American hedonism closes its eyes to death, and has been
incapable of exorcising the destructive power of the moment
with a wisdom like that of the Epicureans of antiquity.
- Octavio Paz
Death is un-American, and an affront to every citizen's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- Arnold Toynbee
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"As long as such self-serving hypocrisy motivates America's response, Ukraine will only sink further into needless bloodshed, and that blood will be on America's head." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. ― Bertrand Russell
Global Coke
"What those 'racists' are reflexively and rightly reacting to is the soulless chill as the fire goes out beneath the melting pot.
Those who think America can thrive as a 'cultural mosaic' are worse than fools; they're Canadians." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions. ― Frantz Fanon
What the United States does best is understand itself. What it does worst is understand others. - Carlos Fuentes
Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States. - Porfirio Diaz
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"Indeed, everything about the American southland was magical and exotic to the young Canadian musicians, from the sights and smells to the drawling manner of speech to, especially, the central role that music played in people’s everyday lives." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
America is a mistake, a giant mistake. - Sigmund Freud
America is an adorable woman chewing tobacco. - Auguste Bartholdi
chimerica
"This is the tone of the China Century, a subtle mix of Nazi/Soviet bravado and 'oriental' cunning -- easily misunderstood, and never heard before, in a real enemy, by the West." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
"And for the others who argued for English-only patriotism, I note that there are more than 57 million Americans (about 20% of the nation) whose first-language is not English...." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
"This is the behavior, and the fate, of paranoid old-world tyrants like Hitler or Saddam, not liberal new-world democracies like America pretends to be." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. - Georges Clemenceau
I found there a country with thirty-two religions and only one sauce. - Charles–Maurice Talleyrand
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. - Edmund Burke
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word. - Marshall McLuhan
"The removal of racist sports nicknames (and mascots) seems outrageously belated -- why, exactly, has this civil rights cause taken so long to gain momentum?" JOIN THE DISCUSSION
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. - Mao Tse-tung
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did. - Red Cloud
In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact. - Marlene Dietrich
I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor. - Lord Byron
One day the United States discovered it was an empire. But it didn’t know what an empire was. It thought that an empire was merely the biggest of all corporations. - Roberto Calasso
Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. - Alexis de Tocqueville
newtown
"No one, I thought, could watch those scenes, of young children slaughtered en masse, and so many parents grieving, without thinking that this, finally, would tip some kind of balance in the country." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams then you must still regard America today with the same naive enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World. - Jean Baudrillard
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American. - Samuel Johnson
America, thou half brother of the world; With something good and bad of every land. - Philip Bailey
"What can be more powerful than disinformation in the Information Age?" JOIN THE DISCUSSION
England and America are two countries separated by the same language. - Sir Walter Besant
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America. - James Joyce
Now, from America, empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
If the United States is to recover fortitude and lucidity,
it must recover itself, and to recover itself it must
recover the "others"- the outcasts of the Western world.
- Octavio Paz
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. - Oscar Wilde
"America really is, for most Americans, all things considered, a good place to be, and all they really want is for everyone to enjoy the same privilege and pleasure." JOIN THE DISCUSSION
When good Americans die they go to Paris; when bad Americans die they go to America. - Oscar Wilde
jobs drug dealer
They're nothing more than traffickers; and as the smart traffickers'll tell you, you don't use the merchandise. They are just inoculating their kids with a tech-drug serum, to immunize them against the very merchandise that put the **** bowling alley in their basement.
America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself. - Georg Friedrich Hegel
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. - Arnold Toynbee
Americans always try to do the right thing after they've tried everything else. - Winston Churchill
The thing that impresses me most about Americans is the way parents obey their children. - Edward, Duke of Windsor
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be. - John Maynard Keynes
Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. - Margaret Thatcher
America is God's crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!... The real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races. - Israel Zangwill
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams. - Pico Iyer
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons. - Ringo Starr
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ― D.H. Lawrence
I have two conflicting visions of America. One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy. ― Bono
The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain. ― Roberto Bolaño
Americans Grow More Pessimistic about U.S. Role in World Affairs on: December 3, 2013, 21:07
I thought I would share some recent reports from the Pew Research Center on global attitudes about America, and America's attitudes about the globe.
First, a ranking of the top and bottom five countries in terms of their opinion of the U.S. (I should note here that the Philippines, Israel and Ghana actually like us more than we like ourselves -- our own favorability came out at 81%):
Second, a report released today which charts Americans' attitudes toward 'world affairs.' It seems we're becoming more pessimistic about our political entanglements abroad (52% of those polled, the highest percentage ever recorded, indicated that we should 'mind our own business' internationally) and less convinced of our own significance (53% indicated that America has become less important and powerful in the last ten years). A strong majority (77%, up from 53% in 2008), however, favor increasing economic ties with other nations.
The first of these figures seems the most important -- and the most unfortunate, given the positive role that the U.S. might play, for instance, in extending the 'Arab Spring' and vigorously containing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Obama's foreign policy efforts during the next two years will, I'm afraid, be limited by domestic exigencies (again, it seems a pity, given the range of things that seemed possible, with his election a glimmering possibility, just before the economic collapse in 08).
Americans Grow More Pessimistic about U.S. Role in World Affairs
Re: Americans Grow More Pessimistic about U.S. Role in World Affairs on: December 5, 2013, 20:27
I was astonished by two things in the Pew survey (thank you Sharon!).
1) More Americans believe their country should "mind its own business" (52%) than after the Vietnam War (43%)!--the highest percentage in the 50-year history of the survey. This level of isolationism would seem to create a vacuum which, as Alex Wang has suggested elsewhere (in the "Chinese Dream" and "secession" threads), China will, I assume, be very happy to fill.
2) 48% of Americans consider China to be the world's greatest economic power, vs. only 31% for America (http://www.people-press.org/2013/12/03/public-sees-u-s-power-declining-as-support-for-global-engagement-slips/), and this has been roughly steady ever since the crisis in 2009. This was truly amazing to me.
Moreover, combine this with--68% consider America the greatest military power vs. only 18% for China--and there seems yet more reason for concern. Since, if someone feels powerless in one respect, but immensely powerful in another, when 'push comes to shove' he will turn to his perceived strength.
Add these two American beliefs together, and America's role in the 'China Century' would not appear to have a very promising beginning.
Re: Americans Grow More Pessimistic about U.S. Role in World Affairs on: December 21, 2013, 23:08
I would like to comment on the Pew report and the ranking of the Philippines as the country with the highest approval of the United States. It's true that many Filipinos' opinion of the United States is very positive. But many of us also find this approval quite sad. The American influence on our country is so strong that American media and commercial goods are valued higher than Filipino goods: anything with an American-source is preferred. "Made in the USA" is a prestigious and envied label. The 'American look' is also popular: lighter skin and 'Western' looks are preferred by the so-called 'blue-eyed Pinoy'. Our skewed perception of beauty is revealed in the fact that many of our most famous actors and actresses are mixed Western and Filipino. Finally, and most sadly, a typical goal of ambitious Filipinos is to move to America and succeed there, not at home.
So 'approval' has, for many Filipinos, a negative side: it indicates the way foreign ideals have replaced our own... a kind of imperialism and cultural destruction.
Re: Americans Grow More Pessimistic about U.S. Role in World Affairs on: December 22, 2013, 19:49
An excellent point, Eduardo, and almost universally true, I think. This is one of the forces behind Islamic fundamentalism, and other strong anti-American attitudes: it seems almost impossible to 'approve' of America without somehow being sucked into it. Its melting pot is highly portable, and few cultures can resist its heat, especially without the insulation of a different native language.