Britons tire of cruel, vulgar US: poll

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A few comments on this thread. First, the comments about Bush's intelligence. Foolish people judge intelligence by fluent speech (or fluent writing, as I have witnessed on this site, including my own). I have known may silver tongued orators with lead (the metal) brains. Take for instance, the Hollywood crowd who like to boast fluently about their knowledge when they don't have enough combined education, or brains, to fill a bucket. On the other hand, I have known brilliant people who could hardly put two words together. George Bush scored higher on the IQ test administered by the military than John Kerry (no big deal however). George Bush has an MBA which is probably more education than 99% of his critics who says he is not smart. George Bush flew F-102s in the Air Force. You have to be quick witted and make sound decisions to fly a high performance aircraft. These traits are regularly tested in-depth by the military. In 1969 (one year after Bush), when I applied to the Air Force for pilot training, I was told that, because of the quantity of applications for pilot training during draft years, the Air Force only took applicants in the top 5% of IQ test scores. Top 5% of college graduates! While Bush entered pilot training through the National Guard, the standards were still quite high and he still had to compete with the regular Air Force inductees. As president, after we were brutally attacked, he looked at the data that was presented to him by the world, and arrived at a blatantly obvious (I can but won't expand on) conclusion that happened to be against the political mainstream ostrich society (keep your head in the sand). As for Iraq, yes, there were many mistakes. Only idiots think that wars don't generate mistakes by the most brilliant leaders. I could probably argue that Bush and his team have generated fewer mistakes in a war as complex as this one, than any other leader in a war in the last 200 years (remember that mistakes by winners are soon erased). And, Iraq still has the possibility of turning out to be one of the most significant positive events in the 21st century. He is a man who sticks by his friends, makes decisions and sticks to them as long as they make sense to him and he does what he says, a rarity for politicians. I suspect there are few great leader who have not had these characteristics. The left leaning media in our country and across the world do not like his conservative, value-base leadership and conscientiously makes every effort to put him in a bad light.

As for the polls.

Polls, like statistics, tend to reflect the opinon of those doing the polling and statistical analysis.

I have no defence for loud mouth Americans. They are indeed spoiled and disgraceful.

From my experience and what I have heard, Europeans have been very friendly to Americans, even the French. Hopefully, that attitude is returned.

I'll try not to stereotype. England is a great place full of great people. The kind of people that can be depended upon. We are fortunate to have them as friends. And we would be wise to nourish that friendship.

As for the EU (not including England). To me they seem leaderless with no direction. They would perfer to ignore problems than address them. They also are willing to let the US lead in facing the threats to society, but with lots of complaints. They ARE NOT willing to spend the money necessary to provide a defense that would allow them to lead. In essence, they complain about the US, but don't want to make the sacrifices necessary for the US to reduce its military influence in the world. And it appears that some had dirty hands when it came to dealing with Saddam.

Economically, they complain that the US is materialistic, but, they sure do like the fact we buy their products and would complain if we didn't.

They complain about our violence (very bad indeed, but a mixture of diverse cultures and significant individual freedoms can tend to allow violence) and our self-centered dispicable society (we probably give more aid than most nations per capita, but we certainly use too much oil), but if the world suddenly opened all the borders to free immigration, who would dare honestly answer where the vast majority would go (probably the same place they are trying to go now)??

While I think Bush's forgein policy on terror is outstanding (Iraq is like a protected knight on the opponents side of the board which effectively prevents his offense-for those of you who play chess) I am unhappy about our border security and lack of a strong program to terminate oil imports, which I believe is our biggest security risk.

We all have to remember that we all want the same thing, freedom and protection from those who would harm us in order to force their way of life on us. We may have different ideas about how to do that, but we should not lose sight of who our enemy is.

Sorry for the novel. I just had a few things to say. I think Bush has gotten a bum rap from the media and a lot of people have bought into it.
 
appreciate your honest candor.

let me make something clear which I think can be honored and agreed upon in this paged thread. the Media is controlling and will way your decision making, it did the time of Vietnam and ever more so now. Do not be delusional, make the decisions based on what you know is right in your heart ......

E ♫
 
Great post davparlr!!! Like I told an acquaintance - in 1968 you had a flight training slot available. Would you take it or just wait for your number to come up???? And to those bone heads who think his old man pull strings for him, well maybe, but not when it comes to earning those wings. All the money in the world doesn't buy you military aviator's wings, and if it did the recipient wouldn't live to see 100 hours flight time wearing them....
 
Its amazing that while the EU champions "human rights", only are those rights truely enshrined in our constitution and guarented by "God".

The state supported media in Europe reflects what the govt wants the people to know, whether by plan or not. I can look back at the 70's and only wish we had an internet and fox news that was capable of carrying an alternative view.

If there is one sterotype I have of Europeans in general, is they are so condesending know it all's that think all Americans are dumb. I've had a few lively debates in HK, Jakarta, Moscow, Martinique, Mexico City and Singapore to conform my suspicions.
 
FLYBOYJ said:
Great post davparlr!!! Like I told an acquaintance - in 1968 you had a flight training slot available. Would you take it or just wait for your number to come up???? And to those bone heads who think his old man pull strings for him, well maybe, but not when it comes to earning those wings. All the money in the world doesn't buy you military aviator's wings, and if it did the recipient wouldn't live to see 100 hours flight time wearing them....

There were several National Guard in our Flight Training class. Most of us felt that they, because the Guard at that time was hard to get into, knew someone. Well, that's life, isn't it. We didn't care as long as they performed and I can assure you they weren't coddled. They knew what planes they would get. Some were good, F-106s, some not so good, KC-97. They were all part of the team. The only student I saw coddled was an Afganistani whos father was the chief of the Royal Afganistan AF. It took him two years (nomal is one year) to get through. They had to let him fly a round robin solo so they put an instruction solo ahead of him and one behind and escorted him around the flight patch. He finally graduated and went on to fly.......F-104s!!!! He probably ended up in a whole somewhere.
 
davparlr said:
There were several National Guard in our Flight Training class. Most of us felt that they, because the Guard at that time was hard to get into, knew someone. Well, that's life, isn't it. We didn't care as long as they performed and I can assure you they weren't coddled. They knew what planes they would get. Some were good, F-106s, some not so good, KC-97. They were all part of the team. The only student I saw coddled was an Afganistani whos father was the chief of the Royal Afganistan AF. It took him two years (nomal is one year) to get through. They had to let him fly a round robin solo so they put an instruction solo ahead of him and one behind and escorted him around the flight patch. He finally graduated and went on to fly.......F-104s!!!! He probably ended up in a whole somewhere.
It's funny, when I was in the Naval Reserve I had to work harder and better than the Regs because they thought I was some kind of burger flipper in my full time job. Sometimes I had 2x the experience of my maintenance chiefs...
 
No wonder they got the idea all Americans were dumb if they talked to you syscom.
 
Nevermind. You do realise most of the places you listed are not in Europe, don't you?
 
Well basically he means with your biased loud mouthed and know it all opinions that you have, it is no wonder that they dont think very highly of you, and ofcourse they make stereotypes which leads them to think all are that way.

Ill be honest, for the most part I agreed with a lot of that novel post up there, but there are some things that I can not agree with and I think that comes from Americans making stereotypes about Europeans on subjects that they do not know about or care to understand becuase it is not American.

Now having said that everyone makes stereotypes. The Europeans of the Americans, the Germans of the French, The British of the French, the Northern US of the Southern US and back and forth.

Is the majority of it true? No, but that is life.
 
I live in a city of 75000 that gets about 22 million visitors a year and coupled with the fact I live right on the border I feel qualified to make a comment Americans are 99% awesome people the same percentage as every other nationality the fact that they have verylittle knowledge about the world outside the US which is the fault of the US media and educational systems which are inward looking is what causes them the bad image the worst tourists in case anybody cares are the people from Israel very demanding and rude . One thing that makes the young americans look bad is that they come here because the drinking age is 18 and they tend to get a little over amped when they drink Canadian beer
 
pbfoot said:
One thing that makes the young americans look bad is that they come here because the drinking age is 18
I thought it was 19. In any event, you're right. The vast majority of Americans are fine folks. I've met some wonderful people over the years, young and old. Young drunk American kids are no worse than young drunk kids from anywhere. They like to party it up, and sometimes get a little, shall we say, rambunctious. As long as they don't start destroying everything in sight or harassing everybody, they're OK in my book.
 
I said most of the places you listed weren't in Europe. That implies that at least some of the places are in Europe, syscom. You can't get much further from Europe than Singapore.
 
DerAdlerIstGelandet said:
, but there are some things that I can not agree with and I think that comes from Americans making stereotypes about Europeans on subjects that they do not know about or care to understand becuase it is not American.

Now having said that everyone makes stereotypes. The Europeans of the Americans, the Germans of the French, The British of the French, the Northern US of the Southern US and back and forth.

Is the majority of it true? No, but that is life.

Help me understand. And for your information I hold no grudges against those dam carpetbagging Yankees!!

PBFoot says "world outside the US which is the fault of the US media and educational systems". Typically we take a class in US history and one in World history. Are you implying that our world history courses are slanted (I'm sure it is) but that Canadian world history is not? What would you suggest would improve our understanding?

Your comments were appreciated.

We all have preceptions base on our media, the Germans are tree huggers with a few neo-nazis and anarchist, the Brits are all drunken soccer fans (this may be true), and Canadians all wear red suits and ride horses and have a dog (actually the Canadians have contributed so much to our culture that it is hard to think of them as anything but brothers and sisters.) The truth is, that the news always represents the worst.
 
I have quite a few American friends, of all ages. And the more intelligent ones do inform that their World History class is quite pointless and bias. They have also griped about the American History class, one friend informed that she had to take it upon herself to learn about the American Revolution. A lot of Americans would find the truth quite shocking, as she did. But her intelligence, luckily, was shrouded by patriotic bias. The funny thing is, I've never known anyone more loving of their nation.

And 90% of the British are just loud-mouthed idiotic hooligans.
 

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