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

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Dwayne:

> Perhaps only the loudest, craziest and least
> emotionally mature feel a compelling need to patrol
> the planet's blogs and chat forums in search of people
> besmirching the good name of their beloved nation
> state.  Perhaps many more people couldn't care less
> and instead of visiting iraqwar.ru et. al. to, once
> again, call that guy in Finland a "wingnut", spend
> time with friends and family, watch tv, play computer
> games, worry about their marriages and children and
> how they're going to make the mortgage/rent...

That crossed my mind too - but still, why does the US have a larger share of
such wingnuts.  In other words, where are the wingnuts from Russia?  I can
see that language can be a barrier to some of them, but that is not the case
for Canada, the UK, Australia, or NZ.

Stated differently, the phenomenon under investigation does not indicate
that most US-sers are wingnuts - that would be a fallacious conclusion
indeed.  But it certainly can indicate that the US has a larger population
of wingnuts than other English speaking countries do.  Or perhaps that the
US wingnuts feel more compelled to "patrol the planet's blogs" than wingnuts
elsewhere.

I noted a similar tendency in one study conducted by the UCSC criminologist
Dane Archer  who studied British and US teenagers.  The responses to his
survey provided by the US-ers contained much more self-righteous violence
and gore than those coming from the other side of the pond.  

Wojtek