So, I've been following a British political Youtuber named Spoons. I like him and don't agree with everything he says (no surprise me being a yank and all) and I came across the video above. Now I'm fully aware that America and the British are always going to have a rivalry, we are essentially the estranged son that had a fight with Mother Britain, screamed "I hate you" and smashed a lot of Mum's things on the way out of the house. Whether the estranged son was in the right to do so or not depends on who you ask.
but one thing that struck me above all else about the video was when Spoon, to summarize said "The only reason why the world "Cares" so much about us Americans (IE hates our guts and curses our kind every chance it gets) is because of how our economic and military might is horribly handled on the world stage. I'm not sure if this needs to be said or if I'm just showing my dumb yank ignorance here, but I get the impression at times that the world thinks that the majority of Americans are "Team America: World Police" war hawks
I can tell you that memes aside, most of us at least on the "Conservative and Libertarian" front do not. Woodrow Wilson is probably the most cursed president behind Biden and FDR, and I've noticed that there is a growing number of people on my side that says we should have stayed out of WWI and allowed the chips in Europe to fall where they may regardless of who would ultimately win. Nothing would please people like me more than for America to ride off the global stage and into the sunset of a return to Isolationism, but it's an ongoing uphill battle and as we've seen with trump, all attempts at a populist America First movement is met with heavy resistance but it's a battle being fought none the less.
Am I right in my perceptions here or is this one of those forms of cultural humor that I just don't understand due to lack of experience? This is a question that I can really use non-American input or at least from people that understand the cultures outside the US better than I do,
And feel free to roast me for being a dumb American. I'm aware I'm showing vulnerability here.
I think the main reason why people dislike the US is the
hypocrisy.
I mean, when Russia invaded Ukraine, they did it with the excuse of "Russian minority being threatened". Which is bullshit, but at least somewhat acceptable bullshit. Personally, I would have much preferred honesty, but hey, appearances matter.
But US have what is called "American Exceptionalism". Basically, United States have prospered because they are an extremely resource-rich and large country with excellent internal interconnectivity (
thank you, Mississippi), no serious external enemies (any enemy US might have is literally an ocean away
at the very least) and, until recently, culturally and biologically relatively homogenous population that was nonetheless very numerous (being a mix of European ethnicites). No other country,
ever, had such a laundry list of strategic advantages.
And then Americans go and act as if US becoming great power and then a superpower is somehow solely or mostly because of the US culture, values and political system, and that therefore
everybody else should
just accept the American way. It is literally "you are idiots, we know better, here is how it is done". And the US have succeeded in enforcing this due to their success in the Second World War - which again happened because of things in the previous paragraph first and foremost. All this bullshit of "democracy and human rights" that has me regularly wanting to barf? Imported from the US (and Western Europe - I hate both of them equally).
So when it comes to US military interventions, hypocrisy is on the full display. A lot of Americans I had talked to act - basically stereotypically about these issues. "Iraq was invaded to topple an evil dictator", "bombardment of Yugoslavia was done to stop the war"... Like, Wikipedia outright says that "NATO's intervention was prompted by Yugoslavia's bloodshed and ethnic cleansing of Albanians, which drove the Albanians into neighbouring countries and had the potential to destabilize the region. Yugoslavia's actions had already provoked condemnation by international organisations and agencies such as the UN,
NATO, and various
INGOs. ".
Which is bullshit. Literally every time military intervention is justified by humanitarian or ethical reasons, you can discard it as bullshit. Nevertheless, that is a typical narrative - and many people don't like it.
So it is not that most people think Americans are war hawks.
It is that most people think Americans are hypocritical idiots.