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Australians love bagging Americans. This is not an opinion but a fact that has been ascertained by having to sit through countless conversations where the generic American has been the subject. More often than not Shakespeare’s Richard the Third has been treated more kindly than this American that is just as fictitious as the hunch-backed despot.
Why is it that Americans inspire such animosity, what in many cases is constituted of a envious respect and a persistent annoyance? The Columbine shootings are exemplary of why the Americans are considered to be such idiosyncratic creatures. Since they are at the helm of the biggest economy they feel it necessary to shoot each other in prodigious numbers. News reports from the States are conflicted in that they sound like they are the products of both a highly developed, affluent Western country and a newly emerged central African war zone. Children shooting children! Really? How barbaric. We cannot understand how such things happen although we are starting to get a taste of it in our suburbs.
There is one thing that can be said about American teenagers. They are an ambitious lot. When they set out to do something they really do it. This could be seen to be an appalling remark given that thirteen people lost their lives and twenty-one were injured that august day. The event was also a violent expression of the disaffection and disenfranchisement that plagues and, at times, drives American youths. Columbine is a reference point used when trying to come to grips with modern American culture and where we as Australians stand in relation to it. It is in our choosing of references such as Columbine that leads us to have throw an American on the Barbie days rather than viewing objectively the people of one our most important allies and greatest cultural influences.
We cannot understand why the Americans went to war in Vietnam (even though we leave unquestioned why we went with them), we do not understand why one in five American high school boys have at one time taken a weapon to school, we do not understand why American films that, supposedly are barren wastelands bare of script, talent or message dominate the local cinemaplexes; we do not understand why a country which is sold as the world’s democratic leading light witnessed the Kennedy brothers assassinated with the accompanying gunfire crescendo of Martin Luther King’s death. We do not understand how two boys can walk into a school and kill thirteen people within 16 min and have failed what was their original mission – to kill everyone in that school and those who came to help them. This is a chilling portrait of barbarism and it should be interpreted as such but we, along with the Europeans and most of the third world have a habit of taking it to the illogical conclusion that all Americans are evil, if not explicitly than at least tacitly.
We do not understand so we do what all good Christians, Muslims, Atheists, agnostics, liberals and communists do when they do not understand something… we bash it. The American has become the mythical, if not actual, victim. We kill a million American’s a day. That is if tongues could kill.
And who is it that leads this lynch mob against the new imperials? Well, I’ll be damned. It’s those Americans. Even when it comes to the great, global critique of the American way the bastards have done it again and imperialised it. Conquered it wholesale. There is nothing more pathetic than an idiot in a huff expecting a fight, only to find their opponent actually agreeing with them. This has happened to us time and time again and it is not that we are beaten to the starting line, it is just that our voices are so meek and the American voice is so very loud when it is booming with victory or harping with self-criticism.
Let us take Michael Moore for instance. This is a man that has made a profession of America basing. We have a stupid white man screaming at other stupid white men and any other men/women of any other race, colour or greed have very little chance of getting their two cents in. Those sixteen minutes that blasted a community apart, that required a reappraisal of innocence and the age at which it is lost, was turned into an Oscar winning tirade by Moore through his Bowling for Columbine. We all know how loudly American cinema can speak, and Bowling for Columbine has nullified any foreign criticism that could be directed at American culture and society.
This is the, often unacknowledged, strength of America. It can head off international criticism in a way that other nations can’t. It has the loudest voice and the recent European verbal violence against the U.S.A was an isolated incident where the European nations used a global forum and the US media itself to propagate its message. The first thing you should do when you want to avoid an argument with someone who has a good one is to agree with them. American culture accomplishes this beautifully. There is an American web site called GeorgeWBushWhackers (www.georgewbushwhackers.com) started after the 2000 presidential elections. It has become obvious that no one on God’s green planet enjoys Bushwhacking more than those who apparently elected him. It is no small indication of America’s love affair with its own hatred that Moore’s book Stupid White Men was on the US best seller list for over a year.
It is time that Australians recognise America’s love affair with its own self-hatred and realise that whatever we have to add to the argument is redundant and superfluous. The chances of the Americans having said first whatever it is that we were about to insult them with is just too great to risk. A telling tale that exemplifies this is the Loser Turd Mafia.
Much was made of the two Columbine’s shooters association with the Trenchcoat Mafia, a group of social misfits who banded together in face of “popular” ostracisation. Pauline Colby, a former member of the Trenchcoat Mafia said, “They were just very angry, but they didn’t know how to release their anger.” The Loser Turd Mafia is also another collective of pissed off American high schoolers that highlight the dual nature of the American beast. They complain and criticise in a constructive manner that has lead to the growth of a global community rather than the local death of many.
The Loser Turd Mafia was started by a group Lawrenceburg High School students who were also outcasts sitting around a cafeteria table and discussing how they should respond to the Columbine shootings. This group of friends thought that the Trenchcoat Mafia and the Columbine shooting had “disgraced the loser title,” and that a voice should be provided for American youth who were pissed off and disenchanted but wanted to come together rather than pull apart. The web site that emerged from that discussion is hilarious and a glowing beacon for American optimism. If you look at photos of the two groups side by side, the Trenchcoat Mafia and the Loser Turd Mafia, they are fundamentally indistinguishable. It is in their responses to the same circumstances that set them apart and it is also this that shows most forcefully the dual nature of American society. It is a two headed monster with the two heads constantly snapping at the other complaining of the others ideology.
The US media network is awash with others just like Michael Moore, GeorgeWBushWhacker.com and the Loser Turd Mafia. One of America’s most famous, outspoken and intelligent critics is, surprisingly enough, another American, Noam Chomsky. Even after 9/11 Chomsky continued to lambast the American government for its foreign policy and cultural arrogance. He published a book titled 9/11 that argued the contextual reasons for the 9/11 attack. Undemocratically but understandably the book was criticised in the US which at the time was less interested in context than in retaliation.
The point however is that the Americans did not need us or anyone else telling them why such and such a thing had happened, or what it is that the Americans are once again doing wrong, they have that covered already, thankyou very much. For God’s sake! They have Noam Chomsky.
It is time that the ability that America possesses to self-analyse and self-criticise is taken into account whenever we decide to utter a sentence with the word “American” included. We might think that criticising the US is a quick and easy way of sounding intelligent, worldly and abreast of current and important affairs. Chances are the use of America and its doings in long angry rants are a sure way of saying something that has been said a million times before. To add insult to injury, on average 999,980 instances of that remark have probably been made by an American. Keep that in mind next time you take on a Californian accent to mimic a New England personality to insult a Texan president.
Disclaimer: This is not in defence of American impunity or imperialism.
Why is it that Americans inspire such animosity, what in many cases is constituted of a envious respect and a persistent annoyance? The Columbine shootings are exemplary of why the Americans are considered to be such idiosyncratic creatures. Since they are at the helm of the biggest economy they feel it necessary to shoot each other in prodigious numbers. News reports from the States are conflicted in that they sound like they are the products of both a highly developed, affluent Western country and a newly emerged central African war zone. Children shooting children! Really? How barbaric. We cannot understand how such things happen although we are starting to get a taste of it in our suburbs.
There is one thing that can be said about American teenagers. They are an ambitious lot. When they set out to do something they really do it. This could be seen to be an appalling remark given that thirteen people lost their lives and twenty-one were injured that august day. The event was also a violent expression of the disaffection and disenfranchisement that plagues and, at times, drives American youths. Columbine is a reference point used when trying to come to grips with modern American culture and where we as Australians stand in relation to it. It is in our choosing of references such as Columbine that leads us to have throw an American on the Barbie days rather than viewing objectively the people of one our most important allies and greatest cultural influences.
We cannot understand why the Americans went to war in Vietnam (even though we leave unquestioned why we went with them), we do not understand why one in five American high school boys have at one time taken a weapon to school, we do not understand why American films that, supposedly are barren wastelands bare of script, talent or message dominate the local cinemaplexes; we do not understand why a country which is sold as the world’s democratic leading light witnessed the Kennedy brothers assassinated with the accompanying gunfire crescendo of Martin Luther King’s death. We do not understand how two boys can walk into a school and kill thirteen people within 16 min and have failed what was their original mission – to kill everyone in that school and those who came to help them. This is a chilling portrait of barbarism and it should be interpreted as such but we, along with the Europeans and most of the third world have a habit of taking it to the illogical conclusion that all Americans are evil, if not explicitly than at least tacitly.
We do not understand so we do what all good Christians, Muslims, Atheists, agnostics, liberals and communists do when they do not understand something… we bash it. The American has become the mythical, if not actual, victim. We kill a million American’s a day. That is if tongues could kill.
And who is it that leads this lynch mob against the new imperials? Well, I’ll be damned. It’s those Americans. Even when it comes to the great, global critique of the American way the bastards have done it again and imperialised it. Conquered it wholesale. There is nothing more pathetic than an idiot in a huff expecting a fight, only to find their opponent actually agreeing with them. This has happened to us time and time again and it is not that we are beaten to the starting line, it is just that our voices are so meek and the American voice is so very loud when it is booming with victory or harping with self-criticism.
Let us take Michael Moore for instance. This is a man that has made a profession of America basing. We have a stupid white man screaming at other stupid white men and any other men/women of any other race, colour or greed have very little chance of getting their two cents in. Those sixteen minutes that blasted a community apart, that required a reappraisal of innocence and the age at which it is lost, was turned into an Oscar winning tirade by Moore through his Bowling for Columbine. We all know how loudly American cinema can speak, and Bowling for Columbine has nullified any foreign criticism that could be directed at American culture and society.
This is the, often unacknowledged, strength of America. It can head off international criticism in a way that other nations can’t. It has the loudest voice and the recent European verbal violence against the U.S.A was an isolated incident where the European nations used a global forum and the US media itself to propagate its message. The first thing you should do when you want to avoid an argument with someone who has a good one is to agree with them. American culture accomplishes this beautifully. There is an American web site called GeorgeWBushWhackers (www.georgewbushwhackers.com) started after the 2000 presidential elections. It has become obvious that no one on God’s green planet enjoys Bushwhacking more than those who apparently elected him. It is no small indication of America’s love affair with its own hatred that Moore’s book Stupid White Men was on the US best seller list for over a year.
It is time that Australians recognise America’s love affair with its own self-hatred and realise that whatever we have to add to the argument is redundant and superfluous. The chances of the Americans having said first whatever it is that we were about to insult them with is just too great to risk. A telling tale that exemplifies this is the Loser Turd Mafia.
Much was made of the two Columbine’s shooters association with the Trenchcoat Mafia, a group of social misfits who banded together in face of “popular” ostracisation. Pauline Colby, a former member of the Trenchcoat Mafia said, “They were just very angry, but they didn’t know how to release their anger.” The Loser Turd Mafia is also another collective of pissed off American high schoolers that highlight the dual nature of the American beast. They complain and criticise in a constructive manner that has lead to the growth of a global community rather than the local death of many.
The Loser Turd Mafia was started by a group Lawrenceburg High School students who were also outcasts sitting around a cafeteria table and discussing how they should respond to the Columbine shootings. This group of friends thought that the Trenchcoat Mafia and the Columbine shooting had “disgraced the loser title,” and that a voice should be provided for American youth who were pissed off and disenchanted but wanted to come together rather than pull apart. The web site that emerged from that discussion is hilarious and a glowing beacon for American optimism. If you look at photos of the two groups side by side, the Trenchcoat Mafia and the Loser Turd Mafia, they are fundamentally indistinguishable. It is in their responses to the same circumstances that set them apart and it is also this that shows most forcefully the dual nature of American society. It is a two headed monster with the two heads constantly snapping at the other complaining of the others ideology.
The US media network is awash with others just like Michael Moore, GeorgeWBushWhacker.com and the Loser Turd Mafia. One of America’s most famous, outspoken and intelligent critics is, surprisingly enough, another American, Noam Chomsky. Even after 9/11 Chomsky continued to lambast the American government for its foreign policy and cultural arrogance. He published a book titled 9/11 that argued the contextual reasons for the 9/11 attack. Undemocratically but understandably the book was criticised in the US which at the time was less interested in context than in retaliation.
The point however is that the Americans did not need us or anyone else telling them why such and such a thing had happened, or what it is that the Americans are once again doing wrong, they have that covered already, thankyou very much. For God’s sake! They have Noam Chomsky.
It is time that the ability that America possesses to self-analyse and self-criticise is taken into account whenever we decide to utter a sentence with the word “American” included. We might think that criticising the US is a quick and easy way of sounding intelligent, worldly and abreast of current and important affairs. Chances are the use of America and its doings in long angry rants are a sure way of saying something that has been said a million times before. To add insult to injury, on average 999,980 instances of that remark have probably been made by an American. Keep that in mind next time you take on a Californian accent to mimic a New England personality to insult a Texan president.
Disclaimer: This is not in defence of American impunity or imperialism.
