I've struggled with these questions for years. Being an American in Europe at a time when our government was starting multiple wars was pretty difficult. It made me want to disavow my government pretty strongly for its abuses.
At the same time, my students found the ideas of free speech, the marketplace of ideas (e.g., the freedom of neo-nazis to spread their views), and freedom to own guns (and potentially use them against the government, in some extreme forms) to be so completely foreign and inconceivable. It's incomprehensible to them that Americans seem to strangley take such ideas for granted.
In the Pacific, the perception of Americans and it's government is generally extremely positive (except for maybe the places where we exploded nuclear bombs in the 1940s, Marshall Islands and Japan).
Basically, we been injecting money and Peace Corps Volunteers for decades. People join the US military and earn money.
In traveling, I've kind of gone full circle. I was naive and unobservant of cultures when I first traveled abroad; then I became embarassed at the behavior of Americans abroad. And more recently, I am more interested in hanging out with Americans I meet, and see the positive aspects (unbridled optimism and other features -- most of the rest of the world doesn't believe things are going to get better and work out . . . .
If anyone wants to condemn anyone else for failing ot learn the dominant language quickly enough, they should try it first.
On the Pacific nuclear testing front, any animosity still held towards the US would pale in comparison to that held towards the French, who have tested bombs here for far longer, and with scant regard for anyone.
At the same time, my students found the ideas of free speech, the marketplace of ideas (e.g., the freedom of neo-nazis to spread their views), and freedom to own guns (and potentially use them against the government, in some extreme forms) to be so completely foreign and inconceivable. It's incomprehensible to them that Americans seem to strangley take such ideas for granted.
In the Pacific, the perception of Americans and it's government is generally extremely positive (except for maybe the places where we exploded nuclear bombs in the 1940s, Marshall Islands and Japan).
Basically, we been injecting money and Peace Corps Volunteers for decades. People join the US military and earn money.
In traveling, I've kind of gone full circle. I was naive and unobservant of cultures when I first traveled abroad; then I became embarassed at the behavior of Americans abroad. And more recently, I am more interested in hanging out with Americans I meet, and see the positive aspects (unbridled optimism and other features -- most of the rest of the world doesn't believe things are going to get better and work out . . . .
If anyone wants to condemn anyone else for failing ot learn the dominant language quickly enough, they should try it first.
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(I'm from New Zealand, btw.)
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