Originally posted by Scootter
Why is so much energy spent on trying to understand the USA and also trying to change us?
I think it's partly because your country has this penchant for bombing places. Since the end of World War 2, every US administration except maybe Carter (can't remember any, anyway) has bombed somebody or another. This sort of thing does tend to draw people's attention and criticism. It's a bit like all the FDBs turning up at the con wearing only lacy G-strings and whining about everyone staring, laughing and being sick.
Also the US is the largest economy in the world (I think this still true - although the current president appears to be trying his hardest to put a stop to this). This gets people's attention too. For eg - the Hong Kong dollar is currently linked within a narrow band to the US dollar - so we're taking a big bath on currency exchange rates with the dollar's current nosedive. The loss of money has also been known to draw attention and criticism from folks.
This is a US board, so the majority of folks are from the US. As many are at great pains to point out, a lot of US people don't care a hoot about the rest of the world, so that leaves very little left to argue about but US stuff. We'd probably criticize other countries more if we thought you'd give a damn - or at least knew where they were.
This complacency for foreign matters, coupled with the habit of bombing foreigners, generally means than any US-foreign interaction that the guys on the board care about enough to argue over often involves places being bombed by the US.
Finally it appears - to me a least - that the BBS is populated by a lot of folks who lean heavily to the right (possibly related to some sort of RSI or something), a lot of the non-US lot are from European and thus tend to be more left leaning - so basically have little to agree with the right-wing US boys.
