> I've never really had anyone adequetely explain to me with reasoning I can comprehend why the US is seen as such a bully or international tyrant.

> I was actually pretty shocked to find the US President featured so prominently on the news in New Zealand while I was there. I couldn't understand why the average New Zealander would care what was going on in strictly US political circles. But is it *my* fault or the fault of my country that foriegn news services choose to focus on US politics? Sheesh. You'd think all of the media in every country was under US control.

I can think of two reasons why the US is seen this way. First of all, the US is one of the countries which *can* have a significant effect on the world if it chooses to do so -- in military, economic or any other terms. I don't know if/how this affects other powerful countries, but from the viewpoint of a small and not tremendously globally significant country, that is a very big factor in how the US is perceived. Major US decisions, scandals, elections, wars and so on naturally get news coverage here, because all of those things are important to the world in general. I think it's true to say that the average NZer doesn't give a damn what goes on in US political circles, but if anything major happens there, yes, it does affect us and the rest of the world, and we want to know about it.

That guy you mentioned, who was shocked that his friends could only name the heads of state of a few countries who are in the news a lot, is just looking around for things to get angry about. I consider myself quite well educated and I take an interest in current events, but I couldn't name the head of state of, say, Zimbabwe or Poland or the Philippines. I don't even know if those places have presidents, prime ministers, rajahs, kings or Supreme Dictators. Of *course* most people only know about the countries which either are in the news a lot, or which interest them personally for other reasons. You can't spend your life memorising facts about every country in the world.

The second factor in how the US gets perceived overseas, I think, is from the spread of US culture. Or whatever you want to call things like Hollywood movies, McDonalds outlets, and the whole glorious spectrum of mass consumer culture. When you see Polynesian kids trying to make themselves look, talk and act as much like black American hip-hop stars as humanly possible, in a country where they'll probably never even *see* a black person in their whole life -- and if they do, he's more likely to be from Somalia or Transvaal than New York -- of course their parents who grew up with the traditional culture are going to feel threatened and sidelined. In a lot of countries, people can see their own culture being pushed aside or changed by global culture, which, rightly or wrongly, is identified mostly as emanating from America.

Just to reassure you that it isn't all about America, in NZ we have the same level of conservative cultural fear of Japanese and Chinese influences, because immigration and tourism from Asia is a huge factor in our society these days. If you believe what people write in letters to the editor, it takes a long walk in a crowded place to see anything that isn't the DIRECT EVIL INFLUENCE of either Hollywood or Hong Kong.

Resentment towards a country is quite a natural reaction from people who are having their way of life changed from what they grew up with (and which they therefore feel justified in thinking of as the natural, rightful state of things forever). For their children and grandchildren, though, it will just be the way things are. It'll be part of *their* culture, not somebody else's. After a couple of years of assimilation, the USA wouldn't be able to recognise its cultural exports anyway, after they've been filtered through the local culture and turned into something unique to that country.

Brunnen-"by that time, of course, those kids will be 40 and griping about how the latest fad from overseas is destroying THEIR kids' eternal and changeless cultural identity"G