Why is Anti-American sentiment so acceptable?

Anti-American sentiment: Why is it acceptable?


America is the most scrutinzed country in the world today. Ever increasingly, i've noticed this jump-on the America hating bandwagon trend. It's rarely met with criticism but approval. Big bad America. The worlds scapegoat.


Why is it so easy to slag off that entire nation particularly? Hmm? Doing the same for a region in Africa or a certain religion would absolutely not be so plain sailing. It would be alot harder. Easy target America?


PC doesn't seem to flex the rule book at U.S haters, criticis of athiesm, critics of Christians. It doesn't condition that way seeminly..The 'racist' callers won't use that word at US criticism. Maybe they don't suitably qualify under the deffinition of 'offensiveness'. They won't get their 'AmeroPhobia'.


Not one good thing is said about that country. whilst those criticis watch their US movies & sitcoms, use American innovations, and mastebate over American porn sites.


Whatever America does, it's a minority. Remember? Just like the Boston Bombers were called a minority.

Firstly, most African countries are very poor, so we expect them to be a bit backward. We can try and encourage change, but we've accepted that realistically it's not going to happen until their economies have grown significantly. America however is perhaps the richest and most powerful nations on Earth and the attitudes of some of its citizens, especially in the southern states, are an embarrassment to everyone in the developed world.

Secondly, the American government has power, but that power needs to be used responsibly. For example, America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan to get rid of Saddam and the Taliban, which I couldn't object to even without made-up excuses. But they gave little thought to what would happen afterwards, and as a result hundreds of thousands of people have died in the instability that followed. A country prepared to overthrow a foreign oppressive regime should also do its best to replace it with something better, which America failed to do.

There are many things to admire about America, and many things to criticise about Britain and the rest of the world. But a nation as powerful as America must of necessity be held to higher moral standards than anywhere else - standards which it all too often fails to meet.

It's not that though. In regards to the bombings, Americans were callled hypocrites for complaining. That is the problem.Some people even claimed it was their own fault, or well deserved. That's not hating the govenment, but dealing with it's citizena collectively

Don't know about the other guy but I probably am. Tell me, why is the USA such a great place that deserves no criticism at all? Do you agree with censorship and restricting opposing views?

I see what you mean, but in this case no I don't think it's hypocritical to complain about the bombings. Terrorism of any kind is a cowardly way to strike, and for all their faults the American armed forces have never been in the habit of deliberately targeting unarmed civilians for no military purpose.

What would be hypocritical would be denouncing, for example, a member of the Taliban bombing a senior army officer and killing several family members at the same time - in other words, the same as what American drones do all the time in Afghanistan. It's not terrorism, because it would be a genuine military target, but all the same there are often many ways in which the same objective can be achieved with far fewer civilian casualties.

Yet those ways tend to be rejected by the Taliban because it's made up of a bunch of half-mad extremists who don't care for the distinction between soldier and civilian, and by America because it would rather keep the cost of war down than do anything to save the lives of a few random citizens of a minor country on the other side of the world.

No, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. There is a void. Criticism toward Americans is becoming too acceptable. Acceptable only to Americans. This creates double standards and this undeserved mob mentality has crept in.

Because they're more powerful than us. They dominate nearly all areas of power; politics, economy, culture etc. so it's OK to criticise them because they are in a better position than us. Whereas if you aimed some of the stereotypes and criticisms at poorer and less powerful countries, it feels like bullying. We're not really in a position to be laughing at them because we are so much more privileged than them. It's just like an upper class person laughing at working class people looks nasty and intolerant, whereas a working class person laughing at upper class culture is OK.

I don't believe in 'privileged'. That is something you have handed to you. If somebody is successful in life, it doesn't mean they're privileged. I'm sick of that ignorant narrative be to honest.

Your country is obviously a privilege that has been handed to you. A lot of privilege can be disputed, but country is not one of them.

Because the US are the big powerful bunch. The same way it's very easy to criticise white, middle class men.

Don't take it personally, you'll always take the lions share of the criticism when you're on top.

I have no issue with American citizens, apart from the minorities in the southern states which seem to have the IQ of a dead goldfish. When I went on holiday to New York and Washington DC a while back, it definitely seemed a lot more pleasant that London. In fact, the only person who I heard being aggressive had a south London accent, so that probably doesn't do wonders for us. Then again, I've just imagined New York to be traffic jams and taxi drivers going, "Get out the way, you ****ing *******!" So maybe I just went on a good week.

I do have quite a few issues with the American government. I actually do quite like Obama (no, not because he's black...). Obamacare is probably as close to the NHS he'll get, which is great, he's not afraid to support controversial social issues like gay marriage, and he actually has emotion. It seems real too, and he doesn't try so hard to hide it. When you see him crying after things like Newtown and more recently in Boston, you see that Obama is actually human.

However, the US government as a whole is passing some laws which will greatly restrict things like Internet freedom, like CISPA, and there'll probably be revised versions of the much-loved SOPA and PIPA sometime. Saying a lot of websites are based in the USA, some of it could affect people outside the country, and it's pretty scary how Hollywood seems to be in control of the entire Internet, which makes its very purpose obsolete.

I do think that many people could be overreacting, though. There was an anti-SOPA et al. video a while back, I think it was much more a video in support of Richard O'Dwyer (I was a supporter of that, and wrote a letter to my MP asking him to argue against his extradition, I got a letter back from Damian Green with what was obviously some copied and pasted response, but it was something), but still, it pretty much said that armed police officers will break into your house, arrest you, put a hood over your head and fly you to a court in the USA where you'll be imprisoned for life, for pirating a few music downloads. It has a legitimate message, but I can't see the US treating pirates like terrorists any time soon.

Anyway, I've just noticed I haven't actually answered the question, I'm just trying to justify myself. Most people don't have that big a problem with the USA, and when people say "Americans are fat trolololol" they're most likely joking. I also think that people are still sore about what seemed like Bush pushing Blair into helping him with Iraq, and it had quite a bit of opposition within the UK. There are also some people who feel that America think that they're superior to everyone else, when the country was built upon the shoulders of other countries. The amount of civil rights issues in America in the 20th century doesn't help its image either, especially the way that Americans brought black people into the country, enslaved them, then the Americans, who kidnapped them, tried to force them to get out the country when slavery was abolished.