Until a few more Americans realise that you often come off as arogant a lot of the time things, aren't going to change, a large proportion of the world is going to hate you. Sorry.

That makes sense. Even if it has little or no founding.

Unfortunately, it *does* have founding. I've had this conversation before, so I've had a long, long time to think about this. I'm a non- (okay, half) American, living in the US for the last year and a half -- take that as you will.

Where do foreigners (i.e. non-Americans living outside the US) get their impressions of the US? In rough order of least to most likely, here's what I've seen:

a) travel to the US,
b) Americans travelling to *their* country,
c) American media,
d) American foreign policy.

(a) is probably the least likely way for people to develop a negative attitude towards Americans. Yeah, there's a lot of tourism, but if people are travelling to the US, then they're likely already above the stereotypes that make people hate Americans, not to mention that they'll have had the opportunity to mingle with the regular populace. Similarly, the percentage of people involved in (a) is miniscule compared to the number of people who are unable to do things like that.

The next option for learning about America is (b), and... well... the US doesn't have the most steller reputation there. American tourists are often (not always) seen as obnoxious, un-cultured, un-educated boobs. Though I haven't the personal experience, all of my (Canadian) friends that have extensive travel experience have caught Americans travelling incognito with Canadian flags on their backpacks, because they don't want to be known as American. The "obnoxious" and "un-cultured" bits likely stem from the people that go out and paint the town red. Even if you drop the "obnoxious" and "un-cultured" bits, you still have the un-educated to think about. The economics of the US gives their population of great unwashed masses the ability to travel the world, but the state of education about foreign lands is apalling -- it shines through like water in a urinal (to borrow a line from Shakespeare). The lack of knowledge about things outside the US is often combined with an expectation that things change to be more American-centric. To a non-American, this expectation of change to suit your ideas is arrogant. Fortunately, the US also has representatives like jimhogan travelling the world.

The next most common way for people to learn about Americans is (c). The US exports their media all over the world, and it's all pro-US, often to the point of being nauseating. This is part of the culture ingrained into the American people, so I doubt many even recognize they do it. It's the whole patriotism thing -- "we're the best" is the mantra, and it's repeated so often that it's arrogant, and offensive. Yes, America is damn good, but so are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, the UK, and a whole host of other countries.

Then there is film and television, filled with... crap. To make films more palatable for the American audience, studios are more than willing to modify history so that Americans have all the good bits. For example, in U-571, why, exactly, was it necessary to fictionalize the story so that it was the Americans that captured the Enigma machine, instead of the British? To an American, it's a good story. To a non-American, it's insulting, and yet another feather in the cap of arrogance worn by the US.

Which brings us to (d), the most likely way for people to form an opinion about Americans -- it's what affects them the most. Someone else mentioned "yeah, the US government makes mistakes". They also said they learn from it. I don't think that's the case. I think the government makes mistakes, but they rarely learn from it at all. The current administration sure didn't seem to, anyway. A lot of foreign policy *is* as bullying. Furthermore, it's meddling in places where the US has no business in meddling -- the sovereign affairs of other nations or regions -- Isreal/Palestine, Chile, Vietnam, Panama, Bangladesh, etc. Yes, some of it is with good intentions, but often it's only to protect the interests of American government and corporations, paying the merest of lip service to the humanitarian reasons the intervention is supposedly for. For instance, the democratically president-elect of Chile was bumped off because a) he had socialist leanings, and b) he wanted to improve his nation economically by improving the copper mining industry to reduce dependance on the US. The end result was Pinochet. Of course, I don't need to remind you that American meddling brought about both Saddam *and* Osama. Yes, the US does good things, but it has such a huge history of double dealings and un-fulfilled obligations that it has committed to, that American foreign policy is "difficult" to trust, and the manner it's carried out in (both by current and some past administrations) is nothing short of arrogant. The American people have built up the President into such an icon that to people outside the US, the President *is* America. Sometimes he makes a good representative, but at the moment, he's just an embaressment.

Is it fair that so much of that falls on the shoulders of the American populace? No. Is it right that people have stereotyped Americans? No. But there *is* a reason stereotypes exist, and when three out of the four methods of learning about real Americans is less than exemplary towards Americans in general, they *aren't* going away quick.

My 2 cents.