The Smugly American ...

[Jayhawker Soule]

My weekly morning routine is relative repititious. I get up around 4:45 and, with CNN in the background, check my email and then the BBC, ynetnews, Haaretz, and, occasionally, the iht/NYT. Shortly thereafter, around 5:30, I make breakfast before my wife and I prepare to head off to work.

It's a small thing - a predictable thing - but I do not recall a single reference to the French elections on CNN. What a country: half blind and the other half myopic!

Sorry: rant over ...

 

[MysticSang'ha]

My weekly morning routine is relative repititious. I get up around 4:45 and, with CNN in the background, check my email and then the BBC, ynetnews, Haaretz, and, occasionally, the iht/NYT. Shortly thereafter, around 5:30, I make breakfast before my wife and I prepare to head off to work.

It's a small thing - a predictable thing - but I do not recall a single reference to the French elections on CNN. What a country: half blind and the other half myopic!

Sorry: rant over ...

I know.

Would it make you feel better if I bought you and your wife dinner? :flower:

 

[Revoltingest]

If you read Drudge, you'd see articles about all the political drama in Frogistan.
I don't bother to......<yawn>....read them.

 

[freethinker44]

Why should americans care enough about the french election that it should be a news story on american news? I mean I fully agree that most americans are uneducated/uncaring about important foreign events, but the french election hardly seems like an important event that americans need to be in the know about.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Why should americans care enough about the french election that it should be a news story on american news? I mean I fully agree that most americans are uneducated/uncaring about important foreign events, but the french election hardly seems like an important event that americans need to be in the know about.

Should the American election be a news story on the French news?

 

[Jacksnyte]

Americans (specifically those from the United States) are by and large extremely arrogant when it comes to world views. We tend to see our country as of primary importance globally, and all others as of lesser or no importance. We have been the toughest bully on the playground for too long, and have become way too full of ourselves.

 

[Revoltingest]

Americans (specifically those from the United States) are by and large extremely arrogant when it comes to world views.

Reading about French politics won't cure that.
Besides, after observing the numerous non-Americans posting here, I don't see them as better.

 

[Tarheeler]

If it helps, I've read a few articles concerning it on CNN's website. But you have to go digging for them, at least in the US version.

 

[Caladan]

Why should americans care enough about the french election that it should be a news story on american news? I mean I fully agree that most americans are uneducated/uncaring about important foreign events, but the french election hardly seems like an important event that americans need to be in the know about.

Surly you jest. These are pretty important international news, they are related to future effects on the EU and the Eurozone, French involvement in Afghanistan and future French-American relations and other international issues.
Is this the standard mentality? to be oblivious to anything happening outside the good old US of A?

 

[Jacksnyte]

Reading about French politics won't cure that.
Besides, after observing the numerous non-Americans posting here, I don't see them as better.

I don't see anyone as better, either, but I live in the U.S., and have never traveled outside the country, so I only know about attitudes here.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Why should americans care enough about the french election that it should be a news story on american news?

Sorry, but how the hell did you stumble across your username?

 

[Jacksnyte]

Surly you jest. These are pretty important international news, they are related to future effects on the EU and the Eurozone, French involvement in Afghanistan and future French-American relations and other international issues.
Is this the standard mentality? to be oblivious to anything happening outside the good old US of A?

Unfortunately, yes

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Would it make you feel better if I bought you and your wife dinner? :flower:

:flower2: :hug: :flower2:

 

[Revoltingest]

I don't see anyone as better, either, but I live in the U.S., and have never traveled outside the country, so I only know about attitudes here.

I've traveled abroad, I've met diverse ferriners here at a major university town, I've worked with LImeys, Asians,
Indians (both types), Russians, etc, & I've Chinese & Iranian in-laws. People in other countries are big jerks (& otherwise)
just we are. But they are more concerned with other countries near them. We're geographically rather isolated up here,
& Canuckistan is much like just another state. So rather than arrogance, perhaps it's just limited applicability for us.

 

[Sunstone]

Some years ago, I read an historian who argued that American indifference to the rest of the world ultimately stems from a need to unify a nation of immigrants. According to him, it was only through cultivating such indifference that Americans have been able to forget the local ethnic and national animosities of the countries they come from, and unite as one nation. Thus, he saw American indifference to the rest of the world as at least partly beneficial to Americans, despite its downsides.

 

[Jacksnyte]

Some years ago, I read an historian who argued that American indifference to the rest of the world ultimately stems from a need to unify a nation of immigrants. According to him, it was only through cultivating such indifference that Americans have been able to forget the local ethnic and national animosities of the countries they come from, and unite as one nation. Thus, he saw American indifference to the rest of the world as at least partly beneficial to Americans, despite its downsides.

This was probably true 100 or more years ago, but as we become less isolated due to inventions like the jet, and the internet, this attitude could present more of a hindrance, not to mention it makes us look like some big dumb galoot (think George W. with his "newkyoolar weapons uh mass distrukshun").

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Some years ago, I read an historian who argued that American indifference to the rest of the world ultimately stems from a need to unify a nation of immigrants. According to him, it was only through cultivating such indifference that Americans have been able to forget the local ethnic and national animosities of the countries they come from, and unite as one nation. Thus, he saw American indifference to the rest of the world as at least partly beneficial to Americans, despite its downsides.

Perhaps, but I suspect that it is better explained by some close variant of Hanlon's razor.

 

[Revoltingest]

Perhaps, but I suspect that it is better explained by some close variant of Hanlon's razor.

Revoltingest's Razor is better......
Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which could be simple unfamiliarity.

 

[Jacksnyte]

Revoltingest's Razor is better......
Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which could be simple unfamiliarity.

Good point!

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Let's compromise ...

Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which could be wilful unfamiliarity.