Why is it considered uncultured to be proudly American?

Post Reply New Topic

I agree with you about 90% on this, here is where I disagree. When refugees come from 3rd world countries where people s**t in the streets to the USA, their cultures, and the foods and cooking styles become a part of American cooking. Here's a few examples.

Pizza. Brought here by poor Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century. They were looked upon as unlikely to assimilate to American culture, and their food ws strange. Nowadays, Nearly everybody eats Pizza, and spaghetti with meatballs, or some sort of pasta. --These are just as American now as cheeseburgerss and Apple pie.

Chinese food. When the Chinese started coming here in the 19th century, they brought their food with them. Nowadays, it's quite common to have a wok and to do stir fries. That being said, with the recent wave of Chinese immigration from the past 40 or so years, it's now possible to forego the dreaded 'happy family' at dodgy chinese restaurants, and get real regional chinese cooking such as ripped cold szechuan noodles in pepper sauce, as well as true Manchu,(north Chinese mongolian) and Uigur, (a Turkic people that live in western China) cuisine, but only if you live in a place where a lot of them have settled.

Same thing with Mexican food. No longer do you have to worry about the gringo-ised hard shell tacos, with hamburger fried with chili powder and way too much cumin, with shredded lettuce and vinyl yellow pasturised process 'cheese', billing itseld as 'Mexican' You can get real mexican food in many differant regional varieties. Stuff like Mole Negro, Mole Verde, Caldo de Rez, and softshell tacos Al Pastor and Barbacoa served with onions, cilantro and lime wedges, as well as Ceviche, and real Tamales that do NOT come in a can.

Also, you can get African stuff such as Beef Suqqar and Sambusas (Somali food is similar to Indian food, but with the addition of Beef). as well as curried goat with basamati rice.

Liberal? Not exactly. Hate Cheeseburgers, Barbeque, and Apple pie? Of course not. I like cheese burgers a lot (5 guyss!! !) I want my BBQ done with proper mustard sauce, and my apple pie with good chunk of Cabot hunters sharp cheddar.

All the above stuff that I've mentioned hasn't changed my love of American food, it's just expanded my views of what American food is, as we are for the most part a nation of immigrants and refugees leaving the 'old countries' behind for a place where we can succeed.

Here's a photo of Jackie Hites (local-ish to me) true '100 mile' Mustard based BBQ. Yes, it's cooked over a real bbq pit with oak and pecan for hours, none of the propane or natural gas nonsense.


As well as a side of Hash and Rice from a place called Shealy's, which is a few blocks away from Jackie Hites and is his main competitor, which is apparently a thing that is alien to people in North Carolina, Most of Georgia, and other southern states further away. --Yeah, it looks like rice covered with diarrheic babyshit, but damn is it tasty.

You elected not to leave it alone on page 2 of this thread with this:


Report me?
Isn't that kind of like alerting the fire department of a fire when you're the arsonist?

BBQ beans go good with BBQ'd meat, too.

Too bad WP doesn't have a true killfile function like most Usenet readers. You, and a few other people would be permanent residents.

Yup. As does Macaroni and Cheese, butter beans, mustard greens and hot vinegar, hush puppies, cole slaw, potato salad, well done fresh grean beans cooked with country ham or fatback, and fresh, creamed white sweet corn and sweet potato bread, washed down with sweet tea.

All choice sides.Maybe a few slices of homegrown tomatoes along with the rest of the feast.
I make my own BBQ beans with all the good stuff like molasses and bacon.
Don't forget a few buckets of ice cold beer along with the sweet tea and Co'cola.

It's a stigma because too many jingoistic right-wing war hawks with blind "love it or leave it" attitudes ruined it for the rest of us.

I think this is worded very well.

My impression of the US, from over here in the UK (and yes, it's a generalisation) is that America is like a blinkered teenager at a party. He genuinely thinks that he's funny, or that he's cool, or that other people look up to him and admire him, when in reality they're all laughing at him behind his back because he's not any of the things he thinks he is. Or, at the very least, everyone is looking at him wondering why he thinks he's such a big deal.

And it's all very well and good being, let's be honest, not particularly impressive, as long as you fly under the radar a bit. Once you go around bragging about how great you are, people will be all too aware that you're not. If you just kept quiet about your perceived greatness, people would leave you to it.

But, that's an outsider perspective and I don't know about American people that consider patriotism 'uncultured', of course.

Yes--I think at least some of those attitudes sometimes go hand-in-hand with people who tend to be less educated, have less experience or interaction with people from other cultures/nations/etc., and come from more conservative, fundamentalist backgrounds. The "love it or leave it" mindset blends well with an all-or-nothing viewpoint of almost everything. It's a sort of fanaticism that I can say I've seen up close with my own eyes, and one that I avoid to preserve my own peace of mind.

Their high volume and neon visibility does make it hard to be a proud American without being mistaken for one of those extremists, but then, I'm definitely not proud of everything American, so I guess I may not be one of them in the first place!

I appreciate your input and the fact that you realize we're not all like that--in fact, a lot of us aren't, though the next four years (at least) will make it much harder to prove.

Unchecked pride: I think that the "ugly American" is akin to the stereotypical "snobby Brit."

America is not the only country with religious freedom.

While I can't quite fathom the number of people who get excited over a country because they happened to have been born there I'm also baffled by the amount of anti-American sentiment coming from your own country.

I've never heard any nationality badmouth America more than Americans themselves.

Like with anything in life it can be overdone, but that is a good thing. It means those Americans have are not satisfied, and have high expectations and standards.

And a lot (probably most) of them are non-earners, to put it as politely as I care to, that think America is too austere and doesn't give away enough free stuff to their liking.

But France is kind of like that. Many other countries have that attitude as well. In fact, Americans in general, are more open to outsiders. Provided they don't kill us all and are coming here legally....