European bigotry

Bruce Thornton reviews Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America by Andrei S. Markovits (Princeton University Press, 2007, 302 pp.)

Markovits next turns to anti-Americanism in contemporary Europe, where “the ‘ugly American’ is a prominent and ubiquitous figure in all of Western Europe’s public discourse.” This bigotry is communicated by the term “Americanization,” which appears in several European languages and universally connotes “something negative, bad, and above all threatening, something that absolutely has to be avoided.” Whether it’s America’s baneful influence on European languages, indifference to soccer, predatory capitalism and Darwinian workplaces, vulgar media that foster “an increased commercialization and superficiality at the cost of true substance and genuine civic culture,” obsession with health and hatred of smoking, fondness for the death penalty and lawsuits, rampant crime and violence — all the changes in European culture and society that disturb elite gatekeepers find their origins in a toxic “Americanization.” Rather than a response to empirical evidence, these prejudices reflect “the feeling of constant self-incapacitation . . . the feeling that [Europeans] are inevitably condemned to be America’s victims, to be permanent minors under America’s tutelage, to be ruled by an entity that they have consistently regarded as their cultural and moral inferior.”

Makes you proud to be an American, don't it!  Fact is, European disdain is probably as good an indicator as you'll find that the country is going in the right direction.