Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenchu
I have met a lot of Americans, and it seems their attitude and personality always shares a similar trait. They are all rude, but dont realize it. Even when they are trying to be polite, like last week, I was on the back of a motorbike with the boyfriend of my girlfriends cousin, an American. He loves Thailand, and has a Thai wife, so he is trying to be polite. But he speeds down a crowded street tooting the horn loud. I mean, he was saying "Excuse me, sorry" a lot, but the whole ordeal was noisy and interupting, and I felt embarrassed being with him. Even when they try, they fail. I always see this. Also I think what they are taught in school is a big one. Almost all schools are pro american toward history. Considering the shameful history the country has, I think people who think the actions taken in the 40's and 70's and so on are just are pretty fuckin warped people. The amount of things and infulences an american has to ignore in their country, in both media, home and school, in order to be a polite, truly open minded person are so great, it is such few people who make it through all this to be decent people.
|
You didn't answer my second question....
Anyway.
So, you've met a lot of Americans, eh? Okay... I've met a lot of Mexicans. Of the ones that I've met, most couldn't speak English well at all, had less-than-perfect hygiene, love to oogle women (especially blondes), and swear every third word. By your logic, that would mean that every Mexican is that way. Hrm....
Your American friend who was speeding down the street... At least he was
trying to be polite? In America, a motorist apologizing at all to a pedestrian or another motorist is pretty rare--unless there was actually an accident of some kind. Being able to drive about five MPH over the speed limit is an expected 'liberty', and a lot of people carry that out to "drive fast everywhere". His behaviour would only have been strange here because he was actually apologizing. A lot of people would think, "Oh, what a nice guy!" And get on with their day.
Every country teaches their own version of history. Don't even try to deny it. Saying history is unbiased is like saying politics is honest. It just isn't true.
Shameful history? What's shameful? Relocation of Native populations aside, what have we done that's any worse than any other country? No, scratch that. Even WITH the relocations, how is our history worse than any other country's? Iraq, for example. They dropped chemical bombs on their own people. Japan--there was a native population there, also, before what we think of today as "Japanese" that are now more segregated and discriminated that the Blacks ever were in America. Germany killed hundreds of thousands nof Jews and started one of the bloodiest wars in the last three hundred years. Rome invaded the Middle-East over silly religious beliefs. Persia tried to subjugate the entire known world. The Aztecs sacrificed thousands of their own people to the gods.
How is our history any more shameful than any other?
Regardless of what you might think, Americans are no more or less polite or simple-minded as a whole than any people. We're humans, just like you. As such, we have the same flaws. Our cultures are different, so some things we do may seem rude, but that goes both ways (good example: it's rude in the West to slurp your noodles, but in Japan it's a sign that you are enjoying the food).
If anyone here is close minded, I'd say it's you.