Someone Asked Me...
Sep. 24th, 2008 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3"What is your general impression of Americans?"
Which is a hard one. I don't have a general impression of Americans anymore. Probably I haven't had since I graduated from Cowboy movies to Marvel Comics in the early 70's. When I was very young, I had the impression that all Americans were rich. Rich in wealth, rich in goodies - as Nail Gaiman points out somewhere in Good Omens (for some reason I'm sure it was Neil, not Terry), Americans had 20 flavours of ice-cream: maybe even more.
And then I started reading Spiderman, and the Fantastic Four, and The Silver Surfer, and Americans were these liberal, JFK democrats, who wanted a fair shake for everyone. Then there was Richard Condon, with his satirical take on Watergate, and Steve Gerber, who had Howard the Duck run for President, and again, it was the liberal conscience, the belief in freedom, that came across most strongly.
I could run it up through Dave Sim, and Steve Earle, and Warren Zevon till 1992, the first time I travelled in America. Where everyone, from SF to Chicago, was friendly, open, interested and good company.
Through the 90's I worked for American companies, with lots of Americans, and visited and vacationed there. I still haven't found a generalised feel for the place, never mind the people.
If I take a step back, I guess I see Americans as the right sort of people - they believe in equality, democracy, and free speech. The thing is, as I get older and learn more, I still believe in that impression, and feel that it's shared by most people in the world.
Which is a hard one. I don't have a general impression of Americans anymore. Probably I haven't had since I graduated from Cowboy movies to Marvel Comics in the early 70's. When I was very young, I had the impression that all Americans were rich. Rich in wealth, rich in goodies - as Nail Gaiman points out somewhere in Good Omens (for some reason I'm sure it was Neil, not Terry), Americans had 20 flavours of ice-cream: maybe even more.
And then I started reading Spiderman, and the Fantastic Four, and The Silver Surfer, and Americans were these liberal, JFK democrats, who wanted a fair shake for everyone. Then there was Richard Condon, with his satirical take on Watergate, and Steve Gerber, who had Howard the Duck run for President, and again, it was the liberal conscience, the belief in freedom, that came across most strongly.
I could run it up through Dave Sim, and Steve Earle, and Warren Zevon till 1992, the first time I travelled in America. Where everyone, from SF to Chicago, was friendly, open, interested and good company.
Through the 90's I worked for American companies, with lots of Americans, and visited and vacationed there. I still haven't found a generalised feel for the place, never mind the people.
If I take a step back, I guess I see Americans as the right sort of people - they believe in equality, democracy, and free speech. The thing is, as I get older and learn more, I still believe in that impression, and feel that it's shared by most people in the world.
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Date: 2008-09-26 08:17 am (UTC)"If I take a step back, I guess I see Americans as the right sort of people - they believe in equality, democracy, and free speech. The thing is, as I get older and learn more, I still believe in that impression, and feel that it's shared by most people in the world."
What I meant was that most people in the world believe in equality, democracy and free speech, and are "the right sort of people", where the wrong sort of people are the minority who don't.
I don't believe that most people in the world share my impression of Americans, and I'm not surprised by that. In many ways America as The Great Satan was created on the day the Towers were destroyed (strange, I almost typed "Fell" or "Came down", since that's how it's normally described, as if it were some passive thing without an external cause). America has done huge damage to itself since that day. That tragedy is dwarfed by the damage it has done eleswhere, but it is a tragedy nonetheless.
I agree completely that the reality is more dualistic than I painted it - however the other side of the coin, reflex anti-Americanism, is so prevelant now that I felt justified in accentuating the positive.