[QUOTE=Struan]
I’m sure that the natives are really nice, but I’m not sure that I met any that week! Tourist hell!
[/QUOTE]
We love tourists. They pay our taxes for us.
What’s the difference between an American and an Englishman?
An American thinks 100 years is a long time and an Englishman thinks 110 miles is a long distance.
:smack:
That, of course, should be 100 for both numbers, not 100 and 110. That just ruins the joke.
Dear Freelancer,
As a neighbour of the USA, I can vouch for them. I didn’t have the time, or patience, to read all of the posts in this thread.
People are people: world wide. As a whole, I don’t even think the North Koreans are any different than me. They want to fall in love, get married, have children, and live in peace.
Now what the hell is with Hezbollah?
[QUOTE=Rodgers01]
Not to pile on, but I have to re-emphasize what others said that the American Dream is not just about materialism. It’s about making a better life for yourself and your children, very often in an immigrant context. I know a family that moved here 20 years ago from South Korea with practically nothing; they worked hard, opened a laundry, and saved their money, and while they still live very humbly, their kids have gone on to have great educations, careers, and opportunities far beyond what their parents could have had. The point in that is not that their kids will be rich someday (one of their kids wants to become an academic, and will likely never be rich), but that they had greater opportunities than having to work in a laundry. I think that qualifies as the American Dream much more than the Long Island family with the huge house and the new Lexus.
[/QUOTE]
[Eddie Izzard] The American dream… to raise yourself up by the sweat of your brow and the swiftness of your mind… to have all the money in the world! And then you stick in your ears and go “Phhhhhhbbbb.” [/EI]
Actually, what Rodgers01 says is closer to what I think of when I hear the phrase “American Dream.” It’s probably a cultural difference, since my parents were Korean, but to me the American Dream is what immigrants come to the US for - to work their asses off so their children can have a better life. Or is that the Asian-American Dream?
[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
[
Actually, what Rodgers01 says is closer to what I think of when I hear the phrase “American Dream.” It’s probably a cultural difference, since my parents were Korean, but to me the American Dream is what immigrants come to the US for - to work their asses off so their children can have a better life. Or is that the Asian-American Dream?
[/QUOTE]
Nah. That’s what my Irish great-grandfather did, too. And my other great-grandparents–Bertha, for example, ran a chuckwagon. They lived in a tent by a river for a while. And Mary Grace, another g-grandmother, worked in an orange juice stand on a California highway–one of the first roadside convenience-food stops, they were shaped like oranges with a window, you used to see old ones sometimes. They all did stuff like that, you’re just a generation or so closer to it. 
[QUOTE=tdn]
In fact, isn’t ingrained classism more of a European thing? I don’t know enough about it, but I’d heard many times that the old class structure in Europe is very much alive and well. While we USAans don’t treat our poor all that great (and we resent the rich as well), we at least put on a facade of equality, and would find any true class discrimination to be pretty repugnant.
I’m sensing some projection.
[/QUOTE]
In some ways there is definitely social isolation here, probably more than in Europe. Those big cars everyone is talking about can be very isolating. Shagnasty, isn’t it a fact that often, suburbanites leave the suburbs sealed in their cars, and go to work in offices full of people similar in background, education, and (self-evidently) occupation, and who also live in suburbs? I’m not saying this is 100% true of course. But we do favor private life and property here more than many other places, and in many instances this does tend to limit contact with dissimilar people. In a city like NY or SF, where people of all classes tend to walk and take public transit, this is less true than elsewhere, but only a very small percentage of Americans live in such places.
Not that this is a reason to hate Americans, necessarily. I especially take issue with complaints about our gas guzzling ways because they are to a large extent synmptomatic of a structural problem, and not something that most of us do happily.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Or a typical Frenchman is a cheese-eating, shower-hating, wine-sipping, existentialist mime who spends all day sitting in a cafe drinking cafe-au-lait because he’s on strike from his job at the Ministry of Bad Plumbing, complaining to the supercilious waiter that both his wife and his mistress are too bourgeouis.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but that one is true! 
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
Not that this is a reason to hate Americans, necessarily. I especially take issue with complaints about our gas guzzling ways because they are to a large extent synmptomatic of a structural problem, and not something that most of us do happily.
[/QUOTE]
This I take issue with. Most of us do do it happily. We could very easily have a far, far better public transportation system, but we have chosen to build one of the most car-centric countries on earth. What little public transportation we do have (with the very few exceptions of cities like New York or Boston) is woefully underutilized, and most of the people who do use it don’t seem to be able to afford any other options. Ridden a Greyhound recently?
That whole topic deserves a thread of its own…
[QUOTE=athelas]
By the way, the US is the only country in the world that is a net CO2 sink; that is, its forest fix carbon faster than CO2 is produced. This can mainly be attributed to the regrowth of forest in the eastern US.
[/QUOTE]
I have a lot of difficulty believing the United States is the only country that can claim this, when Canada has all the forest and a tenth the people.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
I have a lot of difficulty believing the United States is the only country that can claim this, when Canada has all the forest and a tenth the people.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t verify the claim, but remember that stable forests don’t fix nearly as much CO2 as a new-growth forest. If Canada was to wipe out their forests and then replant them they’d fix more than they do now.
Personally, I too have a hard time believing that the US is a net sink, but I don’t have the numbers to dispute it, and until I do I’m not willing to call anyone on it. Certainly not just because everyone knows that Americanians are evil.
[QUOTE=Team of Scientists]
Where did you get this idea, and why do you assume that most Americans disrespect those with lower paying jobs? I think that’s quite an unfair generalization.
[/QUOTE]
I dunno . . . I’ve met a lot of people who are like that. Anyone who’s ever worked in the service industry can probably tell you a few stories about people who take great pains to demonstrate their superior status to the lowly waitress or clerk. The worst of this I ever saw was on a cruise ship-- many people seemed to take it as their chance to “act rich” by abusing the staff and making imperious demands.
Americans are no different than any other humans. Every culture on the planet has a system of social hierarchy. The only thing that varies is the factor on which the status is based. It can be education, or bloodline, or money, or the manner of employment or even skin color. People will find something which sets them apart, something that they consider a desirable quality-- and it must be one in which the majority of people do not share. (Exclusivity, or at least the perception thereof, is essential.)
People with higher-status jobs are thought of as “smarter” than, say, a gas station attendant. “Who would want to work as a gas station attendant unless they had to? That guy must be stupid or lazy.”
[QUOTE=Rick]
The single most telling word in what I quoted above is in the second sentence “seems”. Seems does not mean this is how it is, seems is your perception. the reality is that most Americans work hard, and don’t trade in their car every year or two. We go to work and bust our ass to do the best job we know how. If we can get a high salary for this, where is the harm in that? If I am going to sell my body / or brains I am going to get as much as I can for them. Can you tell me you wouldn’t?
I don’t know where you are from, but I think you have seen too much American movies and television and don’t fully understand what America is about, and what Americans are like.
I guess I shouldn’t feel bad, I have a friend in Sweden that when he travels people seem to think that in the summer the streets of his city are covered in topless super models, and in the winter polar bears walk the streets. neither of these are reality. (Damn it!)
Bottom line is you need to get past the perception and see the reality.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, and if you’re scared of kangaroos, don’t come to Australia. They roam the streets everywhere.
[QUOTE=Rodgers01]
This I take issue with. Most of us do do it happily. We could very easily have a far, far better public transportation system, but we have chosen to build one of the most car-centric countries on earth. ?
…
[/QUOTE]
But this is exactly where I disagree with you. We didn’t make this country what it is today, it was our grandparents’ generation that really decided to move as much as possible toward rubber-tire transit, and the first principle in driving people from mass transit into their cars is to replace trains or streetcars with buses.
More people than you think are fuming at the wheel as they sit in traffic, wishing they could be anywhere else and putting their time and attention to more productive and entertaining use than attending to the traffic.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
But this is exactly where I disagree with you. We didn’t make this country what it is today, it was our grandparents’ generation that really decided to move as much as possible toward rubber-tire transit, and the first principle in driving people from mass transit into their cars is to replace trains or streetcars with buses.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve always heard a vague urban legend that automobile companies bought up the railroads/trams, or their tracks, or* something* along those lines to discourage people from using trains by making them less available.
Any truth to it? Did the automobile industry try to hamstring the railroads or was it simply consumer choice which brought them down?
That’s a bit off topic ( 
) but the simple answer is “No”. A good, succinct explanation of Los Angeles and her transportation system can be found in Sir Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilization.
Upon rereading the question, “no” to the idea that the automobile industry destroyed the trams… at least in LA.
At least we don’t have to live in windmills and clump around in those horrible wooden shoes and wear tacky white bonnets on our heads. And my man does not smell of herring and onions.
And we have hills and trees and artists who know how to draw them, dammit!
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
But this is exactly where I disagree with you. We didn’t make this country what it is today, it was our grandparents’ generation that really decided to move as much as possible toward rubber-tire transit, and the first principle in driving people from mass transit into their cars is to replace trains or streetcars with buses.
More people than you think are fuming at the wheel as they sit in traffic, wishing they could be anywhere else and putting their time and attention to more productive and entertaining use than attending to the traffic.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know if it was our grandparent’s generation or the auto companies or both who ruined public transportation in the US, but I simply don’t agree that there is a significant number of people in this country clamoring for better public transportation (except for those who already use it in that handful of places like NYC and Boston). If it was simply a matter of infrastructure (rubber-tire transit instead of trains), it wouldn’t be a problem: all those people who supposedly support public transportation would be taking the bus, and complaining to their elected officials to get the rail lines back up and running. But that’s not the case at all: our bus system is a shambles. Greyhound stations are almost by default neglected, dirty, and in dangerous parts of town. The busses themselves are a mess. I rode a Greyhound last Saturday: there were backs missing on some of the seats, collapsed seat cushions, graffiti on the walls, and empty beer cans rolling around the floor. The bus smelled, and the fabric on the seats was dirty. Clearly, people who can afford cars are usually NOT lining up to ride the bus – and that’s if a bus station is even available! About two years ago Greyhound closed its station in my town of over 20,000 people, due to lack of business. We now have NO links to public transportation, whatsoever. In a town of 20,000 people!! It’s incredible to me – we used to have a bus and a train station, and now we have nothing.
I’ll stop there because this is OT enough already, but ultimately I think if there were sizable numbers of Americans who really wanted decent public transportation, we would have it, period. So I can’t blame anyone for criticizing Americans for being extremely wasteful with the system we’ve built up for ourselves.
[QUOTE=Einmon]
I think constanze might be of the female persuasion…
[/quote]
I didn’t have to be persuaded to be female, I was born that way 
[quoe]Germans often view Americans with some suspicion because an American’s overt friendliness is often equalled to inherent shallowness. After all, you greet each other with “How are you?” and then DO NOT EXPECT TO HEAR AN HONEST ANSWER!!! I’ve had this conversation with German friends numerous times and tried to explain that this phrase basically means “Hi”. They started eyeing me with suspicion after that. Incidentally, none of them had ever been to America.
[/quote]
We do know that “How are you” is the AE equivalent to “How do you do?” in BE, which is a polite phrase. When you ask a German “Wie geht’s dir?” the answer is the equally formal, and polite “Danke, gut, und dir?” (Thanks, fine, and how are you?) But yes, the friendliness that’s directed at everybody without following up with commitment is considered shallow. Even taking into account the polite routine customary in every culture.
So somebody who at leasts visits other countries as tourist is in a certain mental state?
Why is it so important if somebody has visited the US or not before being qualified to talk about the culture and politics? This isn’t, after all, about individual Americans being nice chap (while voting for a president who started a war) or clueless idiots as every country has them. It’s about the general population, the general culture.
And again, does talking on the Internet with many Americans, reading their opinions on key topics, not count as knowing Americans? Do I have to meet them face to face? Would you consider me qualified if I had been to America?
[QUOTE=Lissa]
I’ve always heard a vague urban legend that automobile companies bought up the railroads/trams, or their tracks, or* something* along those lines to discourage people from using trains by making them less available.
Any truth to it? Did the automobile industry try to hamstring the railroads or was it simply consumer choice which brought them down?
[/QUOTE]
The Perfect Master answers the question “Did General Motors destroy the LA mass transit system?”