board77

The Last Homely Site on the Web

The Bash the U.S. Thread

Post Reply   Page 9 of 9  [ 167 posts ]
Jump to page « 15 6 7 8 9
Is the U.S.A. really that horrible?
Worst country ever
  
10% [ 2 ]
Yes
  
5% [ 1 ]
Probably
  
5% [ 1 ]
Maybe
  
14% [ 3 ]
No
  
57% [ 12 ]
No, but it's so easy to criticize, I just can't help myself
  
10% [ 2 ]
Don't know, Don't care
  
0% [ 0 ]
Where?
  
0% [ 0 ]
Total votes: 21
Author Message
TheMary
Post subject:
Posted: Sat 13 Oct , 2007 10:08 pm
I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map, And knew that somehow I could find my way back; Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too - So I stayed in the darkness with you
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 7067
Joined: Mon 27 Jun , 2005 3:44 pm
Location: On my tush!
 
Exactly Toby :D

_________________

Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping


Top
Profile Quote
vison
Post subject:
Posted: Sat 13 Oct , 2007 10:09 pm
Best friends forever
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 6546
Joined: Fri 04 Feb , 2005 4:49 am
 
Um, don't the Mormoms call all non-Mormons "Gentiles"? Even Jews?

_________________

Living on Earth is expensive,
but it does include a free trip
around the sun every year.


Top
Profile Quote
TheMary
Post subject:
Posted: Sat 13 Oct , 2007 10:10 pm
I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map, And knew that somehow I could find my way back; Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too - So I stayed in the darkness with you
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 7067
Joined: Mon 27 Jun , 2005 3:44 pm
Location: On my tush!
 
I know the Jews call non-Jewish folk Gentiles not sure about the Mormon.

_________________

Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping


Top
Profile Quote
Dave_LF
Post subject:
Posted: Sun 14 Oct , 2007 2:46 pm
You are hearing me talk
Offline
 
Posts: 2950
Joined: Mon 28 Feb , 2005 8:14 am
Location: Great Lakes
 
[ img ]


Top
Profile Quote
TheMary
Post subject:
Posted: Sun 14 Oct , 2007 11:58 pm
I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map, And knew that somehow I could find my way back; Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too - So I stayed in the darkness with you
User avatar
Offline
 
Posts: 7067
Joined: Mon 27 Jun , 2005 3:44 pm
Location: On my tush!
 
*giggles*

_________________

Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping


Top
Profile Quote
democritus
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 12:38 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 209
Joined: Fri 11 Feb , 2005 10:19 am
Location: the vortex of complacency and bad service
 
I thought this Slate article was particularly interesting on the issue of Amercian's perception of the world and the worlds perception of America and Americans.

http://www.slate.com/id/2177970/fr/flyout
Quote:
To Know Us Is To Love Us
Slate readers on how to improve America's image in the world.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007, at 6:55 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last week, in a column inspired in part by Karen Hughes' departure as the State Department's public diplomat and in part by Tom Stoppard's new play, Rock 'n' Roll, I asked readers for ideas on how to improve America's image in the world.

During the Cold War, our freewheeling jazz, rock, and movies appealed to millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Today, the vast phenomenon of anti-Americanism stems mainly from our government's policies. But if the next president changed some of those policies, is there anything in our culture that might restore our luster, or at least make us less hateful, not just to Arabs and Muslims, but also to the Asians and Europeans who were once our closest friends?

I received 120 responses, nearly all of them from foreigners or from Americans living abroad. On the one hand, this is satisfying; here are ideas sent by people who know what they're talking about. On the other hand, it's a bit disconcerting; doesn't anybody stateside care what the rest of the world thinks?

In any case, the letters are, for the most part, extremely thoughtful—and most of them make the point that American pop culture just isn't enough. Our music and movies are already omnipresent, through the Internet and satellite TV—yet there has been no payoff for America's popularity.

Rhick Bose, an American studying in South Africa, notes that globalization has stripped pop culture of nationality. "Young people like Beyoncé," he writes, "but they don't associate her with America."

To the extent that people do link the culture with the country, the effect is not always for the better. Foreigners watch shows like MTV's My Super Sweet 16 and think it reflects the way most Americans live. Bose's classmates, he says, "asked me what kind of car I got for my sweet sixteenth birthday party."

Several readers emphasize that many foreigners, even those with high levels of education, have no concept of American life. They don't know that most Americans are religious people. They don't know that most of us aren't wildly rich. They're skeptical of reports that many black people live here—or dismiss them as not "real Americans." (This tendency appears to be true even of otherwise sophisticated world leaders such as the new French president, who, during his recent trip to Washington, marveled that our recent secretaries of state have come from other parts of the world. True, Madeleine Albright is the daughter of a Czech émigré, but Condoleezza Rice's American heritage goes back generations.)

And so the most prominent suggestion on how to improve America's face in the world—a suggestion made by well over half of those who wrote me—is to send the world more American faces and to bring more of the world's faces into America.

In other words, these readers say, there should be a vast expansion in the Peace Corps, in Fulbright fellowships, and, above all, in student-exchange programs.

An American exchange student in Jordan writes of the foreigners he's met: "Once they see Americans—blacks, Jews, Asians, and 'real' Americans, as they call blonde-haired Caucasians—and hear their diverse opinions on issues from the War in Iraq to pop music, then people realize how much diversity there is in our country."

With this same idea in mind, an American in Sudan adds that we should put particular emphasis on sending ethnically diverse Americans abroad.

A Fulbright fellow in Budapest, Hungary, further adds that it would be good to brief these students in advance on the countries where they're going. Foreigners, he writes, "are quite impressed when they meet an American who knows at least a little something about their culture," who has "an appreciation for their pop entertainment, their great modern novels, movies, and music."

The flip side—inviting more foreign students to spend a year in America (a practice that has been cut back since 9/11)—is no less valuable. A British journalist recalls that the pro-democracy and human rights activists that he's interviewed in Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, and elsewhere have had one thing in common: They all spent some time studying on an American campus.

But there are more commonplace benefits, as well. An American who teaches English in Egypt writes: "Many an Egyptian is shocked, on arriving in America, to find that we spend most of our time in humdrum routines of work, friends, and family. … Most come away with a greater respect for the American work ethic" and a realization "that we are not demons, nor are we angels."

In short, our greatest selling point may be our sheer, mundane humanity. A Dutch student writes, "America must (re-)consider itself an ordinary country—special and of great importance, but not playing in a league of its own. If America joins the world … the world will gladly receive America."

Along these lines is a letter from the aptly named Joshua Mensch, an American in the Czech Republic. When Mensch was a student in Prague in the late 1990s, the Czechs he met regarded him as cool, the arbiter of taste, the beacon of all that is desirable. "Being American," he writes, "gave you a certain cachet."

In 2004, after the deterioration in Iraq and George W. Bush's re-election, the atmosphere changed. He wasn't shunned for being an American—not usually, anyway—but the "cachet" evaporated.

Now, Mensch writes, he is polite to everybody; he speaks Czech as much as possible; he's always hoping to find lost wallets or cell phones, so he can return them to their owners, as a way of demonstrating that American people are decent.

"Americans abroad in every city I visit," he continues, "are quietly re-appreciating their identities as American." They are openly and unashamedly American. But they also behave "in a manner that is worldly, attentive to the differences between the cultures and not brutish about it. … The Americans who act like America is part of the world and not the commander of it, not the evil ruler or the bane of it, and not the ultimate signifier of it, will be the Americans who make America look good."

There were many other suggestions on how to open up the pathways between America and the rest of the world.

Many readers seconded my points about the rudeness and paranoia on display at U.S. embassies and customs desks. Americans living in Europe say that some of their friends—even those who studied in American universities—refuse to come here anymore because they've been treated so horribly at the airports.

Eric Henry, a doctoral student at Cornell who has spent much time in Shenyang, China, recalls that the U.S. Consulate used to open its libraries, film screenings, and Fourth of July celebrations. Now, he says, the consulate is a "razor-wired compound"; an American friend of his was recently arrested for taking pictures of the front gate. "Expats and Chinese who used to visit the consulate quite regularly now only grouse about the things that used to go on there," he writes.

Certainly there are ways of staying on alert without tripping alarm bells on everyone who comes across the border.

There are also ways to get the American message out there without making it seem like propaganda. One reason Karen Hughes' PR trip to the Middle East two years ago was such a disaster, besides the fact that she seemed so ill-suited for the mission, was that it was clearly a PR mission. She was, after all, a government official and thus by nature suspect. Several readers, including a few State Department officials, endorsed my idea of reviving the U.S. Information Agency as an independent entity that promotes American values and culture, not an administration's policies.

One American stationed in south Asia writes that, during Gen. Musharraf's state of emergency and the blackout of independent news stations, many Pakistanis have appreciated Voice of America's news broadcasts—though he adds they will continue to be appreciated only if they are seen as straight news, free of any government's interference. "When tribal elites in Waziristan trust Voice of America to bring them the news," he writes, "it can't be a bad thing for the United States."

A few common themes emerge from these suggestions: Government-sponsored PR has its limits, mainly because people see it for what it is; the important thing is to change policy, and part of that involves aligning America's approach to the world with the most attractive aspects of our culture (in the broadest sense of that word). One of those aspects is what the Bush administration constantly boasts about—our openness and our freedom. But those boasts ring hollow when the rest of the world sees us as closed down and locked shut. The first step, then, is to reopen the doors to the world.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2177970/


Top
Profile Quote
democritus
Post subject:
Posted: Fri 16 Nov , 2007 12:47 pm
Offline
 
Posts: 209
Joined: Fri 11 Feb , 2005 10:19 am
Location: the vortex of complacency and bad service
 
and an even more interesting follow up article on the above article.

http://www.slate.com/id/2177824/fr/flyout

fraywatch
American Culture, MIA?
How many wars can one culture fight?
Compiled by Geoffrey Andersen
Posted Monday, Nov. 12, 2007, at 7:48 AM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
For half a century, America arrayed its military might against the dour adherents of a soulless dogma. The world's fate hung in the balance of power between military behemoths running empires of global reach. Neither politicians nor generals could break the impasse which threatened to bring to a full halt the march of human history. Yet, onto this dark battlefield there strode great heroes, rough and untutored in the merciless ways of power. With a spring in their step and song on their lips, these cultural warriors brought peace to the hearts of men. After years of conflict, the opposing sides laid down their arms to revel in the freedom of good old-fashioned rock 'n' roll.

For many, some version of this story provides a compelling account for the end of the Cold War—an American cultural victory surprisingly wrested from a standoff where no political or military solution could ever be found. While the narrative might fairly be accused of oversimplification, it taps into archetypes that have been embedded in Western culture since David first squared off against Goliath. After a viewing of Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, Fred Kaplan dares to hope that the vigor of American culture was indeed the weapon that brought down the Soviet bloc, and that such a victory might again be possible in the face of America's conflict with the societies of the Middle East. His argument leaves me hoping Marx's famous quip—that history repeats itself "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce"—has been as thoroughly discredited as the political system called Marxism. But as an inveterate skeptic, I do worry that the pursuit of history leaves one open to blindsiding from the future.

With any luck, the entries in Kaplan's inbox are more decidedly upbeat than submissions to the Fray. Our readers responded with a decidedly pessimistic take on the worth and persuasive power of contemporary American culture. According to doodahman, America can't hope to replicate the method of its "cultural victory" because it no longer has a culture worthy of admiration or emulation:

It is beyond ignorant to believe that foreigners see the US and its role, impact, aims and program in a distorted fashion. Rather, it is folks here who have a distorted view. Merely attempting to distort our image with fluffery is a fool's errand.

Why does jazz and rock resonate among the oppressed? Because it has soul. Soul is the very antithesis of what our globalized, corporate one world is all about. Soul is what is left in people when everything else-- their wealth, their security, their family and community relationships, their spiritual expression-- is stripped from them, or distorted and repressed. It's that part of humanity which shines through when the material things are gone.

Well, what are you going to do to show the world that we still have soul? Nothing. You can't manufacture it. You can't create it with propaganda or aid programs or ambassadors. You can only show soul by suffering deprivation with grace and good humor; by sacrificing personal interests and gains for the greater good of all; by respecting human rights, human values, and human life.

Now how do you do that while enforcing a world wide empire of a thousand foreign bases, with a military behemoth sucking up more resources than it would take to clothe every naked person and fill every hungry belly?

You can't. So give it up. Give it up and wait patiently until the evil we send out in the world comes back in full force on our own heads. Then we can atone, we can burn off the self satisfaction, the self interest and the selfishness and return to being the people we once were and are no longer-- people with a surplus of soul.

And when that happens, the world will see it, and the world will respond.

If doodahman despairs of such a project because of problems with us, EarlyBird rejects it because of problems with them: "Every thing we do, either with good or bad intentions will backfire. You can't even try to help or 'win over' such a sick, hate-filled, self-hating person without being held in contempt and dragged down."

Jack_cerf notes that the cultural gulf between America and the Islamic world lies in a whole different ocean than the one which divided us from Eastern Europe:

Communism is/was a bastard child of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It promised to produce the same things liberal capitalism promised -- a world of prosperous, free and equal people -- only better. We could attack it, and did, by showing that it didn't deliver the goods as well. Jazz, rock and roll, and the individual hedonism that went with them were something that people raised in a communist society could recognize as part of a better material existence.

Islam isn't vulnerable to the same attack because, unlike Communism, it isn't purely materialistic. Like all serious revealed religion, it has the great fudge factor of Heaven and Hell to make up for its worldly failures and to keep the faithful in line. As long as conformity to the will of God is the most important thing, mere prosperity and material well being aren't enough, and individual liberty is positively pernicious.

Perhaps the most trenchant criticism comes from endorendil, who rejects both the essentialism and the exceptionalism of Kaplan's premise:

US culture had an outsized influence when US technological advantage meant that most widely available cultural products (recorded music, movies) were American. With mass culture products mature (and their effects known to those in power), and the technology to produce them widely available, local products now compete more or less effectively with American ones. Since most US cultural products reinforce negative stereotypes of the US, it's not even clear that better access to US cultural products would help. When was the last time you saw a movie, or listened to a song that made you proud to live in the US, and that could not have been about another country?

The US shares cultural values with the rest of the world. Things like the power of the individual, the importance of religion in public life, dedication to science and education, free enterprise, secularism and the fight for equality are (in varying degrees) worldwide recognized values. But everyone has a different idea of their relative importance, and many of these values stand in opposition. The US doesn't have a clear message to broadcast in the first place. Moreover, almost every country has historical advocates for all of these values, some much older, some much more eloquent, than the US's.

What is the state of American culture today? What about our society is worth fighting for? In what sense is American culture truly unique and an example to the world? As we return from a weekend dedicated to the honor of our veterans, these questions could use some answers. Please take a moment to share your thoughts with us in the Fray. G.A. … 4:45 a.m. PST


Top
Profile Quote
Display: Sort by: Direction:
Post Reply   Page 9 of 9  [ 167 posts ]
Return to “The Symposium” | Jump to page « 15 6 7 8 9
Jump to: