I was browsing Facebook and a question was asked “What city jn the world would you never visit?”
A 17 year old goth looking girl from Manchester replied “Any city jn America”
And there are lots of Reddit/quora threads from young Brits who felt the UK didn’t need the US to win WW 2. Monty and Harold Alexander were far more intellectually superior commanders than any US general.
Older folks seem to appreciate the US but not the the young ones. Would love to hear input from Londonguy.
My sense is most Americans don’t have an opinion on Great Britain.
Btw - last time I was in DisneyWorld there were a ton of pasty Brits in weird clothes. Especially at the water parks.
A 17 year old has absolutely zero life experience and what he or she thinks they know is in inverse proportion to what they actually know.
It’s cause of all the brainwashing in schools these days. Doesn’t matter which country, it’s all about spreading hate and division. Then when you include social media you have an echo chamber of stupidity.
Maybe she is just afraid of our special situation with random gun violence.
Who knows
With regards to WW2, they learn it from a different view point from how it is taught in America. Here, we basically learn "France was overrun, UK was under the blitz, and we came in and bailed out their asses." In the UK they learn that fortitude during the blitz, code breaking, and whatever else caused the UK to win the war with a minor assist from America. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
^^ I think you’re correct. I read a decent amount of WW 2 history and a common quote coming out of the UK is that WW 2 was won with “British brains, American money and Russian blood”
The majority opinion seems to be they may not have won the war - but they wouldn’t have lost it either. It would have been a stalemate. They seem to have a sense of invisibility after holding up during the blitz and felt the Royal Navy would have stopped any Channel invasion
British brains, huh? Who was the Supreme Allied Commander? That's right, it was an American, Eisenhower. In North Africa, Rommel ate the Brit's lunch. It was Patton that won it back. Whose dumbass idea was Market Garden? Monty's. Let's be honest, I'm not saying England didn't assist the US-led Allies. However, if not for America, Europe would still be under Nazi rule, and England would have been starved into submission decades ago. The Nazis and Imperial Japan would have squeezed Stalin to death by 1950.
I understand why the UK can't teach their students the truth that we won The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, they backed the wrong horse in the Civil War, and we saved Europe thrice in the 20th century (winning the Cold War is the hat trick). A little gratitude would be nice.
^ Think Britain would have expended the same blood and treasure to help the United States out of a “stalemate” (lol)? Nien. Btw - the country’s official name would be Gross Britannien right now if the U.S. stayed nuetral. We’d be fine though.
Gratitude? Any of you ever loan a relative money? I did. My advice - don’t do it. You do not get gratitude as a result. You get resentment.
Probably the same dynamic with the US/UK
When I lived there in the early 2000s, some people like yanks, some people didn’t. The other Americans all said that during the Bush 2 years people were more aggressively negative about it… bringing it up at parties and pubs, even approaching folks with an American eccentric on the tube. When Obama got elected the Brits were psyched. They had those Hope posters and murals everywhere. I got there just as Obama took office and I got the feeling they were envious that we’d gotten around to having a black president before they got a black pm. I didn’t get much of the aggressive stuff other expats talked about. So, I think it depends on the posture we are putting out in the world at the time, esp foreign wars and similar stuff that’s really high profile.
I don’t think young British people can be regarded as having strong either way about the USA from my interaction with them. I have worked alongside many over the years and I rarely if ever heard any of them saying negative things.
Some of the comments in this thread really made me laugh, especially the one where we’d be called Gross Britannian, that’s such a stupid statement.
The last time we were successfully invaded was 1066, our defences weren’t so strong then.
By the way you didn’t come to our aid, we won the Battle of Britain without any help from the USA. You did come to help liberate Europe and defeat the Germans but please don’t think YOU won the war, the Allied Forces won the war.
As a nation we give thanks to your effort in Europe during WW2. It certainly shortened the war.
There’s good and bad in every race, no race is perfect, not even Americans
@ Motörhead. Goths are a weird lot anyway.
Du bist wahnhaft
^ just kidding - you’re probably right londonguy. I actually am an Anglophile.
It doest matter what side of the pond you’re on, the youth of today are broken.
I do t mind if people hate us but I do mind importing people that hate us to our country. They seek and find a better life they never had and still hate our guts. Deport! Ba bye
Won the Battle of Britain? Nice propaganda phrase, but the truth is that British hid in their basements until the Germans moved on from the air campaign. The fact remains that without American aid, shipping, and our eventual invasion of Europe, the UK would be a giant Nazi penal colony. I guess the British schools really suck at teaching history.
^^^ PMSL.
The south was obviously the better side as far as the civil war. It had nothing to do with slavery, that was clearly a tactic the north implemented to get the slaves to fight the south for them. The south was doing something they clearly had the right to do. As far as slavery is concerned it still exists, private companies/citizens just have to use slaves outside of America, and in America there are plenty of slaves but only the government can use their free labor.
Its not really the job of taxpayer dollars and America to end slavery worldwide. The slaves they had back then were brought in from other countries.
Always got a kick out of the British catch phrase for American military personnel -
"They are overpaid, oversexed and over here!"
@londonguy Great Britain certainly won the Battle of Britain with their radars and Royal Ai Force, but it was made possible by a US policy known as lend lease, which allowed the sale of arms to the allied forces, which mainly flowed through England as most of Europe was occupied by the Germans. As a result of the winning of the Battle of Britain it enabled the the US when it finally entered the War in 1941, to have a decisive base of operations close enough to reach occupied Europe, as a result the American led allies were able to beat the Germans and create a strong western front, giving the Russians breathing room to push the Germans out of their own country. At which point we were able to defeat the Japanese and win the war.
Even Winston Churchill himself acknowledged the Americans were the indispensable nation in winning that war.
Don’t forget that the reason why the peace was successful was because of the American people and the implementation of the Marshall plan.
lg is correct about the Brit’s preserving their country with their own forces, before we were able to enter the war in 1941, but they did have plenty of assistance from Roosevelt and the United States which enabled them to be victorious.
@londonguy
You wrote, and I quote:
“There’s good and bad in every race, no race is perfect, not even Americans”
Do you people consider Americans a race of people?
How do you people in England classify the races and how do you differentiate between race, nationality and ethnicity?
Asking for a friend.
I'll tell you who understands the US and other allies contribution to saving Europe, tge French outside of Paris. Take a Steven Ambrose tour in France (and Britain as well). The French cities thank and honor Americans and their cemeteries are well cared for.
"How do you people in England classify the races and how do you differentiate between race, nationality and ethnicity?"
Well there are Tottenham fans and then there are decent people.
^^^ To clarify, Millwall fans are actually the most odious, but their club is largely irrelevant at the moment. Tottenham just happen to be the most annoying atm b/c they think they are experiencing a Patrick Ewing effect, but their inherent spursiness will ultimately see them to 5th place.
^ Patrick Ewing effect HUH where did that come from?
Too many Europhiles in America give a fuck what other countries think. America has led the world in culture, finance, defense, science, and representative government for decades. We have a quality of life that is the envy of every other country on Earth. Our nation is far from perfect, but it is still the best place live compared to all the rest. Other countries hate us because they are jealous and because we do not apologize for being unique and separate from the rest of the world. This does not obligate us to lower ourselves to their standards. Rather, they should work to raise their nations to match ours.
^^^ Raises interesting points. This is a sweeping generalization and certainly won't apply to a large portion of the UK population, but here goes. The UK (especially England and Whales) views themselves are much closer to the USA than they do the rest of Europe (Ireland is a notable and complex exception to this). Their business leaders and Economics professors frequently refer to their economic system as the American/British economic model. Millennials there grew up watching Friends reruns and Millennials here grew up reading Harry Potter. Brexit and MAGA have extremely close parallels and fueled each otehr, as did Thatcher and Reagan 45 years ago. There are plenty more examples (and plenty of counter examples), but I certainly wouldn't think that the typical British view of America is the same as the typical European, and I think that most Americans would make the same generalizations.
My best guess would be she’s just looking for attention, not so different from some our own knuckleheads. Doubt either group is a majority.