[lbo-talk] Why are the US-ers such assholes?

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

I have the following question to the list.

As a rule, I read the opinions posted by the readers of news articles posted
on the Web, especially the BBC (which is moderated).  The reason for doing
that is to have some glimpse into what people actually think in their own
words - sort of a focus group on the cheap.

Although I do not keep any formal tallies of who says what, I noticed a
certain regularity - if the post is arogant, self-righteous, disparaging of
others, and jingoistic, the chances are it has been written by someone with
a US address.  

A similar exercise on the Yahoo-featured Reuters news which has an
unmoderated list is even more revealing - it basically a constant barrage of
self-righteous bile and insults with the rational argument contents close to
nil.  If there is any rationally argued posting there, the chances are it
was written by someone with a Canada address.

These are unsolicited opinions voluntarily supplied by readers, so they can
be viewed as a valid indication of what the authors actually think.  There
might be some sample representativeness issues that may affect the
distribution by a few percentage points, but the fact remains that the
US-sers tend to present themselves to the world as vile, arrogant,
self-righteous, jingoistic and dogmatic assholes - much more so than any
other English speaking nation.  Is it in the water or in the gene pool, or
what?  Any explanations?

Wojtek