An American Hallmark

Posted on June 14, 2009 in Foreign Relations

I found the reaction of Americans to events in Iran interesting: they seemed sick and hurt that the election had not gone the way that their prognosticators had predicted. “Had to be rigged!” Laughably one of them told me that I didn’t appreciate nuances in the Iranian people — mostly just to say it, I guess. (I have had three Iranian students of differing backgrounds and views plus many friends over the years.) Americans read their own newspapers, watch their own television for information about the rest of the world. They want the world to like them. When it doesn’t, they assume that the results were fixed, that people just aren’t getting the information they need to be converted ((It never occurs to them that maybe the people over there are receiving information that we aren’t getting here? Oh, they’ll say, but it is always just propaganda.)) ((I just got reminded of this story. A Friend (as in Quaker) I know was living down in Nicaragua at the time of the Sandinistas. An American peace delegation happened to be visiting on a day when they were holding a barrio meeting. After watching the back and forth for a few hours, an American turned to the Friend and asked her “Did they just do this because we are here?” When we go abroad or watch from our television chairs, it’s the same thing: the world is putting on the show for us. That is why we keep calling some situations wrong.)) . Both conservatives and liberals do this. It’s an American hallmark.