I'm an American, born and raised, and I'm frankly sick and tired that the xenophobic nonsense that the more vocal of us seeks to propagate has influenced foreign opinion of all Americans. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I've been, when on foreign soil, finding myself correcting (or worse sometimes, agreeing with) their notions of what life in America is like, because life in America is different for all of us. Homogenous isn't a word that would even occur to me to describe "the American way of life".
With that kind of sarcasm, you can hardly blame them. It's incendiary speech, and you do not speak for all Americans, so kindly stop using hateful and sarcastic language while sounding like you do speak for all of us. You're free to share your own brand of "'Merica" with whomever you please, but you do not speak on my behalf. Additionally, thinly veiled threats of violence, no matter how cloaked in sarcasm they may be, betray a lack of grace under pressure, and a deeper resentment than is unhealthy to be left ignored.
And GP: you don't speak for all of the EU (or of Europe) either. I'm sure you meant the former because most of the rest of Europe's populace doesn't seem to give two shits about us because they have their own problems back at home.
I was referring to the idea that American adventures abroad don't do much to 'export democracy' as evidenced by a handful of failures.
But that 'analysis' ignores the bulk of the last century where, in fact, American intervention did a great deal to export and defend Democracy in places like France, Spain, Italy, Germany and more recently places like Bosnia and our very costly presence protecting Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
I am no fan of the Bush Doctrine and the foreign policy blunders of the last twenty years but it is more than a little misleading to suggest the United States hasn't done anything to safeguard and spread democracy in the world.
I would love to ramp that role back since it is such an eye wateringly expensive policy to maintain and we could use that money for our own infrastructure and domestic projects like universal healthcare and fighting poverty -- but we're still tied up in those engagements and playing the Superpower Defender.
And xenophobia? Where did that come from?
I didn't mean for my comment to come off as hateful, just exasperated. I would love it if the US would stop sticking our nose in everyone's business. Reallocation of those resources would be wonderful. But I am a realist and I understand that you just can't stop posing a credible threat to potentially bad actors without risking peace or someone stepping up and bearing more of that cost.
Sarcasm isn't meant to help. That doesn't mean it has no place.
The fact is, a large number of the people and governments that criticize the US are propped up by the US financially, militarily, or both.
This doesn't invalidate either point or opinion, but it does reintroduce complexity where points are boiled down to one-liners, absolutes, and sound bites.
I've had the problem you describe when residing abroad, and it is frustrating, but I think you're off-target here. Parent comment seems pretty focused on the financing and accomplishments of various military activities. If you want to blame someone for encouraging false assumptions of homogeneity, Hollywood is a better target.
The EU is deteriorating a bit like 1939. I hope I'm wrong but radicalism and xenophobia is raising all over Europe and it's scary. I'm not talking for all Europeans nor I believe that the majority of Europeans cares about what happens in the US, Russia or China. But they should. We live in a globalised world and our actions have repercussions elsewhere. If US voters[1] favour a candidate that is less prone to warfare maybe, just MAYBE, the influx of refugees will stop. Same goes for Europeans leaders. Sadly I don't see that happening.
[1] The GOP candidate is a question mark regarding his external policy and we all saw how reckless H. Clinton is in Libya. I'm not sure if there's any chance for an external policy change for the better in the US right now.
Your comments regularly break the HN guidelines. If you keep doing this, we will ban your account, so please re-read them and abide by them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.
You don't mind defending your own democracy from the likes of Vladamir Putin et. al. right?
You missed a few countries on your list a bit closer to home.