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Boors, all
by orfanum on Sun 2nd Dec 2012 08:07 UTC
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Just because the Dutch can act like peasants to foreigners (I have been told by other countries' folks that the English and Dutch are quite similar, except the Dutch are even more reserved, socially judgemental and punctilious) does not mean that Americans are any less boorish in their own way.

I deal with quite a few Americans, and they, like the English (of which I am one) can be very polite while still getting exactly what they want. Yes, Americans are outwardly friendly and well-mannered but they are at the same time (in general) bumptious, overbearing, loud, arrogant, incapable of listening, unbending, blinkered and culturally ignorant. The US *is* the world, really, by and large. I once encountered in Germany the biggest *rse it has been my misfortune to have had to spend time with: an American exchange student. Apparently (he reported, guileless seemingly and all smiles) his tutor had informed him that Europeans would simply love him because he was from California. That was his carte blanche. He took heed of nobody's advice about nuancing his outrageously high-octane 'dude' behaviour on account of local sensibilities, or even those of the group he was in.

As I say, we English are no better. Sure, we have 'manners' but we are also cold, unfeeling, heartless, two-faced Anglo-Saxon b*st*rds exactly when it suits us.

I find that it's not pessimism that's not deep (in the West) but politeness itself.

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