I was talking to the housemate last night about where he might go on a youthful, traveling venture he is planning. I suggested Americans are most welcome in trashier countries worldwide and especially the trashy countries in Europe. He pointed out there are plenty of slobs in France and Italy, two countries where Americans are certainly not well liked, and I had to concede the point.
I came up with a new theory. People who are nice individually are often are dicks collectively, and vice-versa, dick countries on a global stage tend to have very friendly individuals. Take our own country, the USA. We're a wonderful people, but thanks to the Bush family, our good name has been smeared irretrievably, or at least for this decade. Now take the French: horrible one on one, but clear thinking and even benevolent internationally. The Canadians: often annoying individually, but pleasant as a country. Then consider the Yugoslav nations. We just had another delightful housemate from Bulgaria return home. We were all sad to see him go. These people are both friendly and surprisingly cool and hot, but lets face it, their leaders like to fight. The Brits, in the middle, and in the middle as always.
The mechanism for this relationship between nice people/jerk country is still forthcoming, but we at BFC believe it has something to do with nice people being too nice to prevent the jerk minority from taking over. A desire for power is certainly a key component of the asshole character, whereas nice people are better at working collectively. However, in asshole countries, people rightly assume their countrymen are also assholes, and they are able to cancel out the asshole majority, giving the nice minority a chance to run things. As a tourist, you experience a country as a collection of individuals rather than a group. Therefore, following this logic through, the housemate should go to Myanmar. Bon voyage!
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