there are two bad ones. Just look, there's not that many millionares, but there's plenty of poor people. Even if every poor person doesn't have a bad story... do the math.
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Lord Merciless
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My impression about those articles is that Brits are overwhelmingly anti-American, while Arabs complaint a lot of America's double-standard in Middle East. Other Europeans, Germans in particular, still respect America and are grateful about what it has done for them. East Europeans, like that Ivan guy from Prague, tend to be even more pro-american. Indians also give mostly positive responses.
I find it very ironic that our people from our closest ally hate us that much.
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24-07-2002 00:08
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