American Critisim

AMERICAN CRITISIM

There is abundance of cultural criticism of American habits and everyday life. Foreigners tend to look upon Americans as aggressive obnoxious individualist, but the question is where this negative view comes from. The common view of daily life as an American is a day where he is totally self-involved, and almost entirely oblivious to what is going on in the rest of the world. As being the worlds top superpower the US is often used as the scapegoat for everything wrong with the modern world. America presents the largest target for the world to vent their anger toward and therefore is the associated cause of global problems

Other Countries criticisms of America often include the use of its political power to project American policy on others. As a superpower the consequences of unpopular US policy choices are used as evidence of specifically American moral failure and are not what may be unavoidable failures of a foreign policy. The lack of subtly or restraint from the use of American power is stressed. This is why US dominance is viewed as overbearing. There is often a clear lack of balance of power between other countries in the world and the US. The void created by the absence of a rival to the United States leaves it open to be more critically scrutinized in its actions by everyone else. That is why when America acts in its own interest, as it sees fit, it tends to have a largely felt impact on other nations. This usually leaves those nations feeling powerless and exploited by the US. Negative views of America will set in where negative effects of its foreign policy are felt.

Another major criticism is the impression of America as the leading key to globalization and free trade. American materialism and industrialism is perceived as a real danger to other cultures. America is viewed as a uncaring institution that goes around disrupting or completely destroying other countries societies and traditional markets for the only sole purpose of increasing it own material welfare. Many countries that hold this view see the US also as hypocrites because of economic sanctions and embargoes

toward countries like Cuba and Iran while still maintaining commercial and political relations with countries like China and Israel. This in turn causes America to be regularly seen as over materialistic and totally self-involved. To outsiders it seems the American dream is that the more things you own, the more money you have, the better you are no matter what morals you have to discard to achieve it. Another view of American industry is it is often looked upon as very wasteful, unconcerned with environmental issues and having an overall cultural indifference. Peoples displaced by American practices, the quick change of the locale economics and the eventual dependence on foreign markets creates bitterness and unwanted change in those areas of the world. What is feared by foreigners