Disclaimer: This is a response to a recurring stream of vile lies and innuendo and outright bigotry that I will no longer be taking up the arse with a smile on my face. It's me venting. This is NOT a screed directed at anybody I know personally, correspond with or am blogbuddies with. I have many international friends and y'all are some of the greatest folk a guy could ask for. Then again, none of y'all were the trash talking jackasses that got me this pissed in the first place so this disclaimer probably wasn't warranted in any case.

Oh well, on with the show:

Dear everybody in the world who is bitching about America,

I hear you've been criticizing my country. You criticize our culture, especially you Old Europe types, saying that we don't have any or that we're all fat lazy spoon feeders. You accuse us of empirialism, saying that we send our troops around the world to bully others into submission. I've even heard you saying that we are neglectful of our responsibilities. You think that since we are the only superpower left that we should be fixing the lion's share of the world's problems and you intimate that we're not doing so.

Bullshit. People are always jealous and resentful of the big dog. On the world stage the United States of America is the big dog. We'll even tolerate your nips and yips so long as you don't bite too hard, but that doesn't mean that we like it.

What's this about America not having its own culture? You complain about this while wearing Nike running shoes and an Adidas ball cap, Coke in one hand and McBurger in the other? Why are our movies and music bigger in your country than your own are (excepting France and most Arab countries where the government actively censors and controls imports of music and movies)? We're ignorant yokels because we don't have passports? Our states are bigger than your countries and we have fifty of them. Just like you, we don't need passports to visit our neighbors. One of them is far bigger than Europe and the other is over half the size of Europe. We don't have passports because we don't need them.

Empire? We're no empire. If we were an empire would we have tolerated a border like Mexico? Hell no. America would go South far enough to have a border that could be guarded by three contract workers and a doberman. Would we have tolerated all that acid rain and waste coming down from Canada along with their government subsidized lumber undercutting our own? No way. If we were an empire builder the USA would have 52 states and it would extend from the Great White North down to Ecuador.

Americans are fat, lazy and stupid? Oh, man is that one a laugh. We work. Man, do we work. We work 40 plus hours a week, not 30 or 35 like you do. We take one or two weeks off a year, not six to seven or even more. Do you know what that gets us? The most reliably growing economy in the world and a country filled with the wealthiest citizens in the world. Always and ever. Surprisingly, the closer other countries get to the American work ethic, the better off they are financially. People come to America with a good work ethic and make hundreds of times more than they made in their own country. America works!

Ignoring our responsibilities? Where? What problem is there out there that we haven't tried to help? Nobody gives more money, supplies, expertise and resources to the world's problems than we do. We give aid to freaking Egypt, that's how desperate we are to give money away. I keep hearing about how America is turning its back on the Aids problem in Africa. We spend untold millions on that problem, far more than any other country. We support hundreds of deadbeat countries in the UN, an organization that seems to exist solely to bash us and the only Democracy in the Middle East. Starvation in the third world? Who sends more food than everybody else combined? Oh, yeah - we do. But mean old America didn't sign the Kyoto agreement. Excuse us (and China and Russia, even though they don't seem to get any flak for it) for not agreeing to something specifically designed to screw with our industries. Your shock and dismay would be more convincing if your own country was living up to Kyoto, seeing as you DID sign it.

You complain that American culture invades every country that opens its borders to us. First of all, this isn't something new. Since the very first time one culture has traded with another an influx of the cultures themselves has been part of the bargain. Second, opening borders is a decision of each individual country. You want our products, you get our products and unless your country is in the Orient (because for some unknown reason we'll let Oriental countries set up grossly unfair trade imbalances with us) if you want us to buy your stuff you've got to let us in too. We don't force our way in - there's never a case where the US military launches a beach invasion in order to sell you Pepsi and a Hershey bar.

We're capitalists and we've had 200 years of practice in how to sell shit and we are the freaking shiznit of salesmen. We've got scientists measuring brain waves to see exactly what color the new wrapper of the Snickers bar should be to make you crave peanuts and just how much silicone Ms.October needs in order to make the maximum number of acne covered teens cream in their shorts. We have teams of anthropologists doing studies of your culture and your habits so we can convert our products into things you didn't even know that you can't live without. We OWN capitalism.

In summary, why don't you have a nice hot cup of Shut The Hell Up?

Regards,
Jim

PS - To all you fartknockers who dog Britain: Just how well are your country's former colonies doing right now? Oh, right. That's what I thought.

Posted by: Jim at 11:47 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 1112 words, total size 6 kb.

1 Rock ON! It was about time somebody said it!

Posted by: Kansas girl at June 03, 2004 03:25 PM (4N2f4)

2 Amen brother!

Posted by: Joey at June 03, 2004 03:48 PM (oW+tb)

3 hmmm.. I love Snickers

Posted by: jimi at June 03, 2004 08:13 PM (lN8eP)

4 Word. And may I add, to the culture bit, jazz, beloved by Europeans who like to sit in smoky clubs and look pensive, is a uniquely American art form.

Posted by: Random Penseur at June 04, 2004 08:38 AM (LlPKh)

5 I am just glad that you said in the beginning that none of your international friends caused this. I mean, I consider myself one your international friends, but I am so paranoid I would've been sure that I had triggered this one .

Posted by: Helen at June 04, 2004 09:22 AM (TmM0X)

6 America has a culture...it's just that, since we're such a melting pot, it's not uniquely ethnic in the way that, say, France's is, or Russia's, or Spain's. Our culture used to be primarily derived from our Anglo-Saxon forebears, but that began to change some time ago. We haven't had thousands of years in one place to allow us to develop the kind of culture that European countries enjoy. And we've had a three-hundred year history of absorbing the misfits, dissenters, refugees and boat people of virtually every other culture on earth, so in that kind of environment it's rather hard to develop a distinct culture of the kind that Europeans think of when they use the word. But we have free people, free markets, and the highest standard of living in the world. There is opportunity galore. You can be anything you want here, if you set your mind to it. I'll take that kind of culture over Europe's any day.

Posted by: Curt at June 04, 2004 11:06 AM (MjUGS)

7 Say it loud... say it proud!

Posted by: Jason at June 05, 2004 03:54 AM (MH3dC)

8 I'm not sure I understand your position, it was too nuanced and sophisticated.

Posted by: SpaceMonkey at June 07, 2004 02:06 PM (DN55C)

9 Sorry to get all hoity-toity like that, SM. Basically I'm just saying that the USA is pretty cool and undeserving of a lot of the crap talk out there.

Posted by: Jim at June 07, 2004 02:47 PM (saeHM)

10 Well, we *have* benefitted from the Brain Drain from EU and all over the world... Is it any wonder all they can manage to do is stand around and throw rocks at US? /snark

Posted by: Claire at June 08, 2004 11:48 AM (l1oyw)

11 Is it any wonder all they can manage to do is stand around and throw rocks at US? Which is by itself a remarkable technological achievement. For them.

Posted by: McGehee at June 08, 2004 01:15 PM (lGoQn)

12 I work here in the Pentagon (Room 1B923A, FWIW), and all I gotta say is... ...RIGHT ON, DUDE!!! Thank you, too, while I'm at it!

Posted by: Tim Kyger at June 08, 2004 03:56 PM (DmFF+)

13 This is the first time I've been here (by way of Everyday Stranger) and I am impressed with this letter. Now, is there any way for mass distribution of this?

Posted by: Tif at June 08, 2004 06:22 PM (jCFyL)

14 A nice hot cup of Shut The Hell Up...I'm going to have to remember that one...

Posted by: Douglas at June 09, 2004 12:32 AM (bFmrY)

15 em·pir·i·cism     P   Pronunciation Key  (m-pîr-szm) n. The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge. Employment of empirical methods, as in science. An empirical conclusion. The practice of medicine that disregards scientific theory and relies solely on practical experience.

Posted by: Alan M at June 13, 2004 12:22 PM (ZVo9w)

16 Quite right, Alan. Typo corrected.

Posted by: Jim at June 13, 2004 12:35 PM (saeHM)

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