<< quidnunc
My eyes were opened when I was in Britain on business last year. Their attitude toward Americans was beneath contempt. It's as if they know deep down that they have sold their birthright as being on the vanguard of Western Civilization to try to get the continental Europeans to like and accept them. Instead, the French and Germans still look down on them.
In their anger, they lash out at us, because lashing out at the continentals would be both shameful and pointless. To the continentals they pretend camaraderie, with the cooperation of the contintentals, as long as they walk two steps behind the French of course. To us they are intentionally rude, superior, accusatory, and shrill. >>
My very regular experience also. In Britain, which I visit often -- my son lives there -- and especially in in the very many foreign countries in which I continuously travel and among the very many Brits [And every other kind of Euro-peon] I constantly associate with.
I was born a "British Subject," was what they call "Public School" educated -- and when I talk, sound a bit like a cross between John Cleese and Edward Fox and so am never taken for an American by any once-great-British stranger -- and always get the full-on boorish british bastardry before any of them wakes up to my even being an American -- let alone of that most passionate variety -- a convert!
And, in fairness, of course there is a percentage -- although small and getting smaller by the minute -- of Brits who love Americans and everything American -- but the vast majority of them are at best condescending toward US and supercilliously sanctimonious in their imagined superiority which, to a girlyman, including here on FR, they demonstrate in the most inferior manner imaginable!
It sounds like insulting people is a talent of yours Brian Allen. Do you really think that a generalisation like this is acceptable? Could this be an example of the bigoted 'trash talk' which quidnunc complained about when it was directed against the US?
I feel this is a good analogy. Your posts certainly evoke the spirit of Basil Fawlty. However, the big difference is that John Clesse only plays at being an idiot.