Posted on 10/16/2004 11:34:42 AM PDT by quidnunc
Hating America is not new. Nor does it have much to do with the unpopularity of George Bush. Instead, primordial emotions like envy, resentment, and self-loathing explain why the world’s elites damn Americans for who they are and what they represent rather than what they actually do. Criticism of American policies and culture is fair game, but not hysterical venom. Left unsaid is why millions flock to our shores and still more emulate our society if it is so abjectly awful as writers, artists, politicians, and journalists attest.
Paul Hollander has spent much of his distinguished career pondering those questions and has now brought together a distinguished team of investigators to attempt a systematic study of this strange phenomenon. What the 18 assembled authors conclude is both fascinating and depressing. Most of the social problems of twentieth-century modernity itself — from urban crime and the destruction of traditional landscapes to the shedding of tradition and the laxity of morals — is attributed to the radically democratic and popular culture of the United States.
Indeed, it is almost as if people hate what they have become, aping American slang and informality and then decrying the erosion of global etiquette. Scapegoating America allows one in the concrete to enjoy jeans, birth-control pills, antibiotics, and video games, even while damning in the abstract the purveyor of both junk and life-saving appurtenances.
Hollander’s team also cites a variety of more recent developments that have accentuated the traditional and deductive dislike of the United States. The fall of the Soviet Union meant that one superpower was now responsible for all the major crises in the world, and could not be balanced by playing it off one against another.…
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
"Intellectuals" throughout the world were convinced during the twentieth century that Communism was the inevitable conclusion of history. The Soviet Union properly understood America and referred to us directly in its internal documents as "the Main Enemy."
While they may skirt the issue with dissembling about "the lack of balance," the truth is that many intellectuals (including those in the US) despise us because we destroyed their god. They hated us once as The Enemy. Now adrift they have nothing left but petty idols like Castro or French "Thinkers", and their consuming hatred.
Or as Ayn Rand put it, "Hatred of the good for being the good." It's as old as civilization, as uncivilized as it is.
Since 1980, I have spent over six years in Korea, three years in Japan, four and one-half in The Netherlands & Belgium and am now in Israel. With the exception of Israel, I have found most people throughout the world love Americans, however: Europeans seem to marganilized into a sort of socialist people devoid of hope or salvation and they all seem to have "just enough" money, too much vacation time and no prospect of rising financially into afluence. Europeans have traded "Opportunity" for "Security Socially" as a people, e.g., they are literally socialist and envious of others who excell. Asians on the other hand are extremely productive and competitive and do have "hope" and expectations of rising into material afluence in their lives. As for the Middle East, it would seem that Israeli's are a blend of American-European outwardly but full of hope in spite of the ravages of Arab hatred visited upon them daily. And for the nonChristian Arabs, they too seem to lack hope as their leadership throughout their Arab world seems to allow only their leaders to live in splendor while they enjoy squallor coupled with state sponsored transference of personal condition into the aforementioned hatred of Jews and Americans.
You write of statism vs. individualism. I'll take individualism any day...
To clarify my prevous post, Israli's are America's best friends followed by Aussi's and Philipino's.
To clarify my prevous post, Israli's are America's best friends followed by Aussi's and Philipino's.
As usual well written. Thanks.
Well-written articles, and excellent post, q.
"appurtenances"
I learned a new word today.
Very insightful: There is a real substitution for religion on the left by worshiping the state. We showed the state to have feet of clay.
Latin America has a long history of corruption which is tolerated. Chile is the exception. Many of them are socialisic. Europe is socialist. Middle East is run by totalitarian leaders, like mullahs or Baathists. If you think about it, Communist, Nazis, and Muslims are all allies with each other.
I don't know why they hate us, I don't care why they hate us, and it's the last thing in the world, that will keep me up at night worrying about.
Hatred destroys the hater.
It is high time we start to insult other countries. A few words to France; a few words to Germany; a few words to Venezuela; a few words to Spain.
And Canada, don't forget Canada.
That is true. But there is a point where you get pissed off and won't have any more of it. If you watched Colin Powell in the last few months, he is a mountain about to explode.
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson is the most articulate and knowledgeable person I have ever read. That guy kept me going over the past year regarding the war in Iraq. He deserves a medal from the President.
His essays appear on NRO every Friday in case some of you have missed him.
The State Department is and has been a mess for eons.
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