A perfect storm of Christian and American arrogance.
Please do review the guidelines and follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I guess you make a good point. After all, the missionaries who converted indigenous populations all over the world were all from the USA. Oh wait, no. The vast majority of the Christian missions were founded by Europeans. Arabs converted millions to Islam hundreds of years ago.
But yeah, they were all infected with American arrogance.
For an example of the US evangelical effect on the third world: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/how-uganda-w...
Is it arrogance? Is it American arrogance more specifically?
As someone who is borderline atheist, but grew up in a religious household, I don't think it's arrogance of any form. I think that these people truly believe that they are saving people from a bad afterlife. You can certainly call that delusional. Just not sure it's arrogance.
Edit: "some" americans of course.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/09/10/right-wi...
Brexit, chemnitz riots - those are all American...
As an American who has lived on 4 continents, I can confirm that American tourists quite often live up to the stereotype. I have a variety of painful memories of times I've had to intervene and explain things and/or translate for aggressively clueless Americans. Many travelers are great, of course. But I still think the stereotype is justified.
It makes sense, I guess. We grow up in a country big enough that we can travel widely without learning another language or learning much about dealing with different customs. And our wealth and our culture of American exceptionalism make it easy for us to spin the globe, plop a finger down, and expect that we can go there and do as we please. Often it works, even if it does rub the locals the wrong way. And sometimes, as here, it doesn't work at all.
It is, but in my experience (cruise from Venice -> Greece and back last summer) that stereotype applies to every culture. Americans just happen to be louder at it.
He made a statement that is a sweeping generalization that isn't even provable.
Your anecdotal experiences on 4 continents are again, just that. Anecdotes. The American travelers you didn't notice, and therefore don't remember, aren't included in your confirmation bias fueled reasoning.
That includes you, of course. What studies do you have that show that demanding proof of causality in casual conversation is effective in improving the discourse? None, I'm guessing. But here you are doing it.
But the phrase "American exceptionalism" is a thing for a reason. And if other societies through history may also have indulged in similar thinking, it functions more to demonstrate how a comparable place in the world can present comparable temptations more than it serves to refute the existence or problems of exceptionalist thinking among Americans.
Religious fervor may, of course, play a greater role (something I'm personally acquainted with as someone who was also involved in evangelism once). The combination of background cultural exceptionalism doesn't help, though.
If you see a comment that attacks any individual or group, the best thing to do is downvote it, flag it, and move on.
As you can see, now that I've noticed the thread and had a chance to moderate it, the evidence shows the opposite.
You've been here long enough that I wish you would be more charitable. You've made such comments before. I wouldn't ban someone just for saying false or mean things about HN moderation, but it's still a bummer. Especially since, if you'd take a longer and fairer look at what we do, you would know that it's not true.
I said something admittedly nasty about Mao's policies a couple of months ago, and was threatened with banning due to "borderline nationalistic trolling". Fair enough.
It sure doesn't seem to be enforced in an objective fashion though. More likely, it appears to be more in line with the current fashion of SV: Never discriminate, unless it's against a group viewed as being powerful and bad by West Coast Americans, in which case it's ok. American? That's definitely a way to be cool and anti-imperialist/colonialist. Christians? Even better. Because of all of the regressive religions which preach hate towards gays and deny evolution, Christianity is the one practiced by white people from Alabama, and therefore it's funny and useful to attack it. If this gentleman were an Islamic missionary from Egypt, the above comment probably would never have been made, and if it had, would be removed, with good reason.
All: please help with this by letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com when you see an egregious comment on the site that hasn't been flagged or moderated yet. We can't read all the comments, but we do read all the emails.
My advice would be to just ignore it and flag rule violations, in my admittedly brief HN career doing anything else has never helped me nor anyone I'm replying to.