Europe's Distaste of America (Part 1)

I'm reading two books right now. One is called Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America

The reasons advanced by the author, Andrei S. Markovits, are many but I will simplify a few.

Part of it is due to sour grapes: they envy our wealth while decrying our seemingly shallow, materialistic culture. They find our cheerfully optimistic nature naive, when they've been taught to be more stoic about their emotions and generally more reserved.

I saw instances of the latter first hand from my interactions with two Britons while I was staying at a hostel in NYC. A young woman asked me, in typically direct British fashion whether or not I told my friends that I loved them on a regular basis. To the British sensibility, this sort of effusive behavior is ridiculously vulgar and uncouth, but I'll counter that assertion by noting that it is a sight to see to be around intoxicated Britons. Having never been taught to be comfortable with their emotions, and without guidance counselors in school, the famous stiff upper lip quickly degenerates into a room full of emotionally stunted eight-year-old children. It's downright embarrassing to observe and made me deeply uncomfortable.

So maybe there is something to be said for good old fashion American emotion, after all.

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Or maybe we're a nation of Hypomanics and Manic-Depressives. That's what's proposed in The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success.

It is proposed that hypomania drives our peculiarly American sensibility. John D. Gartner even goes so far as to propose that Founding Fathers like Alexander Hamilton and successful businessmen like Andrew Carnegie were products of hypomanic productivity. He further asserts that it takes a person who's a tad bit on the manic side to want to leave his/her country for a Promised Land in the first place. He may be right; I'm still chewing on that. I've certainly thought so myself from time to time.

He notes that the instances of mental illness, particular bipolar disorder, are highest in nations comprised primarily of immigrants.

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I don't share every viewpoint noted by both authors, but do recognize that Anti-Americanism has become a common perspective shared by many Europeans. That's a thread that runs through both books, though it is more explicitly stated in the former.

Parts of both books make me involuntarily bristle. I want to shout out at the authors--hey, that's MY country you're talking about! I can criticize it, but you can't! Then I recognize that I sound just as willfully conservative as those who put down the Dixie Chicks.

In short, I'm not sure that any other society would not take the same tact as we have. I'm not sure that any other nation afford the material wealth we are blessed with and not act in the same fashion. I'm sure they'd have a slightly different spin on it and perhaps be a little less reckless and a little less impulsive.

However, I do recognize that we do take our status as a superpower for granted and that in the near future, we may be a second-class power like Britain or France.