Arthur Gadney:
What I meet everywhere, is the exact same love-hate relationship that Steve himself seems to have. When asked, the youth in Europe state very claerly that the one country in the world where they would most like to live next to their own is USA. By a long shot. But a the same time, they are intensly skeptical about the same things as Steve are.
Possibly this love-hate relationship is an inescapable mechanism concerning the relation between "smaller" countries and a country which dominates the smaller ones, be it culturally, technically, economically and military/politically. How not to admire American music, literature, art, fashion of the last half century? How not to buy American hi tech or to realize the American power in the political sphere? But at the same time this hurts. You somehow want to be proud of yourself, and this extends to collectives you feel to be part of, e.g. your nation. If this -- only natural -- trial to keep up your self esteem is supplemented by some -- only too human -- arrogance of the dominator, this leads to aggression. There is anti-Americanism everywhere in the world because the U.S. dominate the world. There is anti-Germanism in the Netherlands, but not vice versa. A great deal of this may be explicated by the fact that the relatively dominant or simply big country would not have to feel "threatened" by a smaller competitor. Fritz. ############################################## Fritz Feger mail@fritzfeger.de www.fritzfeger.de ##############################################