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- Herausgeber: Xenophobe's Guides
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Xenophobe's Guides
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008
A guide to understanding the Americans which dispels or confirms preconceived prejudices with humour and insight.
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Xenophobe’s® guide to the
AMERICANS
Stephanie Faul
Contents
The American population is 325 million, compared with 35 million Canadians; 64 million British; 124 million Mexicans; 127 million Japanese; 144 million Russians; and 1.4 billion Chinese.
Nationalism & Identity
Forewarned is forearmed
The Americans are like teenagers: noisy, curious, unable to keep a secret, not given to subtlety, and prone to misbehave in public. Once one accepts the Americans’ basically adolescent nature, the rest of their culture falls into place, and what at first seemed thoughtless and silly appears charming and energetic.
“Once one accepts the Americans’ basically adolescent nature, the rest of their culture falls into place.”
Visitors may be overwhelmed by the sheer exuberant friendliness of the Americans, especially in the central and southern parts of the country. Sit next to an American on a ’plane and he will immediately address you by your first name, ask ‘So – how do you like it in the States?’, explain his recent divorce in intimate detail, invite you home for dinner, offer to lend you money and wrap you in a warm hug on parting.
This does not necessarily mean he will remember your name the next day. Americans are friendly because they just can’t help it; they like to be neighbourly and want to be liked. However, a wise traveller realises that a few happy moments with an American do not translate into a permanent commitment of any kind. Indeed, permanent commitments are what the Americans fear the most. This is a nation whose most fundamental social relationship is the casual acquaintance.
How they see themselves
As befits a nation originally settled by adventurers, religious fanatics, and misfits (a demographic mix that has changed hardly at all in 400 years), the United States retains a strong flavour of intransigent non-cooperation. Americans are proud to be American – it’s the best country in the world – but each individual will explain that he, personally, is not like other Americans. He or she is different.
“There is no such thing as a plain American. The original ‘melting pot’ has crystallised into a zillion ethnic splinters.”
Americans are proud to be different from each other and from the rest of the world. As a nation of immigrants, Americans can be of any ethnicity. There is no such thing as a plain American, anyway. Nearly every American is a hyphenated American. The original ‘melting pot’ has crystallised into a zillion ethnic splinters: Irish-Americans, Croatian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and so on. A typical American might introduce him or herself as Patrick Ng, Octavio Rosenberg, or Ilse-Marie Nugumbwele.
An American will say ‘I’m Polish’ or ‘I’m Italian’ because his great-grandparents were born in Poland or Italy. It doesn’t matter that he speaks not a word of any language besides English and has never been farther east than New York City or farther west than Chicago. He knows how to make kolatches (if he’s Polish) or cannelloni (if he’s Italian), and that’s what counts. Perhaps the only noticeable difference between the Americans and the people of other countries is that the Americans spend a lot more time at the dentist in their teens so have spectacularly straight teeth.
How they see others
Only 40% of the Americans have a passport (compared with 75% of the Canadians and 80% of the British). They don’t really need one because an American can travel for weeks and still be on home turf.
“Only 40% of Americans have a passport. They don’t really need one because an American can travel for weeks and still be on home turf.”
However, the fact that everyone who lives within 3,500 miles of an American is also an American gives the average citizen a seriously provincial point of view. Because so few Americans visit foreign countries*, they assume that people all over the world are just like themselves, except for not speaking English or not having decent showers. Some Americans believe that foreigners really do speak English but stubbornly refuse to do so out of prejudice. European countries are not fully differentiated in the American mind. American travellers on guided tours can happily swing through five nations in seven days, returning home with the vague notion that the Eiffel Tower is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Tower of Pisa – which, by American standards, it is. The distance from London to Istanbul is less than that between Pittsburgh and Phoenix and only two-thirds the mileage from Maine to Miami.
“American travellers return home with the vague notion that the Eiffel Tower is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Tower of Pisa.”
The delusion that ‘they’re just like us except for their language, food, and clothing’ comes from the reality that all Americans descend from immigrants including those who crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago. Thus people in other countries aren’t really aliens, they’re just potential Americans, or rather, potential hyphenated Americans.
Immigrants
In the past, every new wave of immigrants was met with hostility by the old. The Dutch in Nieuw Amsterdam (now New York) viewed the English arrivistes with suspicion; the English mistrusted the Germans, who refused to hire the Irish, who discriminated against the Russians and Poles, and so on. These days the U.S. government restricts the number of those who wish to be let in to an annual 675,000. Family reunification accounts for approximately two-thirds of this legal immigration, and for the rest there is a lucky dip named the Diversity Visa Lottery.
“In the American west and south-west Spanish has become the unofficial second language.”
Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens cross the nation’s (heavily patrolled and fenced) border every year. In the American west and south-west, Spanish has become the unofficial second language, and signs and government documents provide information in Spanish as a matter of course. Offices wanting their rubbish taken out for collection write ‘BASURA’ on the boxes instead of ‘TRASH’. Through sheer population pressure, Mexico is accomplishing what no other foreign government has ever seriously attempted: conquest of the United States.
Special friends
The Americans have a special friendship with the Canadians with whom they share the world’s longest undefended border. In fact, a great many Americans aren’t fully aware that Canada is a separate sovereign nation. After all, Canadians look and talk like Americans, travel agents describe Canada as a ‘domestic’ destination and the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series baseball championship (once). Any champion baseball team must be from the United States, no matter what its supporters think.
“The American stand-ins for royalty are Hollywood actors, Presidents and sports figures.”
The Americans feel sentimental about the British. They import much of their literature, pop music and some of their better TV programmes from Britain. There is also the Royal Family element: lacking a domestic equivalent, the Americans lap up the latest British blue-blood gossip. The American stand-ins for royalty are Hollywood actors, Presidents, and sports figures. Any winning Super Bowl coach is a king – if only until next year’s big game.
It has been remarked that the U.S. and U.K. are ‘two nations divided by a common language’ and occasionally this leads to some bizarre misunderstandings. For example, in the U.S. ‘pants’ are trousers and ‘knickers’ are golfing attire. In spite of the misunderstandings, or possibly because of them, the two nations intermarry at a prodigious rate, bringing the countries closer than ever. Nevertheless, many Americans remain wary of all foreigners and especially foreign money. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican congressman, even coined his own ‘Ron Paul dollars’. They were not legal tender and most of the coins were confiscated under U.S. law, but that didn’t stop the faithful from trying to cash in on them.
* Canada doesn’t count, and Mexico isn’t considered ‘foreign’.
Character
Enterprise and ‘derring-do’
Like every other nation, America knows that it is the best country in the world. The difference is that Americans have proof. People from all over the globe make enormous sacrifices to come to the United States, often risking their lives in the process. What more evidence is needed?
“The go-getting spirit pervades virtually every aspect of American life.”
The collective energies, ‘derring-do’ and go-getting spirit of these risk-takers pervades virtually every aspect of American life. The Americans’ heroes tend to be outlaws, like Wild West gunfighter Jesse James, or entrepreneurs, like Sam Walton, founder of the Wal-Mart chain of superstores, and Steve Jobs. Their ogres are totalitarians of every stripe, including communists, presidents of major corporations, law officers and politicians. Every American worker has fantasies of one day going into business for himself. It is this ‘can do’, ‘go for it’ mentality that has created so many self-made millionaires and built the nation that is America.
Winners at heart
Being Number One is very important to an American. In the United States it’s not how you play the game that matters. It isn’t even really whether you win or lose. It’s whether you look like you win or lose – more specifically, win. Winning is central to the American psyche. As American football coach Vince Lombardi stated, ‘Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.’
Virtually every event in American life, from matriculation to marriage to buying an automobile, is structured so that one party wins, or at least comes out looking better than any of the other participants. What’s more, Americans believe themselves to be the only nation that is truly capable of winning. They are always being called in at the last minute to bail some other nation out of the soup. Having God on your side in a fight is good. Having the United States on your side is better. To an American, they’re the same thing.
Humorist Will Rogers may have pointed out that America ‘never lost a war and never won a conference…’, and that Americans could ‘single-handedly lick any nation in the world’, but couldn’t ‘confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on’. But author Len Deighton admiringly calls the Americans ‘the WD40 of the world’.
The feel-good factor
Winning is important to the Americans because it makes them feel good, and good is the American thing to feel. The Americans spend a small fortune on books, drugs, and various forms of psychotherapy in order to feel good. The third most widely prescribed psychiatric drug in the country (after sleeping pills and pills for panic attacks) is an anti-depressant. People attend therapy groups, participate in self-discovery retreats and religious revivals, go for hot stone massages, aromatherapy, Shiatsu, and so forth (activities that are especially popular in California, the feel-good state).
“Good is the American thing to feel… Feel-goodism affects all aspects of private and public life.”
