Please, August, do not assume. Hate and enragement are a very different kind of breed. The hate card is a convinient way out if you want to find justification for yourself for such reactions. They all just hate you, eh? All just jealous. Nothing else.

You are correct, mostly. :up:
However, it is rather sad that in a world as ours is these days, people on both sides built their opinion about countries and their citizens on forum posts and a very biased media.
Reading through some of SB posts does gives me the impression that my fellow countrymen are ignorant and quick to blame everybody else; what they not really are, at least not the ones that I call friends and family.
Reading some of TDKs rants can certainly give the impression that Americans are arrogant and un(der)educated when it comes to history and world knowledge.
Again, that's not what Americans really are, atleast not the ones I know here.

There are loonies on both sides on the pond, unfortunately those are the vocal minority whose whole purpose seems to be to spoil the impression one gets of the overall population.

Personally, I like being a German living in the US. People are usually very friendly and respectful.

As far as this thread goes, it might be better just to close it.

I didn't follow the thread that closely, but August and the other right wing US guys are not exactly throwing powder puffs in a debate either.
If you can't take it, don't start it
:rotfl:

Don't call me a "right wing guy" I'm not right wing or left wing. My views are a mix of both. Part of the problem here is when people start trying to tell me what side i should belong to or what that side has the potential for based on past events in their country.

For example I am pro abortion rights (considered a left wing view here) but advocate personal responsibility (right wing). I favor a conservative view of gun rights (right wing) but oppose business deregulation (left wing). I support a strong military and police force (right wing) but support drug legalization (left wing).

So which side am I on? I'll tell you; My countries side. End of story. There's an old saying in my country: "My country right or wrong, but my country".

Reading through this thread, it does seem that my comments are somewhat excessive and painted with too broad a brush.

I apologise for the venom expressed in my post, Skybird. You and I are destined to disagree on many issues, but I went too far in this thread.

(Golf Clap)

Good for you TDK1044.

Yeah. I'm not usually that big an ass, wireman. I went way too far here. Apologies to the German members.

TDK,

good to see you getting calmer again. If only you believe me that in no way I want to personally attack you or your countrymen on a personal, vis-a-vis basis, not here or in any other post, a lot would be won. We can disagree on practical issues and political assessemnts - we must not personally hate each other, or personally fight with each other. If you read through my posts, you will see that I indeed criticise your nation on certain given specifics of policies and political acts, yes (like i also critice my own country on other specifics, or the EU) - but you will also see that I do not start to aim personally at board members as long as i do not get personally attacked first: but I reserve the right of giving the change in the currency they eventually have chosen first (and often I do not even that, but simply ignore much personal mud thrown at me). I have been friends over years with Americans, and personally, not via internet, you know, since my time in Berlin. do you think they were just masochists who enjoyed to get bashed by me over nothing, and getting personally offended? ;) :lol: Hell, we even often agreed in many critical views on both America, and Germany.


If that is not hypocrisy at its best. It is not your disagreements with me or your differing opinion that made me put you onto my ignore list. It were your personal attacks, your constant mistaking of argument with personal attack, and your inability or unwillingness to see the difference between criticising a set of clear-defined details and aspects of the policy and political effects caused by your country - and yourself, your ego, your private person. Because for you, like for quite some others, the US is a golden monument, untouchable resting on its podest, and what you consider it to be by ideals and dreams and utopias once designed a long time ago, you mistake with the reality it is causing for real. You are used to be seen as the big liberators, the power of democracy, of good, of light and what is positive in life, on earth, and all universe. If somebody reminds you that there is quite some things not functioning as advertised, and this monument of a (young!) nation violating parts of its own heritage and self-refering claims, and by that also damages others, then you blow the horn and call for the big witch-hunt.

but with growing criticism of the US you will have to live, for your position in the world is no longer seen as one-sided as in the past, and your influence to prevent critical views and make people believe what you want them to believe, is waning. and that is good.

The irony here is that people like you, by claiming to be personally offended if needing to face any realistic assessement of the US that is looking beyond the end of your nose, you are preventing yourself as well to see what damage you already have suffered, and what losses of the ideals that the US has been meant to be by its founders, already took place. You do not see the present nation the US is, which has drastically changed from the early ideals, or even the time around WWII, and short after, but you live in your private imagination of what the US was meant to be, long time ago, in the past. While fantasising, you are too busy to realise that you are also doing damage to others as well, whom you claim to do well from your fantasy perspective.

No wonder then that you are enraged by me so much! I am a disturbance to your private dream show, for which you have invested part of your life's energy. shaking somebody from his dreams and tell him he is not sleeping in a bed at the centre of the earth never is being welcomed.

Take this comment like you want. Feel free to see it as a personal attack, if you must that. But this is how I see this post: as an explanation, simply that, not more, not less.

I would like to ask you to simply ignore me and stop adressing me personally, like I asked Subman as well. It's just a favour I do to you that by ignoring me you could answer me on equal terms. and if argument over a political opinion would not be mistaken with personal attacks so often by you and some other guys, then this forum would be a slightly calmer place. I ignore personal attacks I am not aware of, that is what the ignore button is for, and I do not see any reason why I should constantly prove people how much mud I can take without feeling hurt, but where such comments get quoted by others and I must note them, I feel hit nevertheless, and then I react to it - and who would criticise me for that. I am not personally attacking neither members of this board first, nor do I attack individual, private american persons on a personal level first, I criticise certain - not all - policies, and political effects caused by your country, and i do it by arguments, not by some stupid generalisation like "all Americans are Abu Ghraib fans and are military fascists by nature" - which would be the equivalent to this stupid endless repetion about the Third Reich and the citizens of the Federal Republic of today. Where you get hot over others criticising your nation's policies, and do not see that "you" are not your "nation", you have a problem, so then go and see a therapist, because you also pose a problem to others. But your mistaking of "nation" and "ego" shall not be an argument why critical opinions you do not like should be censored, or supressed or prevented from being spoken out, just to caress your inflationary nation/ego.

america is not beyond criticism, and it is not untouchable - and it also is neither perfect, nor divine. There is a lot of damage that it has caused by its ways of goings and proposing it's models and routines, enforcing them by using its enormous influence and dominant position, and for this damage the world is pointing finger at you and want you to accept responsibility for, and agree to desperately needed repairs and major corrections. If that hurts some people's ego I'm sorry (or not), but that's how it is. America has started to cost the world too much and promises to become even more expensive if being allowed to just continue as if nothing needs to be changed - that simple it is.

That's why the opinion of folks like yourself is so important on forums such as this one. You have a foot in each world and don't have to rely on Speigel articles to form your opinions.

Y'know when Skybird posts something about Germany or about how Germans are thinking, I usually send a copy of it to my cousins who live over there to get their take on it. A great majority of the time they write back telling me to please not take his rantings as in any way representative of the German national mood on a particular subject.

Unfortunately though most people don't have those kind of foreign family connections, and it then becomes a question of how much time and effort a person is willing put toward finding out the truth. Given that this forum is for casual recreation that effort is often minimal or non-existant. However the impressions gotten from it can remain long after the browser is closed.

Making it worse there are those, on both sides of the pond,who don't care one bit about uncovering the truth. They use their forum posts like a propaganda tool. Their words are literary weapons, designed to cause discontent and doubt in the minds of their targets. Guess which group I think Skybird belongs to...

So keep posting Thomen. You are in a unique position to educate Germans about Americans and Americans about Germans and maybe lessen the impact of the Skybirds of the world. :up:

From an American perspective, Skybird, it feels like Europe is always looking to blame the US for their lot in life. Sure, American foreign policy and monetary strategy has left much to be desired at times, but if the EU functioned the way it was meant to, and the Euro was a real competitor to the Dollar, then much would be different.

But Europe is so fragmented. Many of the countries have little time for each other, and the British don't think they're European at all. There's little cohesion, and as a result of that the US has a greater influence there than it should have.

I think things will change though and I think China will be the wild card over the next 20 years. We'll see.

Ironically, I'm about to fly to the UK for a few days and will be returning home on Sunday. I'll check out this thread then.

If I ever get to Germany, I'll buy you several beers, Skybird. It's the least I could do in apology for my needless rant. :D

Indeed, it has often be like that indeed, especially with germany, and even more so during Bush, and Reagan as well. You see, Germans are obessed with America, and it is both fascination and irritation at the same time, for we perceive america to be doing things very different than we do - and often we think it should be impossible to do it the american way, for we often think our way works better. This is as basic a characterisation of Germans' attitude towards america as it can be. But at the basis, despite all criticism, you often find fascination. the other reason why america attracts so much close attention, of course is that it is so omnipresent in the world that it is affecting practically everybody else - and then it is a legitimate interest that the affected party has interest into the one by whom it gets affected. With Obama, the tone will change, but he probably will demand even more, and germans definitely are wrong when assuming that Americans have voted a world president - Obama will be the US president before anything else. I predicted since month that many people here are set for a cold-shower-wakeup event, especially the Green and the SPF, but also mahjor parts of the CDU. At the same time we will find it more difficult to reject him, like it was easy for obvious reasons to reject Bush. I am waiting to see how berlin will handle it: a weak chancellor, a damn paralysed great coalition, and plenty of stagnation, and positioning for the next election in roughly one year. As Afghanistan shows, and Steinmeier demonstrates in his sleep-envoking comments, German foreign policy excels in weaseling around, making loud words here, and doing different (and half-hearted only) there. I would like to spank them all.

However, I tried to make clear the defined context of my criticism regarding America's role on the finance crisis, and I see myself in conformity with practically every economic-political observer (at least outside the US), and I took it for granted that the events and the timetable of how the fincial crisis unfolded, is generally known. Assuming that to be consensus and widespread knowledge, maybe was a mistake of mine, helping to heat up the atmosphere, leaving my statements hanging in open air and giving the appearance of being a lose gun firing wild. My structural presentation also is often not that good in this foreign language, thinking in German or translating into English really affects the way I arrange my thoughts, and in English it is more confused, due to the constant translating I need to do. That is no excuse for I am responsible for how and what I write, but it may help as a bit of an explanation.

Excluding the impact of surprising, unpredictable events, that probably will be like that. Haha, that Nassim Taleb book really made me sensitive to the importance of expecting the unexpected events. :lol:

Pah, already forgotten, I snapped back and had my bite of you, so we can leave the issue behind. :D My topic selection certainly sometimes could encourage emotional debate. But there have been more serious "events" in past years.

Bon Voyage when going to Britain. Some landscape there I would like to see myself, maybe.

Apart from what Skybird already and fittingly said, I have to add a few tidbits of my own to the discussion.

First of all, yes, europeans, and germans prolly all the same, are arrogant b*stards when it comes to the US for sure. In many ways this is unfair and ignorant, something that has to be openly admitted, given the history of the US and it's culturual background. Many over here see the US as just another, though very powerful, nation state like all the others, with only subtle differences, while in reality it's a completly different mindset prelevant there based on many different cultures who never reallly blended in with each other. The land is so huge that a democrat or republican on the east coast is a completly different breed of person then his ideologic relative on the west coast. It's hard to reember that once the air gets hot.

Then there is the obvious problem of the US beeing a country involved all over the world, quite massivly at times, basicly effecting everybodies life on this planet in one way or another. Power brings a lot of responsebility, a responsebility I got the impression many americans see as a burdern. This, I assume, is in direct relation to the phenomenon most americans never leave their country and got an education that is very US centric. I once had a talk with an american exchange student, back in school days. Though a cool guy, I asked to see his history book. World War 2 was put on two pages only, and it basicly said "we got in, we rocked, we saved the world". Mix in all the hollywood movies and the views of a lot of US forum members and over time you develop the picture of a nation that is so fixated on beeing the "good" guys they stop listening to reason out of principle. I mean, seriously, america talks about freedom and democracy....but it appears they consider non american lives not noteworthy. The easyness with that the phrase "collatoral damage" is thrown around, it's ease of acceptance of that to win a war, Guantanamo, Abu Ghuraib does not appear to fit to a civilized nation that sees itself and actually is supposed to be the beacon of the western world. Now I know I am leaning myself out of the window given german history. But we are living in the 21 century now, not the 1940ies. And much of Germany's acceptance of freedom and democracy stems from the example the US gave. This reputation, not the military or economic weight, is what enabled the US to reach it's position in the world, where the fascination stems from. And that reputation is all but shattered by now, not just by the US government, but also by common ppl discussing on boards like these. And it always appeared to be republicans giving this "barbarian" impression, that is why Bush was so loathed, Obama beeing such a hope. In a nutshell, the impression given by republicans: weapons fanatics, death penalty, CIA kidnappings, prison camps, torture, wars of agression, arrogance, environment hostility. I am sure there is more to it in it's substance, but from an outsiders view, without knowledge about the internal workings of the US parties and their domestic messages, these are the dominant images. They "appear" to be the complete opposite of what the US stood for.

Please note I am not talking facts here, but perception.

It's not only that, though.
You'd not believe the questions I had to reply to at times, the wonderous look on many a US folks faces once they got told France and Germany share a border, or that Germany is not located in the middle east. The numbers of times I got asked how Hitler is doing and why we hate jews is mind boggling, considering that germany is a completly different country now compared to the WW2. All this left the impression that americans get involved in a world they know nothing about..and worse, don't want to know about. I had americans telling me the "greens", a german party, is communist because they read that in one of their newspapers. That europe is "socialist" while in fact it is social democratic based on capitalism, a pretty big difference. Add this to the constant bragging and superiourity complexes ones has to face, especially when it comes to american ideology, then it compares with communist fanatics who are equally obsessed with their world view.

You see, I tried to argue in a very calm, very open manner, sharing ideas and views in the begining of my forum life. I've also traveled to and through the US (and Canada) quite extensivly. I've been everywhere between New York and Seatle. Wheerever I went, I met friendly, helpful ppl. My work environment also puts me in contact with US folks all the time annd on a personal level, I get along with them really well. I actually like america very much, despite the impressions some got here. When it comes to games about the cold war or the pacific theatre of operations in WW2, it's not the japanese or russian side I chose. I said it before and I will repeat it, I'd not invest so much energy in typing and ranting if it were not a country I didn't bother about in a good way. And I dare say, that is the case with most europeans here. You have friends, good and steady ones. It is not forgotten what you did with the Berlin airlift and during the cold war. It's just..you guys are on such a collective ego trip, you never listen. it is not that europeans are the masters of knowledge themselves at all, far from it. But you do not even take it into consideration. How would you deal with a person you consider a friend, but that acts towards you like he doesnt bother at all? http://smiliestation.de/smileys/Traurig/7.gif

I apologize for coming into this forum with guns blazing and without making an adequate introduction and impression first. World events kinda prevented that I assume.
I will stress again that all that is written here is not set in stone or the last word on wisdom. It's just an overview, where many of the problems stem from and that facts and perception may differ quite a bit, but that it is perception ultimately deciding judgement, fair or unfair. If you are in such discussions, just give the folks argueing a little more credit and don't go the "hate" line. Europeans bash themselves over politics as well, at times as harsh or even worse then here. Britain and Germany especially have a history of that, nevertheless we get along pretty well.

Since we're clearing the air here I must say that i'm getting kind of tired of Europeans accusing Americans of not knowing their geography. So what if one of our younger citizens doesn't know that France borders Germany?

How many Euros can tell which states border, say Wisconsin, without looking at a map? How about California?

How many times have I heard our Congressmen referred as "Members of Parliament" or our administrators referred to as "ministers"?

Most of the Americans you meet over there are young soldiers and students on holiday. That's like getting financial advice from a welfare recipient, probably not the best source.

Wisconsin, there comes Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and what was it...Iowa? No brainer, I travelled the area quite a bit, was invited to a wedding in Minneapolis, landed in Detroit, got a car and made a great lakes roundtrip beforehand. Pretty flat landscape, though the immidiate lake areas were beautiful, Chicago an exception but downtown, which was impressive, though kinda "cold".

California, Mexico to the south, Oregon to the north, I forgot what is in the east, some desert state for sure.
You need to trust me I did not look that up on the internet.

But then again nobody asks you to know all the german states either. It's about whole countries, no states, after all. And as we are at it, I could name you most asian, north and south american, african and european countries, their capitals, major rivers, mountain ranges and forrests. We had to learn all of that in school, in case of the US even the states. And though I forgot a lot of it by now, I still can pretty much place countries correctly once I hear their name.

What is problematic in this regard, in my opion, and given the example of Germany and France, that both these countries were playing major roles in history, directly related to the US, both play a major role in current alliances. Both consider themselves allies of the US. Heck, the largest part of the US immigrants are german, more then the british and irish combined. Both France and Germany consider themselves friends of the US. Is it really asked to much for an allie's population to know their friends location? After all I got most of this not from US folks that came over here, but americans I met within the US.

And if the US folks don't know that much about the world, how do they judge foreign affairs, their development, history and relationships to other countries? And how does this effect their vote for a president and his foreign policy agenda? You see, the problem lies in the influence and power the US, it's impact on the rest of the world. US diplomacy is best described as a broad sword, it's not exactly subtle. For you guys US foreign policy may run as "and then there is the rest of the world somewhere", but I assure you this rest does not take it that lightly when another country is invaded or it's citizens kidnapped in the name of fighting terrorism. In case of Germany the once highly regarded Nuremberg trials are more and more seen as nothing more then winners justice even by the intellectual elite in light of the US recent actions, compared to it's former place as a high standart for international attempts to fight wars of agression themselves.

That can't be a good development, but it's an understandable reaction. And I fear similiar developments are occuring all over the planet right now, detoriating the US position even more. A weaker US also means a weaker alliance, in return meaing a weaker west in general and less of a chance to tackle future opponents like China and maybe India.

Good job. Do you think you could do that if you hadn't been there?