Josh, you write you'd lean toward cultural exchange over nationalism. And then:
but c'mon: be reasonable and realistic. This country's basic principles of free speech alone set it apart from every other country in the world, and for that I think the world is better off, no matter how many coffee shops might disappear.
I'm German and I agree with a lot of what you say. Germany, in an attempt to overcome the national trauma of the Third Reich, is possibly one of the most "Americanized" countries in Europe. Plus I personally am a great admirer of much which emerged from America and arrived over here, not only musically. But the way you put your last paragraph contains a great deal of that kind of American self-consciousness which drives crazy even those who embrace American culture and products. You cannot expect from Europe which experienced the first democracy over thousand years before what now is considered America even existed, which had revolutions and democratic constitutions earlier than America, which had the enlightenment and so on, to applaud your generous offer. I know more than one American in Europe who says she or he doesn't want to go home after the 11th September. You know why? Because there, so they tell me, they feel uncomfortable with telling their opinion, e.g. about treating arabic prisoner bad etc. Maybe there's a difference between Texas or the countryside in general and NYC, but c'mon: be realistic, Texas is a part of the US, even the biggest ;-). You cannot but understand that members of other democratic societies are frustrated by the American No to the Kyoto Protocol or, even worse, the boycott of the International Court. The reason for the American rejection is IMO that lots of Americans, to the dismay of others who claim the same properties, identify America with freedom and democracy. Why would anyone bother to be Americanized if the American way is by definition good? The American is good and the rest of the world is either bad, like the whole Islamic world apart from those who supply America with oil, or marginal, like Europe. The American refutation to commit itself to an international jurisdiction like the one America inventend and imposed on Germany in the Nuremberg Processes is seen as an arrogance of power, as a grotesque failure to abstract from the "American" point of view. I hope this has helped a bit to illuminate the bad feelings which are sometimes evoked by the American hegemony. Though I don't know Japan so much, I'd imagine that the reasons are somewhat similar over there. One further remark considering the Starbucks-McDonalds-thing (is this the McWorld-issue I quote?): What I personally dislike about those two, or rather about the whole chain idea which is a very American idea, is the loss of diversity aspect. Maybe I like to have a Cheeseburger and a McRib with such a big bucket of Coke once in a while. But I'm irritated by the fact that in areas of lower something people begin to eat the same stuff all over the world and every day, and that I find me exposed to the same boring stuff in every f*#~ing city all over the world. All the best; Fritz. ############################################## Fritz Feger mail@fritzfeger.de www.fritzfeger.de ##############################################