Some people who havnt travelled to the US percieve Americans to be idiots. Your president doesnt do much to help with this.

But after many visits and some good friends in the US I have to say there are plenty of English who love youre country.

You have loads of space, with amazing scenery and at the moment its a country where I can still afford to fill up the tank on a car.

Americans used to be percieved as Fat but you only have to take a look at the average Brit to see that there are plenty of Fat wasters here too.

I have found the US has plenty of healthy eateries and supermarkets.

I like the way you can go to Walmart and buy anything including guns ?

Guns yes we have them in England too its just that over here they are heavily licienced, which results in all the scum bags getting them illegally.

Over here if someone breaks into your house armed with a weapon you end up locked up if you harm them while they rob you blind.

So take it from me we dont all hate Americans.

Just one thought though why do Yanks think all us Brits have bad teeth ?

I will swap the M1 for Highway 1 any day of the week.

Well America has a history of electing bad governments, I think this reflects on the population as a whole however I found americans to be great people once you look past all the bullsh** (i.e. Britney Spears sightings).

I don't think anyone in the world competes with americans in customer service, read that somewhere so they are amongst the nicest too!

I understand what you are saying DLBiten, but please don't take it personally. Other posts have already said that nations don't have friends, they have only interests - political, diplomatic etc etc.

Right enough, Britain was pretty good in its day: so was Spain, France and Holland to name a few others (don't forget the Romans) - all gone now and the USA is top of the pile, at present.
Somewhere in the future the USA will decline (and fall?), just as Rome did, and we will be looking at a "new kid on the block" - could be China or India or ... (fill in your own idea) ....

ps I have never really forgiven those Mongol hordes out of Asia! but, Mongolia is not what it was.

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Dave

Yeah, but what did the Romans ever do for us....apart from Aquaducts, sewers, roads.......

Andy

Andy,
I had to leave a bit of room for all credit to the Romans!
Mind, they were not very nice to this guy:-
A History of St George
who, even today, is better known and remembered in many countries of Europe, and other parts of the world, in contrast to England.

Despite the credit given previously to various other European nations, the Brits have been the best at running other countries in recent history and, arguably, in all known history: ask anyone from Malta what they think about the French who ruled them for a couple of years until the Brits kicked them out.

About St G. Things are changing, slowly:-
Branches of the Society

DLBiten,
I guess you have a sufficiently wide ranging answer to your valid question.

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Dave

I saw Jerry Springer interviewed once (quite an intelligent guy!).

He claimed his TV show could only work in the USA. When asked why - he had said no-one was paid to go on his show and there were no professional actors, so you need a population happy and willing to humiliate themselves publicly, and in his opinion only about 10% of any population would be of that ilk - and that in the USA that meant 25,000,000 people...

Just a theory...

Seriously, everyone likes to take a shot at the guy on top from time to time - in Australia we call it the "tall poppy syndrome". And it's easy to find fault in anyone's work. I think most here have nailed it on the head - the people charged with presenting an image of the USA to the world (ie the govt.) could be doing a better job. (Thank God we have a new govt ourselves...)

Personally I have some great mates from the US, and hope to get there one day - everyone I've met say the people are friendly and hospitable.

Damien

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Keep passing open windows...

You want to watch the Jeremy Kyle Show. I'm fairly sure the participants get some form of payment but they really are the dregs of society in the UK. I don't watch it often but I remember Jeremy asking one of these bagheads about how her own childhood was and she replied, "My Mum was a good parent, apart from that time when we were taken into care".

Seriously though, watching it is a kind of therapy. It makes you realise that no matter how bad life gets, there's always someone further up shit creek without a paddle than you.

as said previously, people are agains politics and the -isms like communism, capitalism, socialism... etc.. and now a days the trend is american-ism- and many people agains that actually the way that america threats. on the tele, in the newspapers we are seeing/watching how the american army act or behieve to the local people wherever they invate, or we are seeing watching how american bureaucrats manupilate the oil prices or the stock markets. if you go further you can read or see how the intelligent services of america produce and apply the conspirasy teories all over world.

people are agains the things which i have written above and not particulary american citizens. i have met lots of americans who went iran, middle east, etc. and no one had and problem. they are not agains americas richness or your wealth. they just want to have their normal life before america puts its hand on their soil or economy or people or biringing democracy.

maybe all these are the first rule of being the "world leader" just like ottomans, romans, ussr, uk (still) did earlier. i am not sure of that, but, what i am sure about this is the world we are living and there is only one world that we "must" share.

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ozhan u.
website under construction

I believe that was Lord Salisbury, Queen Victoria's last Prime Minister (8/10 for being pedantic I think?)

Some years ago I read an article based on a coversation between Clive James (Australian humourist, journalist, essayist and all round smart arse) and P J O'Rourke (US, similar). Apart from wondering what one has to do to get to wait on that table for a day, one comment from Clive James struck me; he said that any former colony or part of empire would always blame their former rulers for any problems, so some constantly half drunk occer (sp?) in a string vest who has never worked a day in his life and spends all his benefits on booze is (of course) poor because of the British, nothing to do with his own choices. He went on to speculate that there must be a similar character somewhere (probably Cappadocia), identical in all respects bar the string vest, who blames the Romans for his problems.

The US will not be top dog for ever, and when someone else takes over (I think India rather than China, but I have no better basis for that than anyone else), it will all become their fault. In the same way that the worst whingers are often the ("we") Brits, because we were last top dogs and lost our place to the Yanks*, so the US will take over as chief whingers at whoever knocks them off their perch.

*Harold Macmillan (UK PM in the late 50s) saw Britain's role as being "Greece to their Rome". Totally irrelevent, but an intersting attempt to salvage some self respect out of relegation.

Accuracy is never pedantry......but the caricature of working class people "in a string vest etc" is not pleasant, and smacks of Daily Mail editorial........?

*This was MacMillan's failed attempt at recovering dignity, I think, and very much in his patrician mode which was dying on its feet; MacMillan failed, like all his class, to read which way the wind blew. Remember at that time Britain had lost an Empire and failed to find a role. We were bankrupted by the war and had begun paying back the US for every bomb, breakfast and bullet we were supplied. Of course we liberated Europe, but we remained skint by this policy of payback until about 2 years ago...shocking really. Not that I defend Empire, neither an Imperial one nor a dollar one.

No-one I know dislikes US citizens, only their government's foreign policy, which is actually criminal.

In my defence, the quote about the string vest etc was by Clive James - I think it does succeed in capturing a character even though there is (as with all generalisations) a risk of offence. I'd present Harry Enfield's characters as similar examples.

Although I agree with you that people do not dislike US citizens, only their government, many comments are made that do not make that clear. I can't recall the context and am supposed to be working so I can't spend time searching, but I remember a comment by you that appeared to hold a Brit currently living in the states responsible for US foreign policy for no better reason than him living there. Even those who voted for Bush may have had valid reasons; the choice was between him and Gore in 2000, and one must wonder what would have happened had it gone the other way. I fear it would not have been good, probably at least as bad, but different.

I'm afraid there are also people who simply refuse to see the distinction between people and government - whether that is blaming the German people for Hitler or a Zimbabwean colleague for Mugabe. I don't know if it is possible to reach such people and I no longer try - I am old and only have so much time left. and I'd rather spend it with people who have at least a little common sense. One could argue the world would be a better place if I made the effort every time., because I might make one such see sense, and thus reduce the volume of prejudice in the world, but I am just too lazy.

Mark - the number of people whjo have little or no clue in the world seems to be rising, trying to reason with them is the classic unmovable object - no matter how unstoppable (read true) the logical and ethical argument is there is no getting through to them

I get the same thing on a smaller scale with random louts pushing me about in the street (because I currently work as a Pizza delivery driver on a moped, and am therefore visually identifiable as being on the lowest rung). I tried to reason with the last two and point out their error, but to no avail so the next one is getting a motorcross boot in the crotch.

Unfortunately there isn't a boot in the world big enough to kick the US foreign policy (which as Cam stated earlier is in clear breach of international law). Home-made nuke anyone?

That depends on where you are and other circumstances. In Sheffield (SOME) of the local police have realised that they are utterly powerless to do anything to protect us, so you can do some real damage to a known criminal without them following it up, just claim 'self defence'...

The thing that gets me with the USA isn't the people (everywhere has good and bad, and the UK seems to be filling with scum) but the way that the government twists the people's thoughts - anybody actually read the US foriegn policy relating to what they call 'Unilateral Multilaterism', (produced by the Bush-Cheney "think-tank" the whole document is a complete farce and if you deconstruct it and reproduce it as a fact by fact statement of policy (as it should be, transparent) it is the most aggressive foriegn policy since 1938!!!
It basically states that America wishes to have a global military presence, that the military capability of ALL other countries should be reduced to near zero (as we don't need our own army if the yanks have occupied and are 'looking after us'), and the best bit - the cost of providing global stability through unilateral multilaterism should be borne by all countries. This sounds just like a global protection racket with no joint body having any say in how the system is administered. We already have a UN and an agreed way to behave - which the USA pays absolutely NO attention to!!!

The world doesnt hate the American people, but your government should be 'the first against the wall when the revolution comes'.