> One of the biggest culture shocks I experienced when I got off the boat
> was the discovery that Americans tend to be navel gazing people who do
> not give a shit about any other culture or people.
Well, I guess that, having experienced this all my life, I have some immunity to it, but perhaps I've picked up some understanding of it along the way, too. It would be nice if Americans developed a little more interest in the world besides what they see on CNN (or rather the Fox network, which I guess is more popular than CNN). But I don't think its quite true to say that they don't give a shit about other countries; the problem is more that they have always tended to feel isolated from most of the world by two big oceans, and since WW II, by an economic and military machine which gives an impression of impregnability (except on a few occasions).
As long as the average American feels this security, she/he can afford to be magnanimous and charitable towards other, less blessed, lands -- the Lady with the Lamp, the refuge for the wretched, teeming masses, and all that. But on the occasions when some small, seemingly powerless segment of those foreign masses seems to rise up and humiliate Fortress America, Americans are shocked to their core, and react with patriotic fury. Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War (Johnson's "little yellow dwarves with pocket knives"), and 9/11 were the most recent examples of this phenomenon.
The reason leftie intellectual Americans have so much trouble understanding the appeal of Shrub's Texas Ranger act -- the "aw shucks, ma'am," laconic strong-but-protective image -- to the average American, and the lack of concern among the populace about the Patriot Act and other shreddings of civil liberties, is that these intellectuals don't share this visceral reaction of the isolated American who suddenly sees a hole poked in her/his fortress.
But without trying to unnderstand the Average American's psychology, what are you going to do? Just overthrow the government, then line up all the stupid, oafish, racist, nationalistic "Bubbas" and shoot them? But how are you going to make the revolution without at least the cooperation of some of the Average Americans? It seems to me that a lot of radicals who rage at how stupid, nationalistic, etc., Americans are are running primarily on bloody day-dreams of revenge against all the people they hate, which is not exactly the best frame of mind for understanding the situation.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt