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Personal opinion below:
America has succeeded. No matter how you want to look at it, America ranks among the top, if not the very pinnacle of achievement in the modern age.
The country went from being the ultimate underdog fighting what was then the very best and strongest that the old world could throw at it and....they won a war that they had absolutely no business winning.
That sparked something in the American mindset, and it forced a certain self-evaluation that echoes through loud and clear today.
Everything that was pivotal to the victory that should not have been ours is regarded as almost sacred, specifically because it worked (for us).
Individualism - that works for us. That rugged sense of self reliance that says in no uncertain terms "I make my own future." If you don't think that played an important role in early US history, then I would put forth that you do not understand Americans or our piece of the North American continent very well.
Hard work and diligence - We work here. A lot. Longer hours with less vacation than any other industrialized country. Why? Because it worked for us. It wasn't easy beating a globe spanning empire with a thousand year head start. It took constant hard WORK. It wasn't easy to carve a new nation out of the wilderness, but we did that too. We didn't do it by going on extended holiday, we did it by busting our collective a$$es and bending the land to our will. Again, it worked, and we saw the fruits of those labors manifest themselves in our surging strength on the world stage, surpassing nations that had been around ten centuries or longer than we had.
People look at the country of my birth and wonder how it even continues to be. It is (compared to its European counterparts) so filled up with noise and violence that it often must appear to be little more than loosely guided anarchy, but it works for us. We love to fight, argue, debate loudly, and so forth. And we love our guns. That too, is a tradition left over from our earliest days. It was simple farmers with guns who defeated the armies of the Empire. Yeah, they get turned on our own citizens because we continue to support the old tradition that got us here, but it is BECAUSE of that old tradition that you won't see us giving up our guns anytime soon.
It works for us, and we're damned proud that it does and has. We celebrate that constantly, much to the chagrin of a lot of other folks around the world.
Where we get into trouble is with the assumption that because our ways have worked so well for us, we figure they must be globally exportable, so we're mystified when we step in somewhere and try to help (by bringing our methods--generally practical and time tested methods that we use ourselves--into a foriegn situation.
The problem with that is that the foriegn situation is just that....foriegn. They have their own ways....ways that often clash with, or are at odds with the stuff we're proposing, and that's where the resentment and friction comes in.
From the American POV, he's only trying to help, by demonstrating what he knows to be successful. From the foriegn perspective, the American is being insensitive to local customs and traditions, and is running roughshod over a thousand or more years of history.
When the person from the other country makes this known in a less-than-happy tone, the American response is typically exhasperation.
Least that looks like the root of it to me.
-=Vel=-
America has succeeded. No matter how you want to look at it, America ranks among the top, if not the very pinnacle of achievement in the modern age.
The country went from being the ultimate underdog fighting what was then the very best and strongest that the old world could throw at it and....they won a war that they had absolutely no business winning.
That sparked something in the American mindset, and it forced a certain self-evaluation that echoes through loud and clear today.
Everything that was pivotal to the victory that should not have been ours is regarded as almost sacred, specifically because it worked (for us).
Individualism - that works for us. That rugged sense of self reliance that says in no uncertain terms "I make my own future." If you don't think that played an important role in early US history, then I would put forth that you do not understand Americans or our piece of the North American continent very well.
Hard work and diligence - We work here. A lot. Longer hours with less vacation than any other industrialized country. Why? Because it worked for us. It wasn't easy beating a globe spanning empire with a thousand year head start. It took constant hard WORK. It wasn't easy to carve a new nation out of the wilderness, but we did that too. We didn't do it by going on extended holiday, we did it by busting our collective a$$es and bending the land to our will. Again, it worked, and we saw the fruits of those labors manifest themselves in our surging strength on the world stage, surpassing nations that had been around ten centuries or longer than we had.
People look at the country of my birth and wonder how it even continues to be. It is (compared to its European counterparts) so filled up with noise and violence that it often must appear to be little more than loosely guided anarchy, but it works for us. We love to fight, argue, debate loudly, and so forth. And we love our guns. That too, is a tradition left over from our earliest days. It was simple farmers with guns who defeated the armies of the Empire. Yeah, they get turned on our own citizens because we continue to support the old tradition that got us here, but it is BECAUSE of that old tradition that you won't see us giving up our guns anytime soon.
It works for us, and we're damned proud that it does and has. We celebrate that constantly, much to the chagrin of a lot of other folks around the world.
Where we get into trouble is with the assumption that because our ways have worked so well for us, we figure they must be globally exportable, so we're mystified when we step in somewhere and try to help (by bringing our methods--generally practical and time tested methods that we use ourselves--into a foriegn situation.
The problem with that is that the foriegn situation is just that....foriegn. They have their own ways....ways that often clash with, or are at odds with the stuff we're proposing, and that's where the resentment and friction comes in.
From the American POV, he's only trying to help, by demonstrating what he knows to be successful. From the foriegn perspective, the American is being insensitive to local customs and traditions, and is running roughshod over a thousand or more years of history.
When the person from the other country makes this known in a less-than-happy tone, the American response is typically exhasperation.
Least that looks like the root of it to me.
-=Vel=-
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