Why Do People Hate America? [Paperback]

The heart of this book is not why people hate America, but rather on how Americans have lost touch with reality.

This book joins three others books I have reviewed and recommend separately, as the "quartet for revolution" in how Americans must demand access to reliable information about the real world. They are Bill McKibben on "The Age of Missing Information" (a day in the woods contrasted with a year reviewing a day's worth of non-information on broadcast television); Anne Branscomb's "Who Owns Information" (not the citizen); and Roger Shattuck, "Forbidden Knowledge." These are the higher level books--there are many others, both on the disgrace of the media and the abuse of secrecy by government, as well as on such excellent topics as "Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy" by William Greider, and "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom.

Here are a few points made by this book that every American needs to understand if we are to restore true democracy, true freedom of the press, and true American values to our foreign policy, which has been hijacked by neo-conservative corporate interests:

1) "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Dr. Samuel Johnson said this in 1775, on the eve of US revolution from British tyranny. When patriotism is used to suppress dissent, to demand blind obedience, and to commit war crimes "in our name," then patriotism has lost its meaning.

2) According to the authors, Robert Kaplan and Thomas Friedman are flat out *wrong* when they suggest that "they" hate us for our freedoms, the success of our economy, for our rich cultural heritage. Most good-hearted Americans simply have no idea how big the gap is between our perception of our goodness and the rest of the world's perception of our badness (in terms set forth below).

3) According to the authors, a language dies every two weeks. Although there are differing figures on how many languages are still active today (between 3,000 and 5,500), the point is vital. If language is the ultimate representation of a distinct and unique culture that is ideally suited to the environment in which it has flourished over the past millenium, then the triple strikes of English displacing the language, the American "hamburger virus" and city planning displacing all else, and American policy instruments--inclusive of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund--eliminating any choices before the Third World or even the European policy makers, then America can be said to have been invasive, predatory, and repressive. At multiple levels, from "hate" by Islamic fundamentalists, to "fear and disdain" by French purists, to "annoyance" by Asians to "infatuation" by teenagers, the Americans are seen as way too big for their britches--Americans are the proverbial bull in the china shop, and their leaders lack morals--the failure of America to ratify treaties that honor the right of children to food and health, the failure of America to respect international conventions-the average of two military interventions a year since the Cold War (not to mention two countries invaded but not rescued), all add up to "blowback."

4) According to the authors, America is "out of control" largely because the people who vote and pay taxes are uninformed. The authors of this book are most articulate. Consider the following quote: "And the power of the American media, as we repeatedly argue, works to keep American people closed to experience and ideas from the rest of the world and thereby increases the insularity, self-absorption, and ignorance that is the overriding problem the rest of the world has with American."

5) According to the authors, the impact of America overseas can be best summed up as a "hamburger virus" that comes as a complete package, and is especially pathological. McDonalds "serves" rather than "feeds". The "hamburger culture" is eradicating indigenous cultures everywhere, and often this is leading, decades later, to the realization that those cultures had thrived because they were well suited to the environment--the "hamburger culture" assumes that electricity will provide for air conditioning, that everyone can afford a car once the cities have been paved over, etcetera. When this turns out to not be the case, the losses that have occurred over decades cannot be turned back, and poverty, as well as ethnic strife, are the result.

6) Finally--and the authors have many other points to make in this excellent book, but this is the last one for this "summative" evaluation of their work--according to the authors the USA is what could be considered the ultimate manifestation of the "eighth crusade", with Christopher Columbus and the destruction of the native American Indians (both North and South) having been the seventh crusade. The authors are most interesting as they define the predominantly Catholic edicts from the Pope and from Kings and Queens, that declared that anyone not speaking their language (and therefore not able to understand their edicts) was a savage, an animal, and therefore suitable for enslavement. In the eyes of much of the world, America is a culturally-oppressive force that is enslaving local governments and local economies for the benefit of a select wealthy elite that live in gated compounds, while demeaning, demoting, and destroying the balance of power and the balance with nature and the balance among tribes, that existed prior to the arrival of American "gunboat diplomacy" and "banana capitalism."

There you have it. According to the authors:
1) Americans are uninformed about the real world
2) Americans are not in charge of their own foreign policy
3) What is done in the name of all Americans is severely detrimental to the rest of the world, and Americans will pay a heavy price if they allow this "hamburger/gunboat imperialism" to continue.

May God have mercy on our souls, for we know not what we do.

The book does indeed list some remarkable facts about America's behaviors and how the US dominates world economics, globalization, cultural export, arrogance, biotechnological warfare, corporate rule, and so on. A few of the facts reported in the book are truly astonishing, and I did further research to verify them (incidentally the authors' claims were always correct).

But the book also tries to make points that aren't very useful, like the tortured use of hamburgers as a metaphbor for American viral culture. Quite a bit of work is devoted to explaining that the hamburger, both as a symbol and as a literal food, represents the "layers" of American monoculture, agriculture, and farming that injure the world. The point might have been better made without trying to make hamburgers the centerpiece of an entire chapter of such a metaphor.

The authors also launch the book with WAY too much minute attention to the literal syntax of the phrase, "who do people hate America?". Every possible linguistic insight is analyzed.

Of particular value is a segment in which the US's military interventions in and against other countries in the name of "freedom" or "progess" are listed and briefly described; the authors use this list to question America's claim to be a beacon of freedom and democracy for the world (while simultaneously using military interventions to override free elections we don't like, using trade wars to force corporate advantages against Third World countries, using assassinations to subvert other countries' governments, etc.).

The authors also look at America through history, including interesting references to Native American authors, and the way that America appropriates and then modifies the "culture stories" of other people to become a Frankenstin monster-like parable of the American spirit.

It's the best book on the topic, but I wish it had been more straightforward. When it IS, it's at its best.

A particularly profound and downright frightening part of the book is the list of American military interventions over the last 200 years.

I feel I should state that I am absolutely not anti - american, I work in the USA and am very happy thank you, but this book addresses points that the american media does not, and this is concerening. Ed Oswalt's comment "perhaps because the authors view Americans as being informed largely by TV situation comedies and Disney movies", is a little unfair, as the final chapter in the book is really saying the opposite. However, this is a view that many europeans may take and hence the book does the usa a service in this area.

Having said all that, you will probably hate this book if you are a republican....