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
___________________________________
We are what we are: Who knows why? My theory is that in order to believe most of the bullshit about "the cittee on a hill," the residents of that city become so detached from the real world that they reflexively attack anything which suggests that the real world deviates from the cartoon version of "America" they hold dear. I think many Americans intuitively understand that if they even begin to question the propaganda and nonsense with which they've been bombarded since infancy they will quickly lose their quasi-religious faith in "The Greatest Country that Has Ever Existed". Thus, unrelenting belligerence is their habitual stance. This will prevent other, more balanced people from even engaging them, because it's just so damn tedious to do so. Americans, by and large, really believe that we are both different and better than anyone else who has ever walked this planet - different and better in every way. No one else really counts. Anything that might cause a red-blooded American to question this belief simply cannot be tolerated; it must attacked and silenced, if possible. Hence the online assholishness.