Why Europe never likes us

I think I figured out why everyone in Europe hates the US.

Despite popular belief, it has little to do with cultural imperialism. They like our culture, that is why they buy our crappy music and eat at McDonalds. Whatever they don't like they don't have. They like the fact that we go to war and kill the bad guys, because they know that if we didn't it would be their soldiers coming home in body bags, and they would be paying even more than they already do for the cleap oil that they are addicted to as we are.

It is simple.

It works something like this. Right now there is an upcoming election in Germany. There are two candidates Schroeder (who is the current Chancellor) and Shtiobel (who is the favourite). Schroeder is the leftist, and Shtoibel is the right winger. Schroeder supported the US war on the Taliban. Naturally so would Shtoibel. But now there are elections.

Schroeder does not need to say much, everyone knows what he stands for. Schroeder now has to distinguish himself, so he has come out fiercely against any invasion of Iraq.

Now it is not to hard for anyone to see that there would be little that is unjust in toppling SH. He is a monster. Thanks to him there are 40 less villages in Iraq. He used chemical weapons aginst thousands of civilians for no real reason. There are thousands dead, and countless permanently disfigured because he happens not to like them. If we got rid of SH we could end economic sanctions and allow life in Iraq to go on as before. Medicine could get through, and they could go on being just another Middle East dictatorship with no rights but relatively little violence and physical repression.

But Schroeder must tell his people that he is different and on the left, so he appeals to the old leftist, anti-capitalist, anti-America sentiment that he knows his people will buy. Now he is Chancellor, and he does and did hold a lot of support, so people still listen to him, and when he says "vote for me because I think America is bad" people listen, and even if they don't vote for him believe that America is bad. The right does the same thing.

In short anti-Americanism is a political card that all sides of any conflict, political, religious, economic, or ethnic will pull out when they want to distinguish themselves from their opponents. Since the US government changes so often (from Republican to Democrat) it is easy for either side to blame someone in the US.

It is the same all over the world actually. In the Middle East the politicians blame all the country's problems on the US. That is of course east. You just say, "look, they have a good economy, we have a bad one. In theory the world should even out, so if there is an imbalance then it must be that they are taking from us." Then if there is anyone who is allowed to think enough to point out the foolishness of this claim, he disappears before he can tell someone else.

So it really does trickle down from the politicians. Few people have any clue what the US is like except for the American movies which they love to watch, and the American junk they love to buy. They know few Americans and couldn't understand a newspaper unless the pictures are particularly colorful. Almost no European understands why the US pulled out of the Kyoto protocols. They are just told it is bad, and the US did it.

So pardon me for not caring when some polls show that the English don't like Americans.

Stop being so damned gullible.