I have to go back to bed. I have a habit of waking up in the middle of the night to check my emails.
I have a question, though. Someone asked me if it's true that all Brits hate Americans, although I found the opposite when I took my trip.
Of course I know the stereotypes (baseball hats, elastic pants, velor suits), but is it true? Do you hate us?

Alt Q (as it appears to be obligatory): Would you go for a non-themed wedding around halloween or wait until the summertime?

Edit: I'm sorry for posting so soon after Kitty's thread. Please forgive me, Kitty!
(nolongernuts, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:03, 34 replies, latest was 15 years ago)

you stepped on my thread :(

( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:05, Reply)

I am outraged

( Roota zweeeeeoooooowm, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:06, Reply)

^this I really liked that thread I was learning new things about you lot
all the info I need to take you all down!!!!
( SteveFrench Cardio is for homo's. do you even lift bro?, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:45, Reply)

:( I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to. Will I get yelled at now, internet style?
(nolongernuts, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:06, Reply)

It's ok
But don't let it happen again!
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:13, Reply)

Ok.

(nolongernuts, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:16, Reply)

aww, now DiT's done it to you
hurts, doesn't it
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:38, Reply)

Americans are ignorant, arrogant, ridiculously loud, racist, gun loving, violent, crazy religious, and gay bashing.
But I get on with nearly all I've met.
(PsychoChomp, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:11, Reply)

That made me laugh!
Seriously? I'm curious as my first time out of the States was last week.
I admit, I live in Hicksville, but I swear I'm not a redneck!
(nolongernuts, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:15, Reply)

The english are generally quite open to meeting individual americans,
it's just you as a country or in big groups.

Plus you're all fat.
(PsychoChomp, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:18, Reply)

^this
when you get two or more americans together there is the potential for them to start whooping and cheering.

We don't like that sort of behaviour.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:20, Reply)

We might whoop and cheer, but that's when we've had a good harvest.
Usually when I go downtown with my friends, we get drunk and discuss politics or religion.
(nolongernuts, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:24, Reply)

I want this upcoming disaster story to be watertight, Rog
Don't let me down.
( Roota zweeeeeoooooowm, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:14, Reply)

my wedding is going to be in september or october
could potentially be near halloween.

what's wrong with having it then?

Chompy summed up views on Americans nicely, and like him I get on with nearly all I've met.

The problem is that, from the outside at least, it seems like Americans think they are better than everyone else and deserving of special treatment purely because of that. Merely being an American is not some kind of achievement.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:18, Reply)

I guess I'm quite naive then.
I don't think we're better than anybody else, but I've not been out of Farmville for long (yes, I just said Farmville) and am still figuring out the big bad world.
(nolongernuts, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:22, Reply)

part of the issue is that there is so much american tv about
that it's easy to think that most americans are like those on tv.

but given that there are like 250 million of you(?) that's almost certainly not the case.

I've not met an american I didn't get on with.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:28, Reply)

I really enjoy the West Wing
but it does give a sense of "we're the only ones qualified to deal with the world's crises"
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:30, Reply)

you get with nearly all you've met?
tart
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:29, Reply)

I have no idea what you are talking about

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:32, Reply)

not really ninja editing,
perhaps old and fat ninja editing. Where you can see his grey underpants peeking out of his ninja uniform where it doesn't quite fit around his middle anymore. And he's wearing slippers.
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:38, Reply)

quiet you
or I'll never teach you how to make a ninja mask out of a t shirt
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:52, Reply)

Individually you are mostly fine.
But all together, ghastly. Something to do with kicking us out on our arses in the eighteenth century.

We have long memories.
( Bartleby A dead man on vacation, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:36, Reply)

Yeah.
They threw our tea into the Atlantic; 240 years later, we did the same with their oil.

Revenge is sweet. Specifically, revenge is sweet light crude.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:41, Reply)

Obviously it won't be watertight if it involves a boating disaster
But I'm assuming it won't be so epic.
( Roota zweeeeeoooooowm, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:38, Reply)

Naaah. Brits don't hate Americans.
At least, if you mean individual Brits and individual Americans. That'd be daft.

And a lot of Brits on the right wing idolise America and everything it does.

For the rest of us, it's a complicated affair. We don't understand a great deal of American culture, and there're large chunks of it that we'd rather not have - the creationism, the patriotism, the religiosity, the anti-socialism (even Callmedave Cameron would be lambasted as a socialist by US standards, remember), the commercialism, the preppiness, the general conservatism, the can-do attitude... we think they're all deeply strange and/ or worthy of suspicion.

And all this has to be understood in the context of British and American history. Britain is a very minor power that was once (and for a very short time) a very major power. We're just about beginning to get our heads around that, and the concomitant ideas that we aren't militarily or economically all that important, we shouldn't have a seat on the UN security council, the future is in the EU, and so on. It's a slow process, and most of us don't want to admit it to ourselves because, frankly, it's a bit embarrassing to most people.

We see America as partly an emblem of what we once were, and what we would still quite like to be. So there's some jealousy there. But it's tempered by the fact that America, too, is a declining power. So there's a slightly sardonic satisfaction that British decline is beginning to be reflected in the US, combined with a sense of superiority bankrolled by the fact that we (just about) accept our decline, and Americans (as yet) seem not to. So there's a kind of patronising attitude, too: we think of ourselves as (slightly) older, sadder and wiser than you lot.

In short: we don't hate you. We just think we're better.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:40, Reply)

well reasoned as usual
but I'd add not that the Americans aren't accepting their decline as a power, but that they don't see it.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:46, Reply)

Well, no -
but we're only just beginning to see it, and we've been in decline since at least 1945 (and probably 1918: the writing was on the wall from shortly after WW1). Trident anyone? And imagine any UK politician saying that the size of the armed forces should be reduced by at least half, and the permanent place on the UNSC surrendered...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:49, Reply)

yeah, I wasn't saying we are any better for it
but as a nation we just felt smugly superior, rather than outwardly whooping about being the best :-)

Really, it's the whooping that I don't like.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:51, Reply)

I absolutely agree.
When Dubya visited the site of the erstwhile World Trade Center, there was a scene where the builders there started chanting USA! USA! USA!. And that made me think, "See, THIS has a lot to do with it..."

(Which reminds me: on 11.ix.01, my brother was in a youth hostel in Salzburg with his mates. There was also an American there. They were - obviously - watching the news. The American asked to the room, "Why do they hate us?" My brother and his mates explained in great depth exactly why. For two hours. Sometimes my brother is great.)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:55, Reply)

Regarding your earlier point
why on earth would anyone suggest we give up our seat on the UNSC? Even if though we're a small country of less significance than we think we are, why would you reduce that further by giving up a permanent seat?
(Bazongaloid, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:58, Reply)

Well, I don't think that there should be any permanent members,
so the UK giving up its seat is part of that. And I don't see a problem with unilateralism on that front - if all members ought to give up their permanent seats, then the fact that some don't doesn't reduce the obligation.

But, if there's going to be a permanent membership (or at least a membership that doesn't rotate as quickly as it does for the current non P5 states), then there seems to be an argument available along the lines that it should have something to do with population, economic might, military might, strategic importance and ability to maintain the peace. The UK scores badly on all those: were the UN to be set up now, there's no way that the UK would be a candidate seat holder. So the argument for retaining the seat seems to rest on the fact that, once upon a time, it was more justified than now. Yet the idea that you can run a major international body on the strength of what member states once were seems deeply strange.

EDIT: That is to say, it's not about reducing significance, so much as recognising it.
EDIT 2: The other advantage of giving up the P5 seat is that it'd piss off most Brits royally, and that'd be intensely satisfying.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:07, Reply)

But at the moment we do have a relatively significant nuclear arms stockpile
(compared to countries that don't have nay for example, not compared to the US or Russia) so, whether you agree with it, that still makes us fairly significant.
(Bazongaloid, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:12, Reply)

Not so much, given the number of other nuclear states
including those that're undeclared. If it's nukes that count, then permanent seats should also go to South Africa, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, possibly Iran, possibly Syria and so on.

In terms of non-nuclear importance, they should also go to Brazil, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and a few others.

British decline isn't absolute, of course; it's relative. But that's what really counts. So you either have to accept that the P5 criteria are arbitrary - in which case, the moral authority seems to vanish - or that there should be a mechanism to remove states - in which case, bye-bye UK - or that more and more states can have permanent seats - in which case, the very idea of a two-tier SC looks to be untenable, and we're in effect back to the League of Nations and its requirement for unanimity in decisionmaking.

None of the horns of this trilemma looks too attractive to those who want the UK to keep its P5 seat...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:22, Reply)

Sorry....
think know
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:51, Reply)

I didn't until you stomped on Kitty;s thread!
only messing pal. You lot are ok but whenever I go to the states it really is a minority of people who come across as semi intelligent and decent.

You seem alright though so well done. Here is a gold star.
( SteveFrench Cardio is for homo's. do you even lift bro?, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 9:44, Reply)

I love Americans
My father lives amongst you and is married to one. Some of my best friends are New Yorkers and as a nation your contribution to world culture, though terrible in some respects, is mindblowing in others (like music).

I find your enthusiasm and missing embarrassment gene appalling and alluring in equal measures. I love your openness partly because I am so completely different from this. I also really like American women A LOT.

The one thing I really cannot stand is the constant graduating from everything. Stop it. You graduate from University: THAT'S IT. Not from fucking primary school etc. I realise it's great for short-term confidence but it's just fucking silly.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:00, Reply)

enthusiasm and missing embarrassment gene
that sums it up very nicely.

My embarrassment gene is very finely tuned.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:02, Reply)

do you need some privacy?

( SteveFrench Cardio is for homo's. do you even lift bro?, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:02, Reply)

Eh?

( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 11 Aug 2010, 10:47, Reply)