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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: LadyAngelika

Let me rephrase this. Not everyone wants to be American, but from my experience, foreigners that have wanted to be American have based their impression of what America is on the images portrayed by Hollywood.

Better?

- LA

Better in the sense that only you can account for your experience.

I've never met anyone who wants to be American....and I've travelled to a fair few countries.....I'm not exactly Michael Palin....but I've done ok.

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I think you're seriously misunderstanding the indoctrination that happens in every country around the world.....the objective being 'love of country'. It can't be any other way considering defence is somewhere approaching the top of most agendas. Americans aren't the only ones who consider their country to be the best and they're not the only ones with half-baked soundbites such as "the American Dream"....we have "land of hope and glory....mother of the free".....just as ridiculous all the same.

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If you mean because people go to live in the US it means they want to be American? Well that would mean that there are far more British who want to be Canadian or Aussie as far more choose to emigrate to those two countries than the US....but they retain their British identity. And we have so many people coming into this country that this island is swamped......that doesn't mean all of these people want to be British....it means they're searching for an improved standard of living.

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In my view.....reading these boards.....the British and the Americans are similar in one respect and dissimilar in another....

1) There seems to be a comparatively high number of people in both countries who think their country is a cut above the rest.

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2) Where the British and Americans seem to depart is in that Americans want to be liked by other people.......they want to be seen as a special country........whereas the British really couldn't care less about what other people think....and I suppose that comes with a quiet confidence in being British.

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But to answer the OP......in my experience....I've never met an American in person who has a limited world view......but then the Americans I've met have been over here.....in Tokyo...or in Dubai....so I suppose those are the ones who travel.

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But then does it matter anyway.....there are plenty of British people who would struggle to find France on a map and it's only a few miles away.....that's if they realise that such a country actually exists.....so Americans would hardly be the first people to be insular.

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Oh and edited to add: being from French heritage you should understand notions of cultural superiority that extend beyond the United States....the English and French battled for centuries to export their cultures....and although France lost that battle...even today they believe they're the rightful heirs to the cultural throne......when London was granted the 2012 olympics at the expense of Paris.....the French president's response? "how can the world choose a nation with the worst food in the world over France?"

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ORIGINAL: LadyAngelika
The US is a melting pot society. When you move there, you become an American. The whole social structure of the society is to adopt the American way of life. Canada however is a mosaic which follows the principle that we become richer by having immigrants bring their cultural diversity to our country for us to learn from and integrate.

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"Multicultural cities? Yes, Canada's are. But so are American cities. As Cohen convincingly argues, the U.S. is a spectacularly diverse, multicultural country. The hoary dogma we teach schoolchildren -- they are a melting pot, we are a mosaic -- distorts reality in both countries."

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In the United States, where the term melting pot is still commonly used, despite being largely disregarded by modern sociologists as an outdated and diffuse term, the ideas of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism have largely replaced the idea of assimilation. Alternate models where immigrants retain their native cultures such as the 'salad bowl' or the 'symphony' are more often used by prominent sociologists to describe how cultures and ethnicities mix in the United States.

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ORIGINAL: popeye1250

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ORIGINAL: Dubbelganger

Methinks Elisabella's map is pretty much spot-on. And I find myself in agreement with LadyEllen's first post.

I have no tolerance for flag-waving jingoistic American Exceptionalists. They tend to be uneducated, untravelled, uncultured morons of the first order, barely suitable for menial labor.

I have been to 37 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, Puerto Rico (2x), Mexico (about 30x), Canada (about 10x) Costa Rica, Morocco, Gibraltar, Spain, Hungary, Belgium (2x), Luxembourg, Austria, Liechtenstein,, Netherlands (3x), Germany (3x), England (2x), France (3x), and Switzerland. People pretty much want the same things everywhere: meaningful work, a good education and environment for their kids, good healthcare, freedom from fear (of getting shot or mugged, growing old in poverty, etc.) By and large, people in most of Europe have these things. We in the US have many of those things, too, except that our social safety net is seen as a burden by those who would rather spend money on wars and new military toys rather than Grandma's old age. For that, I piss in their mothers' milk.

If I could afford it, I'd live in Europe in a heartbeat. I already speak some German, and have rented a flat and lived in Munich for 5 weeks, so I know I can get by quite easily.

Dubbel, "if I could afford it."
Yeah, I can live in Europe if I wanted to as I have dual U.S. / Irish citizenship but, a gallon of gas is what $5, $6 ?
And a pack o fags $7 or $8 ? Three Euros for a pint? Car insurance $2,000 per year *with* a good driving record in Ireland!
That's the problem, all those cradle to grave benefits *cost a lot of money* and Ireland's not even the most expensive country in Europe, I think Norway is and most European countries tax the hell out of their citizens.
And noone's bitching about grandma's old age, it's the generation after generation of illigitimate children and their layabout parents who've never had gainfull employment and thought it might be "cool" to quit school at 14, 15 or 16 smoke dope and "have a kid", that's the problem.
I've been to probably about 40 differant countries and most of them were shit pits.
Unlike the pols in D.C. I don't want to "give" them anything. Anyone who thinks the world is a bed of roses should do some travelling in the military.
Outside of Europe, Canada, Australia and Brazil and Argentina I have no interest in seeing anyplace else. (Most) other countries are failures.
You've been to some very nice countries, you should go to Haiti sometime, you can smell it 50 miles out to sea and it smells bad!
Sure, everyone "loves you" when you're giving them the U.S. Taxpayer's dollars!