As I see it.
The United States of America, for various reasons, seems to be a country which is both admired and detested. You could argue that it is a maligned country, with many people having stereo-typical adverse views about it, some of which might be unfounded, others not being valid anymore, and still others which are partly true or exaggerated.
It might or might not be the case that America is loved and hated in equal measures. Clearly, for many poor, not so poor and rich people, America is the place where they want, yearn/or and aspire to be. It is the much vaunted realisable 'eldorado' where poor, honest and hard working men and women can realise their dreams of making loads of money, living the good life and even become 'anything' they want to be, including POTUS, or President of the United States of America.
Continental America (the USA) is a vast land of probably nearly 320 million people, with many of them or their forebears emanating from countries all over the globe. All of these disparate people have been moulded together under the umbrella nationality of being Americans
How well Americans are glued together and feel themselves to be 'one people', having comprised so many disparate peoples is probably debatable, especially considering the history of the country, with its colonial and slavery past, its dispossession of the Native Americans, the forced incorporation of some states into the Union during the Civil War, and the historical enmity between the individual states and the Central Government in Washington.
It is not surprising that, probably somewhat like religious dogma, America has used arguably an inflated image of itself to not only mould her citizens into becoming Americans, but also to instill a feeling of 'inferiority' into the psyche of other nations, in comparison to her 'professed superiority, not only in terms of her wealth and abundance, but of her constitution and particular form of government.
And so 'The American Dream' is born and hyped, to the extent where Americans, some, have either not been able to see the spectre of the American Nightmare which co-exists with the AD, or they deny its existence or attempt to argue it away. Thus the advent of personal responsibility and indolence to explain crime, poverty,deprivation and socio-economic inequality, with factors such as the history of slavery, which is at the heart of race relations problems in American society, being denied or ignored.
Yes, it is the case that all Americans are not the same, and that they have different opinions like the citizens of other countries. That there is a difference between the people - some of them atleast - and their government. That the Americans, especially the Republicans, seem to have an innate animosity towards their government and are suspicious of the government intervening in the lives of ordinary people to regulate aspects of their lives
It is also true that it is not all Americans who want their country to become, not so much the 'world's policeman, but, as I see it, 'the world's robber baron.' It is ironic that it is the elite amongst the more conservative Republican Americans - those people who hates the government intervening private and social life - who are probably the biggest advocates and beneficiaries of American adventurism abroad.
And so, it seems to me, that some of the reasons why the USA - I struggle with the concept of 'America', when we Canada, Latin America and South America are also there - include the perception of 'American exceptionalism', the perception of America having an inflated ego; of her being an international bully; of her right wing politics; her racism; and her arrogance.
What is needed is more balance between how the American psyche perceives idealised and actual America. This balancing should result, hopefully, in a realignment of how Americans see and behave towards their country, and of how others see it.
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