House of Eratosthenes

A lot of people like to talk about how poorly-behaved Americans are. In recent years, this has become a widespread phenomenon that threatens to wear the word “boorish” completely out of the English lexicon, like wearing the high-traffic path out of a carpet.

In fact if you were to arrange all Internet content into a massive pie chart, I would estimate on an item-by-item basis, that half of it, of course, would be porn; maybe 7% commercial enterprises; another 5% conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks; an additional 3% would be other political opinions, like mine; 2% blog pages about motorcycle riding, knitting, and the like; toss in another 1% or 2% to cover all the bitching about Meredith Viera and Star Jones leaving The View, and all the rest would be a bunch of bullshit bloviating about Americans. We make our women wear tops on the beach, we swagger, we don’t extend our pinkies, we eat salad with the dinner fork.

Well, for anyone wishing to make a list capturing the content of that big ol’ slice, don’t forget to add this.

“The rise in anti-Americanism is a threat to our national security,” [Keith] Reinhard says. “The more people dislike us, the more easily they can be recruited by our enemies. In this global world, we need all the friends we can get.”

Reinhard, a former international marketing executive hailing from New Zealand, has founded an activist group called BDA, and the BDA has put out a sixty-page booklet to address this problem.

To overcome such perceptions, Reinhard founded the Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), a group of educators, executives and citizens working to combat the spread of anti-American sentiment.

Although its primary focus has been business travellers, the BDA recently extended its efforts to all Americans travelling abroad — its World Citizens Guide, booklets and pamphlets offering a crash course in other nations’ histories, religions, traditions, peoples and languages.
:
The World Citizens Guide is colourfully illustrated and includes images of nations’ flags, facts about each country and common sense tips that would benefit any traveller.

The 60-page, passport-sized booklet was created for students who study abroad. Its success ushered in the pamphlet, an abridged version, for business travellers.

The booklet, which also includes an interactive mini-CD, includes the 50 most useful words in Arabic, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

It suggests that Americans should learn the norms of the countries where they travel and follow them to prevent someone from unintentionally sending the wrong message.

For example, the book says: “In most European countries, the correct way to wave hello and goodbye is palm out, hand and arm stationary, fingers wagging up and down. Common American waving hand moving side to side means no — except in Greece, where it is an insult.” [emphasis mine]

Well, packaging is extremely important, and Reinhard’s product impresses me as a positive contribution, because of the way it’s packaged. After all, the content itself, is loaded with problems I’m being asked to overlook.

Stringing together what this article says, after all, what I’ve been told is that an ignorant American might go to Greece and show his ignorance by waggling his hand side-to-side; some offended Grecian will then become more susceptible to being recruited by America’s enemies. Is Greece really loaded with natives who are one hand-waggle away from becoming Al Qaeda operatives?

Does that really make sense? What scares me is, gee whiz, maybe it does in this world. And if that’s the way things are, well, I have a few problems with Mr. Reinhard’s proposed solution.

I find this interesting. If I were to approach a major newspaper and tell them, “I see a link between people who are acrimonious to Americans, for whatever reason, and America’s enemies” I would never be taken seriously, and if the paper decided to take a look at me it would assuredly be in a negative way. Witness the world reaction to President Bush’s now-notorious line about “with us or against us.” But then I can take the Reinhard approach, do exactly that with the overture of “I want to make some new rules for Americans to follow. I want to point out how boorish Americans are as a whole, and put them on a shorter leash.” And hosannas will be sung as the palm leaves are laid at my feet.

But it’s the same sentiment. Exactly the same. So that’s my first beef; the selectivity. Our newspaper editors and political pundits instruct us to sneer derisively at anyone making a link between hostility to America, and terrorism — even though we can use our intellect to conclude nothing else, but that terrorism is rooted in hostility. And yet, when someone dishes out the right platitudes about Americans being rude to people overseas, suddenly the rules are changed.

The second problem has to do with the date. Sure, “I question the timing” has become a stale cliche, in some parts even understood to be an invitation to giggling. Doesn’t it fit here? People around the world resent Americans all the time. Why start harping on the issue as we begin the third week of October in an even-numbered year? Why? If it’s not an agenda, it could be incompetence. Maybe a little of both. But it has to be at least one of those.

Third beef is with the union between the mission statement and the logical premise. As an American, if I’m rude to people while travelling overseas, I might tick people off. Ticking people off is a national security threat because it might lead recruiting by America’s enemies. So I should be nicer to people overseas, because America “need[s] all the friends we can get.”

What kind of friend would this dirty little cretin be? I waggle my hand the wrong way, and he’ll listen more closely next time Al Qaeda needs his help blowing people up? Fuck him! What an asshole. Sounds to me, from what Mr. Reinhard said, like America has been way too friendly. Hey, all I’m doing is taking his comments seriously here — be nice, or else your boorish behavior will be used as a recruiting tool. Well, used as a recruiting tool upon whom, exactly? Just askin’. There’d have to be something wrong with the guy who wouldn’t ask. What kind of prospective friends are we talking about here?

Fourth problem…and expressing this one, calls upon the reader to make the most out of whatever resources might be available on the receiving end, especially attention span and common sense. My fourth problem with this little project is this:

Like millions of other people, I have a lot of ideas for “combat[ing] the spread of anti-American sentiment.” America itself, after all, is a nation whose history is rich with spreads of anti-(fill in the blank) sentiments within her own borders. Anti-black sentiment, anti-native-American sentiment, anti-Asian sentiment, anti-Jewish sentiment, anti-Hispanic sentiment. America, like no other country in the world, has played host to a veritable Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors of racial bigotry.

And defeated them.

We have more experience at this than any other country conceived by God or man. No small feat, when you’re dedicated to the free expression of any idea, no matter how repulsive that idea might be. How do you marginalize ugly ideas, when you’re opposed to the practice of marginalizing ideas? And somehow, American ingenuity has triumphed, with our honor more-or-less intact. If you’re a bigot or a sexist or a homophobe, you must choose your audience very carefully or you will mocked…if you hold a position of authority or trust, you will be driven from it the minute your true nature is exposed, your career likely ruined for good. That’s about as marginalized as ideas can get in a country honoring free speech.

Now that America finds herself, as a whole, on the “business end” of prejudice and raw hatred brandished on the world stage, it just seems to me we should stick with what works. Use our own experience. We do know something about this.

Intolerance toward black people: In this country, it was once the rule. Now it is an exception. What happened?

Did we hand out 60-page booklets to black people to stop being so thuggish? No, we did not.

Did we bomb townships where anti-black sentiment was known to be expressed? No.

Over time, we simply called to the attention of people that anti-black prejudice, was exactly that. Prejudice. Pre-judging. The dissention was exposed as something that said very little about the targets of the ill feeling, and was much more of a shameful commentary on the person nurturing it. It became a symbol of what it is: childishness. Simple-mindedness. One-dimensional thinking. It was exposed as logically untenable.

Even the man who hated black people out of personal experience, was exposed as guilty of generalization. Person of color commits a crime against you or your relatives, you come to regard all persons of color a certain way — that’s wrong. Groups are groups, people are people. To go through life as some two-bit racist just because that’s what your daddy was, even though you’ve never met any black people yourself — doubly wrong.

Same goes for persons of another faith, or any other race, or surname.

Okee dokee then. America fought prejudice by getting the message out about how to look at people. How mature grown-ups look at other people, and how silly, immature bigots look at other people.

It’s a success story.

So why aren’t we fighting this worldwide instance of prejudice and slack-jawed, simple-minded, poorly-thought-out animosity exactly the same way?

To put it more concisely, it’s just impossible for me to look at some foreigner who got an American hand waggled at him in the wrong direction, and goes on to say “those dirty rotten Americans…” with any more esteem, or tolerance, than the average filthy redneck who suffered some perceived slight from a minority group and went on to say “those dirty so-and-so…” I just don’t see any difference in those two situations. None whatsoever. People have had opportunities to explain a logical difference to me; very few have taken the time or energy to do so, and the ones who have tried, have been far from compelling.

In fact, in the example of the European guy who encounters a boorish American tourist, I have to ask — maybe this is my fifth problem with the article — what does that foreign guy do for a living? Isn’t he in the tourist business, or engaged in something related to it? Isn’t he at least out-and-about somewhere that’s been developed as what you’d call a “tourist trap,” like, maybe, St. Mark’s Square?

Gosh, I’ve lived in tourist traps before. Seems to me when you’re walking through someplace you might meet some tourists, you should expect — y’know — pretty much anything.

I mean, you wouldn’t believe what we see here in America from other countries. Why, just this last spring we had a huge demonstration all over the country from illegal immigrants — let me repeat that, ILLEGAL immigrants — from another country. They marched around, and let’s just say they represented their native country less than optimally. Some of them even carried around signs to the effect that they ought to take the place over, that the rest of us didn’t even belong here!

You know, it seems to me that those illegal immigrants, back then, might have been able to use an etiquette guide. It seems to me their behavior might have been interpreted as ugly, thuggish, and more than a little arrogant. It might have led to anti-illegal-alien sentiment. In fact, it did. I don’t remember any snotty lectures about manners, or 60-page rulebooks being handed out about how, while you’re illegally trespassing into this other country where you have no right to be — make sure you don’t waggle your hand in the wrong direction and accidentally make some enemies.

No, to the best I can recall, as this other country was being represented by the “travellers” in a not-quite-sunny sort of a way — if this resulted in a bad feeling in the natives, it was portrayed as some kind of character issue with the natives.

Was I not paying attention at the right time? Did I miss something?

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Ugly AmericanSunday, October 15th, 2006

Ugly American
Sunday, October 15th, 2006