NationStates Jolt Archive


Why the world loves, hates the US

Uplio
18-11-2004, 23:02
Actually, its a speech I made, and I would like to know what you guys think of it..
Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World

Consider this. You’re in Iraq, Asia, and all of a sudden, you see one person. Now, there’s nothing so unusual about just one normal appearing person, but when you see a knife dangling off of his belt, you get nervous. All of a sudden, you see a second person. Obviously woman, because she has a headscarf around her head and neck. What you see next shocks you! The man gets his knife out, and goes toward the woman. Frantically, you call 9-1-1, only to remember that you’re in Iraq. The national emergency number is different here, and quite frankly, you don’t really know what it is. What do you do next? Perhaps stop and call “Stop! Murder!”, or just think it’s a coincidence and nothing unusual. Or maybe run after the man, in an attempt to stop the “murder”. Personally, I would run to the nearest police station, and tell them everything.
Most people would jump to conclusions, like I would. Even though, it could just maybe an innocent husband showing his wife a new pocketknife he finally had enough money to get. Or a friend showing his girlfriend what he found. See what I mean by jumping to conclusions? Well, that’s what most of the people in the world see America as. A “shoot first, talk later” type of policy is used to describe us, in the outer world. Instead of trying to negotiate with Iraq, we attacked them. That brought our world popularity points down considerably. Now, don’t get me wrong, most of the world greatly sympasized with us after 9/11. They greatly supported our plan of hunting down Osama ‘bin Laden. That was them. They saw how hard this time was for us. And what did we do? Attack Iraq. Many saw that the United States of America was actually uniting again. They were thinking we would actually look at the outside world once more. They saw that what really held us together, was not our money. Nor our military. Rather, it was our morals. Our religion. Our bravery. Our strength.
This brings us to another topic. Religion. Europeans ask themselves this question. How can the most materialistic nation in the world, be one of the most religious as well? For this, they respect us. After all, the New Testament states that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Besides, in most industrialized nations, the rise of science reduced the church’s influence, thus reducing religion in that nation. However, this is America. Here, as they say, anything is possible. Did you know, that 94% of Americans believe in God? Out of that, 85% are Christians. Also, the United States of America is the largest market for religious books in the world! Actually, its not that surprising, as religion was the main idea America was founded on. From Pilgrims, to Pioneers, most people wanted religious freedom. The right to worship how they want. This is why most people are against gay rights and abortion. People uphold their basic moral values, while the rest of the world seems to lose them right before our eyes.
In contrast, the world views us the same way as we view them. They see us as losing moral values, because we’re too materialistic. Always working hard to get money, to get the economy going. Being too greedy. As drowning in the process of money, money, money so much, that we don’t have the time for family, friends, and community. As being oddly moralistic; finding sex shameful, but violence beautiful. The American norm of two weeks’ vacation time a year strikes Europeans as uncivilized masochism. As Detled Schulz, a Swedish social worker who looked like the twin of the England actor Alec Guiness, said “We insist on our vacations! Life is too short to spend it working all the time.” This is true enough, but what they don’t know is, that we were taught to work, day and night, hard, for a happy, prosperous life. That’s why we are so powerful in the world.
Next, people are confused about our environmental policies. We were the first ones to implant a Clean Air Act, and a Clean Water Act. And now, we are finally starting to think of the environment, with newer hybrids coming out, and NASA researching a new jet plane called X-43A. This plane will “breathe air” to fuel itself. It uses hydrogen as power, and you can get from London to Sydney in 2 hours or less, as it goes 6,800mph. That’s 10 times faster than the speed of sound! Yet, we did NOT sign the Kyoto Treaty. This treaty was an agreement between nations of reducing greenhouse gasses.
We are also actively trying to create an Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense System, and so far are succeeding, yet refused to sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? How is that possible?

Now, the question is, that despite all these problems, why are millions of immigrants trying to come in here? Its true that America seems to demoralize. And that our foreign policy seems a little….weird. But many people view us as extremely rich, exciting, adventurous. Not to mention that we seem to pursue happiness, and find it all the time! We gave the impression of being extremely friendly people, who just want to find happiness. They find us as hard working people who are trying to uphold their moral rights, and succeed in doing so.
Some people might actually fear our military. And with good reason too, as we have the best military in the world. Technology wise I mean.
So, as I’m finishing my speech, I would just like to say that the world is looking up to us and our riches, technology, and, more or less, moral values. So you make up your mind. Does the world hate us? Or love us? Or both?

Thank You.

So what'cha think?
Andaluciae
18-11-2004, 23:10
This little writing seems to make sense...in a way...*confused*...sits back and sips his pepsi.
Uplio
18-11-2004, 23:17
Hehe... It was supposed to make you think ;)
Vittos Ordination
18-11-2004, 23:27
It was a little too simplistic, as I don't think that some of your points are explored well enough.

But you are very correct that our John Wayne bravado is a great deal of the draw to America. It all depends on how you look at it, we are either an extremely confident leader, or a selfish bully. We seem to be viewed as the latter now.

And America was not founded on religion. Most of our founding fathers were far from traditional religion wise. America was founded on the idea that authority doesn't necessarily need to be top down. That a system can be endowed with the same authority as a king. Because of that, we were able to get away from the traditional western thinking that the leaders needed a mandate. So we were able to write religion out of our government in the same way we wrote a king out.

What's so scary about today is that we seem destined to slowly move away from a authoritative system and back towards an authoritative group. With Bush's mandate quote, it seems he thinks that he is bigger than the system, and with the little amount of buzz it caused I would say that quite a few people agree.
Uplio
18-11-2004, 23:33
Actually, I had a number of points that I couldn't put in, because there was a time limit of 3-5 minutes.

It is scary how republicans only seem to control our government now that they are the majority.

I got most of my facts out of the book "Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World" by Mark Hertsgaard
Bozzy
18-11-2004, 23:51
It was even more scary when the Dems did...
Chikyota
18-11-2004, 23:59
Some of it I agreed with, some of it I didn't. A nice start though.

I do have qualms with the figure of 94% of US believing in god and 85% being christian though. Last I'd checked, no less than 15% of the population was agnostic/atheist.
New Granada
19-11-2004, 01:07
The US operates just like the mafia.

People are sometimes jealous of the money we have, and we sometimes use it to pay people off.

It is the victory of corruption over decency.