The World According To Americans 2012 Summary

America is commonly characterized as the greatest country in the world, the glorious “land of the free and the home of the brave”, “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. This idealization of the American identity conveniently focuses on what people want to hear and blurs out most everything else. In reality, Americans do not live up to the dreamscape created by our views, and we never really have. America is no longer characterized by its freedom and democracy, nearly every first world country can afford that luxury. Nor are we set apart by the great opportunities given to our people, for those are far from universal. We aren’t equal, we aren’t unified, we aren’t kinder or smarter or richer than any other country across the board. It’s easy to find the shortcomings of American culture, all the things we aren’t, but the things we are have proven to be more elusive. First, let’s examine the nots.

The author directs a scathing degree of indignation toward the blinded American people and, equally, the evil celebrities who are misleading them, while letting the root of the problem slip right between his accusatory fingers. He rattles off half a page of governmental failings that are slowly killing our economy, our families, and our globe at large, and then proceeds to blame the American people for…

Ishmael read does an incredible job of pointing out all possible notions that the people who were here before us are,our cause of success. Reed discusses passionately for the ideas and social behaviors that arrived in the United States of America before and after the first wave of European settlers.

After the collapse of American society, a survivalist group in Idaho takes it upon itself to maintain civility and morality despite the chaotic new world order.

Over and over again, Williams illustrates this theme of “American Exceptionalism.” Throughout the book, there are several occurrences in which the “We are the best, and all that we are doing is of benefit to the world” mentality is shown. On one hand, there is nothing wrong with being proud of roots as an American and believing that America is the greatest country, but on the other hand, using this thought process in in order to legitimize the domination and control of other nations unlike America while preaching one set of values and acting on others, is wrong. We see these actions play out time and time again as America invades and controls other countries “to help” them, however, prohibits the country from experiencing the full advantages of self-determination – a value that America claims to hold i.e. a tragedy of American Diplomacy.

Since its inhabitance, competition and dominance has been a concept that remains prevalent throughout American life. Past ideologies such as Manifest Destiny, Cultural Imperialism, and Ethnocentrism are all practices and beliefs comprising what it means to be American for many citizens, while also continually shaping outside perception of Americans today. On one hand, many countries have and continue to fully embrace American culture, globalization, and the rise of capitalism. In contrast, many countries have and continue to reject America’s stride for world assimilation regarding their ideals and values.

Article Summary: Understanding American Worldview In the article of “Understanding American Worldview,” written by J. La Vella Ingram, discusses about the different types of views and ideologies that are incorporated in America, which could potentially vary from another culture. For instance, some cultures base their lifestyle on the future by remaining productive in the present, instead of focusing on the past. Or, some cultures believe that we should have mastery over nature, and not the other way around, so we may keep advancing in certain fields.

Known in every corner of the world, the United States is retained with admiration in everyone's eyes, recognized for its courtesy, orderliness, continuous prosperity, and viewed as a culture sanctuary. From an outsider’s point of view, the U.S. represents perfection; however, those in its confinement are aware of the cruel reality, perfection is but a myth, and south, located at the border, is Brownsville,Tx, the city that has the capability to shatter the world’s impeccable image of the U.S.

The idealization of a pure culture creates a strong wave of chauvinism. America became the epicenter for the idealized culture to form, but idealization leaves out the human aspect surrounding it. Mukherjee added to this idealization, dreaming, “’America’ in contrast, exists as a myth of democracy and equal opportunity to live by, or as an ideal goal to reach” (Mukherjee 1997, para.1). Mukherjee’s dream is beautiful and what many people desire out of America, however America is not an ideal; it

The article, “We Are All Americans” by Vicente Verdu was about his view of America. He states that in a few years it will be hard to separate what is American and what is not. America’s influence on the world might not be bad but it does hurt the individualism of other countries. He described a school shooting in Germany that was a repeat of what happened in Colorado. He assumes that the model of American life is a “fractal” (Verdu 23). of the many everyday aspects that exist and gets repeated. Verdu concludes that everyone in the world will start to dream the same and will want to have the same destinies.

America today receives harsh comments regarding problems faced throughout the country along with citizens accusing America for foreign affairs. American citizens look past how lucky one is to live in such a country because the main focus seems to revolve around the multiple disputes being faced. D’Souza emphasizes two concepts in which he explains the reasoning for America to be considered perfectly imperfect.

In conclusion, Donald Trump is both charismatic and holds himself in high esteem, he is eager to explain how exceptionally well he did in the election and does this in great length in his speeches. He even has a framed map of the 2016 election results displayed in the White House (Lozada, 2017). In his recent speech in Poland, Trump made reference to the ‘West’ ten times. Beinart (2017) argues that in this context the West is not a geographical term, but a racial and religious one. Trump is unlike his predecessors, who acknowledged that democracy and capitalism were not Western, but the universal aspiration of humankind. Previous leaders of the US discussed globalisation as a process where America improved the world. However, Trump describes globalisation as a process by which the world cheats, weakens and threatens America. His words, ‘The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive’ (Trump, 2017), only makes sense if non-white, non-Christians are seen as invaders. Thus, this implies that anyone in America who is non-white and non-Christian is a threat. Trump, by describing that being Western is the essence to the US’s identity, is defining the US to be in opposition to many of its own people.

America’s foreign policy affects each and every person in the world in terms of prices, taxes, supply of gasoline, and the lives of our soldiers also depends on how we associate with US. This country can bring hope to the lives of the poorest people in the world. It is because of their persona that they are able to respect the lives of others who are not even their own. Most American citizens believe in embracing their values, justice, fairness, democracy, a helping hand when there is need and hard work. Their values are applied from their households, to

“America was conducting business as usual, but others were joining the game.” (Zakaria, 221). All this time we thought we were on top, we were actually slowly becoming less and less of leader and more a bystander as the rest of the world is slowly rising around us. Zakaria shows in that quote that as America has been continuing business like always, and because of this we have failed to realize our standing with the world around us. In the book The Post-American World, Zakaria shows us the challenges that America faces today. I believe the United States is most affected by our ignorance, competition, and worldly participation.

On a November 6th meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Abe, the United States President Donald Trump mentioned that he “never knew we had so many countries” before he became president of the U.S. This humorous display of obliviousness serves as a public continuation of the United States’ proud neglect of geography outside its borders resulting from the lack of geography in public education. U.S. students show mediocre performance in international math, science, and reading tests; however, videos and articles describing episodes where U.S. citizens demonstrate an astute lack of geographical knowledge populate global media. This phenomenon accentuates the negative foreign perception of the U.S.’ self-centeredness and ignorance.