Re your: "Having had a pleasant experience up north, I wasn't quite ready for the braying, shouting fat Americans running STOP signs, cutting each other off, yelling obscenities out car windows while blasting their horns, one SUV taking up two parking spaces, a HUMMER with a 'Kick Their Ass & Take Their Gas' bumpersticker, etc."
Enough tut-tutting from me. I'll allow someone else to point the bony finger of indignation for a change. This is from an article in yesterday's NY Times on escalating rudeness on the Long Island Rail Road:
"At least one expert in social norms believes the decline in civility on the railroad is part of a much larger trend. Gail Satler, a sociology professor who lectures on contemporary society at Hofstra University, said bad manners have become a pattern of American culture, cropping up consistently in public places.
"'In the last 15 to 20 years, people have increasingly moved indoors into their own private space,' Dr. Satler said. 'They stay home, rent movies, have food delivered. They're so used to doing anything they want that when they go out in public, they no longer know how to behave, They just make themselves at home wherever they are, regardless of the effect on those around the them.'"
That strikes me as a pretty heavy trip to put on takeout food. Surely, cocooning can’t play that big a role in USers’ unique boorishness; after all, they must have a lot of pizza-to-go in Canada, too. I’m inclined to put the blame for rampant US incivility on Americans’ penchant for waging unjust wars. I figure any people willing to rain death and destruction on foreigners for no good reason at all will also be inclined to pick their teeth at the table, belch at inappropriate times and even comb their hair with saliva in public. Mass slaughter and rudeness are part of a continuum, I fear.
Carl