Kevin Connolly's guide to American culture
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
I was pleasantly surprised and rightfully reminded about some of the greater points of our country and culture and it was refreshing... A foreigner being offered a ride from the airport without a stutter of consideration and being told "this is America, son, we help each other out"... that if the fact that the U.S. Spends as much money on defense as the whole world combined concerns you, remember that the White House would he the first call made from your country if you were invaded... I chuckled at the elevator comment... and so on.
Well done. A tad too simple, but makes for a nice light quick read.
not if you were invaded by order from the White House, but I guess it doesn't count.
"There is something about the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness."
"If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it."
"But if Sonia Sotomayor is to make it big, there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take. This is the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured. A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her religious parents."
In its place is a sort of wordless acknowledgement, halfway between a grunt and a hum, "mm-hmmm". It is a sound that acknowledges your thanks but implies that no great joy has been found in helping you either."
I agree with this 100% up until the last sentence, where he clearly indicates that he just doesn't get what's actually happening in these cases. Where I see this happening, is when people say "Thank You" over-enthusiastically, or in response to things that were done as a matter of course and deserve no thanks. The person being thanked is taken off-guard and slightly embarrassed to have been thanked for something which he would have done anyway. It feels like saying "You're Welcome," would be to acknowledge the thanks-worthiness of the act in question, which would be a form of dishonesty, so they can't say that. On the other hand, it would be unambiguously rude to say nothing, so they mumble something non-committal in a vague attempt to to say, more or less, "Really, it's nothing." Why don't they just say that? Probably because they are taken off guard and slightly embarrassed.
The really perplexing thing about this is that just a few paragraphs later, he gives a prime example of this effect in action:
"It is curiously moving to see them sitting looking a little embarrassed as a pilot or flight attendant calls on their fellow passengers to give their service and sacrifice a standing ovation."
They don't generally think of what they are doing as some sort of great sacrifice or heroic endeavor: they think of it as a job, and also as a way to give back to a country which has given them much. If you look at their rank insignia, the majority of them are very junior, unlikely to have done anything in their thus-far short careers other than attend training. They're probably thinking, "These people think I'm some kind of war hero, and I haven't even done any real work yet, let alone deployed." I personally think that their service is nonetheless praiseworthy, but I'm not talking about the actual merits of their actions, I'm talking about their perception of those merits. So when every ticket agent, TSA screener, gate agent, or flight attendant they come across says, "Thank you for your service," they don't really feel justified in saying, "You're welcome." Most eventually learn to smile brightly, look the other person in the eye, and cheerfully say, "You're Welcome," because they learn that this is another form of service: it makes Americans feel good to express gratitude to those in uniform.
[EDITED a couple of typos]
Really? Because I've scored the old "mmm-hmmm" from perfectly normal "thankyous" performed for perfectly normal services.
"I'd like a cup of coffee" "Here you go" "Thanks" "Mmmm-hmmmmmm"
In Australia we'd just go "Sure" or "No problem" or something.
"It is curiously moving to see them sitting looking a little embarrassed as a pilot or flight attendant calls on their fellow passengers to give their service and sacrifice a standing ovation."
I've never seen anything like this, I can only imagine that being embarrassing all round if it ever happened. Though I certainly have seen soldiers looking embarrassed upon being thanked by random strangers in airports.
The change-in-the-hands thing is a little more defensible - in some cultures, putting the change on the counter (especially when someone holds out a hand) is considered to convey that you think your customer is too beneath you to touch. It's been known to come up now and again in the US, especially between people of different races/ethnicities.
I went to America for the first time earlier this year, having grown up in the UK I found the "mmm-hmm" thing quite suprising. I agree though that thanking every sales person you see in your day for every small service is somewhat ridiculous.
Endless sub-clauses roam across prairies of newsprint in search of the point, like homesteader wagons on the Oregon trail circling around a knackered old buffalo."
That's quite a claim for a man who seems to revel in that most hated journalist practice.
The one of making every clause its own sentence.
And every sentence its own paragraph.
The result is that he—and his many fellows in this practice—seems really inordinately proud of his every sentence, as though each one of these (rather mediocre and limp, but surely not very objectionable) lines seems like it's supposed to be a punchline. And as punchlines they all fall well short of the mark, leaving me actively annoyed rather than the 'meh' I'd probably get otherwise.
But the rejoinder "you're welcome", which once greeted almost any expression of thanks in America, is in retreat. In its place is a sort of wordless acknowledgement, halfway between a grunt and a hum, "mm-hmmm". It is a sound that acknowledges your thanks but implies that no great joy has been found in helping you either.
I'd almost forgotten about this, but on my first day in the US I thanked a hotel clerk for some service and got an "mmm-hmm" acknowledgement and it felt incredibly rude. I suppose I don't even notice it any more.
I can see how it might appear a little brusque though. Americans, particularly here out west, tend to put on an air of stoicism, so our "mm-hmm" probably comes without a smile or even a glance in your direction. But I've interpreted that to mean that I am being helped as a matter of course, not for the sake of propriety or some sense of obligation.
I live in one of the most "segregated" cities in the United States, literally on one of its fault lines (my alley divides White Suburban Chicago from Black Urban Chicago). White or black, the people on my block are confident and secure and happy and generally pissed off or insecure about the same things I am; meanwhile, the people across the alley are living amongst dogfighting rings, hand-to-hand retail drug dealing, and flashing blue police cameras.
It's not a "black" and "white" thing and it's naive to express surprise about it. We all know how it got to be that way. There is no magic wand you can wave to lift 115,000 people out of social, educational, and economic poverty. Except maybe, maybe, by pouring billions of dollars into their public schoools.
I'm going to be done discussing this now; I'm happy to read anything you write in response, but this is one of those super-unproductive discussions that is inevitably going to embarrass me in a year.
Incidentally: you want to see that correlation in Europe? Go for a walk in the Paris suburbs.
On the other hand, I think you will see the same kind of skin color based wealth stratification in every country in the world, developed or not.
Are you referring to the Indians or the Asians?
Yeah, it's kind of fun to see how someone with a different perspective might characterize us, but this isn't the kind of thing you should read and think "well, that doesn't gel perfectly with my experience," because no account of all American people ever will.
And if that makes you uncomfortable, it is worth remembering that wherever you are, there is a good chance that if your country is ever invaded, your leader's first phone call will be to the White House in Washington.
My first immediate thought was the remote chance of my country being invaded. This led almost instantly to the uncharitable thought that if I found myself in another random country, the odds are good (historically and looking to the future) that it would be the US doing the invading. Amusingly the last sentence of the quote still makes sense in this scenario.
If you are a U.S. ally, you are unlikely to be invaded by the U.S. (kinda goes without saying, and you can insert pretty much any country you like in place of U.S. and the sentence remains true).
If you are a U.S. ally, what are your odds of being invaded by someone other than the U.S.? Very low. Why? For the same reason that your leader would call the U.S. if you were invaded. What if you're not in a formal alliance with the U.S.? Odds are still pretty good that any potential aggressor will, before planning an attack, ask himself, "Will the U.S. intervene if I invade my neighbor?" If the answer is "yes," he probably won't invade. Keep in mind that the U.S. has fought wars because someone figured, incorrectly, that the answer was "no."
OK, what if you're not at all friendly with the U.S.? In this case, there are a lot of other factors that come into play. Are you a peer power? If not, have you aligned yourself with such a power? If so, how much are you worth to them? How about nukes, do you have nukes? If not, can you fake it credibly? Are you generally belligerent and aggressive, or do you mostly mind your own business? Keep in mind, these questions aren't just factors in determining your chances of being invaded by the U.S., they are factors in determining your chances of being invaded by anyone at all.
Summary: if your chances of being invaded are very low, it's most likely because of the existence of the U.S. military. If that's not the reason, it's because you have a comparable military, or have aligned yourself with somebody who does. If you're not on good terms with the U.S. you're in a more precarious position not just because the U.S. might invade you, but also because everyone else knows that the U.S. won't intervene on your behalf. If you have nukes, only crazy people will invade you, unless you act so crazy that the sane countries decide that it's worth the risk to try and take them away, since you'll probably use them sooner or later anyway.
They are on good terms with us, but not formal allies, which leads to: The Russians assessed, correctly, that we would not intervene (militarily, at least) on the Georgians' behalf.
The Georgians knew this, which is why they had tried so hard in the proceeding year to get into NATO.
To this day, the US is willing to deploy troops for lots of reasons--sometimes to protect allies, sometimes in response to humanitarian issues (Yugoslavia)--but never in a situation where they will get into a shooting war with Russia or China. And the tendency is reciprocal. When Russia sends troops into Georgia, they do so knowing the US will not send their own troops to Georgia. When the US sails a half dozen aircraft carriers through the Taiwan Straits, as they did in 1996, they do so knowing China will not cross that line and attack Taiwan, as they were threatening to do at the time.
"Dear Vladimir and Dmitri,
We are absolutely unwilling to risk war in defense of Georgia.
Sincerely, NATO."
The great irony is that, by taking steps intended to stave off a Russian invasion, the Georgians instead opened the door for one. If they had instead played a slower and more cautious game, they might have maintained sufficient ambiguity and doubt to keep the Russians out. Maybe. Or not. I'm also playing Monday morning quarterback here, so I can't really blame them for trying.
What they didn't know was that the Russians had already moved several brigades through the tunnel and controlled both sides of it before the fighting in South Ossetia started. But, hey, maybe it really was pure coincidence that those two things happened in that order, in rapid succession.
This is such a wildly common bit of historical illiteracy, often reduced to "a nation founded by Puritans".
The Puritans founded settlements in one region. Many other groups, often not religious in structure at all, started all the other settlements that together grew into the 13 original colonies.
And whatever happened to the Puritans? Well, their descendants for the most part are the residents of Massachusetts, not exactly the most right-wing or "intensely-religious" bunch.
Was this irony/sarcasm? Because my detector is off.
First of all, I read his 2 volumes of "Democracy in America" a couple of years ago, right after I had read Thucydides's "History of the Peloponnesian War" and just before reading Lord Acton's essays on liberty, and I challenge any of today's economists/political thinkers to come up with something at least 50% better.
Second, Tocqueville's "L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution" is in my opinion the book that best describes/explains the French Revolution, which I also think is the event that most defines the last 200 years of Western history and political thought, starting from Kant and continuing with guys like Marx and Lenin.
On the other hand, isn't "de rien" thought an appropriate reply to "merci"?
"For the first time in history, the current generation of Americans cannot be certain that the generation that comes next will be more prosperous."
for the third consecutive generation.
To whomever this old couple are: thank you! If we could all remember that, where ever we are, this world would be a much nicer place.
When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Culture, he said: "I think it would be a good idea."
Regarding forcible registration with the state of blacks: “One can understand the necessity for registration of Kaffirs who will not work.” (Reference: CWMG, Vol I, p. 105)