10 Things You Didn't Know About America/Americans

10. America is a Free Country
Perhaps you knew, but it's easy to forget just how much freedom you actually get. Remember when the Clinton administration was unable to shut down whitehouse.gov's "sister" site? Ever buy a banned book from the American Library Association? Or notice a non-profit organization receive harsh criticism for requiring its member to have a religion -any religion at all- and think about all the countries that revoke your citizenship if you don't sponsor the state religion?

9. The Pursuit of Happiness...
I heard something about "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property" the other day, which reminds me: My third-favorite thing about America is that you can do almost anything that tickles your fancy. Name your child after an apple, join a protest every weekend, or get whatever tattooed wherever. Government officials may doubt the sanity of people who do these things, but they rarely stop you from doing your own thing. And if your state doesn't allow it, just go find one that does!

8. America is Safer (and Less Safe) Than You Think
Living in Singapore, I find people amazed when I describe DC as "really nice, but don't wander through some parts." Are they safety-crazy? Am I really scared when I visit our nation's capitol? Did I spell capitol right? (Always mess that one up...) Students were robbed at my alma mater, I think at knife point, and we were always reading about shootings in the paper. But I never felt unsafe. That being said, coming to Singapore has taught me just how much progress we could make, if we made it our priority. America's a civil place, but (and I say this as a neutral observer) some countries have us totally beat in that regard.

7. America is Brimming with Indie Goodness
American youth have talent, and they have the drive to show others their skills. I'm talking music and movies, specifically, but I'm sure there are other avenues of skill which I'm unaware of. The point is, if you told me to make a playlist of all local stuff, I could get you some really good songs. This is my second-favorite thing about America.

6. Americans are Ignorant
While performing in San Franciso, Eddie Izzard made a joke about General Lafayette, adding "You don't know who he is, do you?" after scattered laughter. "Let's see... was it the Spanish-American war? The French-Bananna war? No! He was a Revolutionary War hero, hung out with Washington... ah, forget it."
Still, I bet a lot of you know about Lafayette. Mostly, Americans are just bad at the foreign stuff. When I said "Singapore" in #8, did you know where that was? Can you name 10 countries in Africa? How about South America? Do you know what the only real communist country left in Asia is? Do you know what Europeans think about the EU Constitution? Do you know what insurgencies the US has funded over the past few decades? (Did you know we funded insurgencies?) Do you remember what Manifest Destiny was from History class, and can you name a few countries that think the same way nowadays as we did then? Do you have any Muslim friends?

5. America is Not Racist
Please, please. Of course you can find racism in America. But you have the option of not being racist. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that racism is a very big part of one's daily life in some countries. Consider Malaysia, a fairly modern place that has laws such as "10% of all jobs must go to natives & Malays." Let me stress that this policy separates citizens into "bumiputra" and "non-bumiputra" --there's no denying it's a racist policy. Now, I know the history & justification behind this law, and a glance at my passport will show you just how much I love Malaysia in spite of it. You can have a great country with racist laws. But sit back every once in a while and appreciate just how far America has come in this regard. Saying "I think we should reserve 10% of jobs for the majority race" just isn't acceptable anymore.

4. Americans Speak a Beautiful Language
I was just reading an article in the GNU archives which complained about people programming:

if (n == 1) printf ("%d file deleted", n);
else printf ("%d files deleted", n);

Basically, they're saying that this doesn't help pluralization if the native language has multiple levels of plural nouns (like in Polish). What I'm getting at, through very round-about means, is that English has a lot of rules and exceptions. It's complex. You might think that's a bad thing (but you already know English, so stop complaining!) but where you see "difficult to learn", I see "expressive". English is a beautiful language to talk in. These rules and exceptions to rules present a high-frequency speech-scape which lets you play word games and have fun. I can imagine that sarcasm started this way. (But no-one ever uses that, of course.)
Forgive me if I'm partial to English; the real reason I prefer it the most is its lack of tones. I'm drowning in tones a bit; they make songs difficult to sing, and make casual conversation sound like an MC is joining your friends on his day off.

3. America Has Good Movies
I say this coming from the twin perspectives of foreign movies and video games. From a VG perspective, I really respect the film industry for occasionally throwing money at an idea that might work. The classic example is Waterworld, which bombed terribly, but at least they tried. Lord of the Rings was a high-budget trilogy that did succeed, even though these kinds of classics-to-film usually fail as well. From the perspective of foreign movies... well, I take it back. I like foreign movies. :)

2. America Is a Good World Leader
People forget this when they criticize what's going on these days. I'm not going to break it down step by step. But I am going to ask you to name a world power that behaved better, at the height of their power, then we are acting now. Rome's a good contender, except that their approach to bettering the world was to conquer it, because "everyone wants to be Roman". Considering that power corrupts, and considering that most politics in America focuses inwards, I'd give us a silver star.

1. Americans Won't Listen to an American not in America
Most of you will disagree with most of this article, and some will eagerly disregard all of it. I feel that it's mostly good, keen observation and reason, but Americans have a tendency to zone out at the phrase "America is...", especially if it's coming from someone who's not in the country. (Hey! Wake up!) This is, surprisingly, my number one favorite thing about Americans. Because I'll say "America's not racist" and you'll all say "What is he talking about! It's terribly racist!" and slowly but surely the country's racism will recede. Some of you will gladly point out the atrocities America has committed internationally, and the spotlight will be on these things, instead of resting on the laurels that we're "not the worst" world power. And this, in my opinion, is what society's all about.