Part 31 of a potentially endless series...

Why do they hate us abroad? In part, because a dedicated group of fellow Americans, and other members of the international left, run a relentless campaign in foreign newspapers convincing readers that America is one undoubtedly one of the most vicious, evil, and vile forces in the world.

Today's example, a guy named Gaither Stewart (the picture is worth a thousand words) who hails from North Carolina and makes his money telling Europeans and Russians just how evil his homeland is. In Pravda:

From my vantage point I experience forms of Americanism chiefly in the context of the hegemonic tendencies, bullying globalization, arrogance, militarism and imperialism of the United States of America. One glaring, arrogant example is the construction of yet another US military base in the ancient city of Vicenza in north Italy, where (anachronistically) American soldiers in military dress jog over the cobbled streets of the city center, as if it were wartime, as if it were theirs, past cathedrals and Palladium architecture, weaving and dodging among startled women and children. This military display is a form of the Americanism become anti-Americanism in Europe.

Germany complains that we're evil for closing a military base there, and now we're evil because a few of our soldiers jogged through Vincenza? (And somehow I doubt they did it full military dress, as implied.) Oppression through jogging. When will the hegemony end?

What is it, this American morality? This righteousness? Is it our religious roots in the fable of the Puritan settlers, those super religious people who in their hardships were bigots, perhaps also practitioners of incest and racists soon morphing into dogmatic chauvinists who early-on labeled their dissidents and different-thinkers witches and demons.

The Puritans practiced incest! Did you know that? News to me. These Puritans also were apparently more racist than anyone else at the time, despite, historically, the fact they were leaders in the abolitionist movement. And never mind that those doing the accusing in the Witch Trials were, in fact, dabblers in the occult themselves. But forget history -- I'm sure the good Russian readers of Pravda are eating this up.

Pre-Americanism! The same Americanism initiated then which today fosters the rights of the rich to become richer, the strong to trample the weak and the contempt for and the crushing of anything smacking of the social in our land, real trade unions and, heaven forbid, universal health care.

Wow! That is evil! They allow ... can you believe it ... capitalism! — where poor and regular people can become wealthy, and wealthy people sometimes get even wealthier. Oh no! (This never happens in Russia, apparently.) And we fail to have nice, strong unions like those in France and Italy — which can shut down the state on a whim to demand higher wages. And — can you believe the atrocity? — we don't have (completely) socialized medicine! (Much of it is, but there are still some holdouts.)

Incredible! The evils!

Meanwhile, out in the empire, as long as it is distant, the Puritan legacy instills blindness to the use of cluster bombs from the stratosphere and hidden torture in places with foreign names like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib ... and while our neighbors in Haiti eat dirt, literally?

Again, never mind that Italy (and Russia, of course) regularly use far harsher tactics than those found in Gitmo. And that, far from turning a "blind eye", the US military had already discovered, shut down, and was prosecuting those involved at Abu Ghraib long before the press got involved.

It's all the fault of those Christianist Pilgrims!

And of course, Haiti has far more influence from France than the US, being a former French colony. But, being a European nation, no French responsibility is discernible! Nor does the author care to note that Cuba, which has fully embraced his socialist ideals, is far nearer to the US -- and far poorer! No: poverty, in his narrative, is not caused by a lack of economic opportunity, but by American citizens having too much patriotism.

Surely there must be another point of view? Something to redeem this awful nation, Amerikkka?

When I asked a friend and writer colleague in heartland America what he understands by Americanism, he stunned me and overwhelmed me with the following:

"From birth I have been immersed, enculterated, inculcated, and surrounded by the myriad toxic components of the 'American Dream' or 'Americanism.' There are some admirable aspects to 'America' but by and large we live in a spiritual/psychological sewer." He then listed two dozen aspects of Americanism, which I repeat here: narcissism, greed, hyper-individualism, consumerism, capitalism, corporatism, faux democracy, media whoredom, asphyxiation of the Left, Christian fundamentalism, Mammon worship, moral retardation, militarism, imperialism, celebrity worship, wars on drugs and terrorism, prison industrial complex, mean-spiritedness, self-absorption, American exceptionalism, bullying, anti-intellectualism and the abandonment of many uninsured and homeless in the wealthiest nation on earth.

What a terrible list of sins! We "asphyxiate the left" -- presumably by questioning their beliefs in articles like this one. We're guilty of "greed", never mind that Americans give more, per capita, than anyone else on earth. We're guilty both of a lack of spiritual values ("Mammon worship"!) and -- at the very same time -- "Christian fundamentalism"! Unlike the British, we worship celebrities! Unlike the French, we're "mean spirited"! (Gosh, North Carolina must have been an awful place!) We're guilty both of "corporatism" (in which the state directs corporations) and "capitalism" (where the corporations are presumably left unrestrained). And, like every nation on the planet (Italy certainly included), there are still homeless people here.

And, richest of ironies, we're accused — before the Russians no less — of "faux democracy." Because, you know, our elections are just a rigged sham — whereas Putin was elected fair and square.

I'm sure we're also too tall and much too short, too fat, and too thin, too outspoken, and much too quiet! Really now, is there any sin of which we're not guilty?

The article rambles on this style, deploying one Marxist trope after another -- Americans have a "false consciousness", we're guilty of "imperialism", and, despite the fact that probably the majority of us work relatively cushy jobs, with limited hours, in air-conditioned offices (where a number of us -- you know who you are -- spend much of the day sending IMs and "tweets"), American capitalism is utterly "savage and vicious." (I presume he was once forced to actually work to earn money?) And American democracy is a "sham" because we don't elect enough representatives of the far left. Like our dear author.

And that's only installment 1. Part 2 can be found here!

I can understand why Pravda would run this -- it's a lot safer to criticize and incite readers to hate the US than their own president Putin. We're not going to feed their editors Polonium-laced sushi. But as for Mr. Stewart's — his dishonesty on so many historical and contemporary points is rather less excusable.

Why do they hate us?

They hate us, in no small part, because our own leftists, angered that they and their compatriots are not in (sufficient) power, pour our their bitterness and disdain in one poison pen letter after another in the foreign press. They present themselves as experts on, and representatives of, the US — condemning their inferior fellow citizens en masse because their native land hasn't yet been remade after their own image. If they can't possess it for themselves, then they'd rather see it destroyed — if not actually, then at least verbally, in effigy, before the whole world.