Why is it that they hate us so much?

That's a question I've heard a lot of times over the last 10 years, ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and it's one that has been on my mind since the news about Osama bin Laden came in late last evening.

<em>They hate us because of our freedoms.</em>

I'm sure we have all heard that one, and I imagine we've heard the reason that can be summed up in what basketball player Wilt Chamberlain said about the way people viewed him.

<em>Nobody loves Goliath.</em>

I don't believe the first one at all -- it's just mindless national chauvinism -- but I think there probably is some truth to the second one.

But let me posit a third reason that probably encompasses both of the first two and adds a little more.

<em>We turn everything we touch into crap these days, and we're so big we turn everybody else's culture into crap too.</em>

Comedian Patton Oswalt said it perfectly when he said America was like a giant retarded trust fund baby with nuclear weapons. If we want Disney World in France, France had damn well better build a Disney World. Whether they want it or not.

When I lived in Austria in 1977, it was a really big deal when Vienna -- a city with nearly 2 million people -- got its first McDonald's. Three years ago I visited Beijing and there were American fast food outlets all over the place.

A couple of years ago, some politicians were talking about progress in American Samoa. They agreed that Samoans were becoming mature enough and sophisticated enough economically to join the modern consumer society.

Oh, joy. Kiss Samoa goodbye.

[caption id="attachment_1090" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Our new capitol"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/mall_of_america.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1090" title="mall_of_america" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/mall_of_america-300x183.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="183" /></a>[/caption]

When did we become a society that started judging men and women by what they owned instead of what they believed or what they accomplished? When did we start measuring everything by money?

<em>Greed is good.</em>

Not really, although the argument that greed makes people work harder is an understandable one. The problem is that the highest paying jobs of all these days don't make anything or create art. They just move money around. As Tom Wolfe had his character Sherman McCoy explain in "The Bonfire of the Vanities," his job was to help people bake a cake, and his pay was a few crumbs that fell off when the cake was sold.

Great book, crummy movie.

Which brings us to our culture. Go anywhere in the world these days and you'll find American movies, American television, American music, and let me clue you in. We're not talking about "Casablanca," "I Love Lucy" or Cole Porter. When it comes to movies in particular, studios have decided that what sells worldwide is action movies. So the world sees us at our worst -- heads exploding, nude bodies, plots thinner than tissue paper and actors that won't make anyone forget, heck, even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When's the last time you saw an American movie that uplifted you or taught you something? Or a television show that didn't push the envelope for smut? Or music you could sing along with ... or dance to?

You'll note I haven't even mentioned books.

We pretty much don't do books anymore.

If Hollywood made "Gone With the Wind" today, Scarlett would have a nude scene in the first 20 minutes, Ashley would be a closeted homosexual and Rhett would teach us the joys of miscegenation. Was "Casablanca" a more limited film because Bogey couldn't call Major Strasser a cocksucker? Were we disappointed that "The Wizard of Oz" didn't include Dorothy realizing that she was becoming a woman?

Do you see my point? I hope so, because it's not a particularly subtle one. You go to the movies these days and you leave feeling slimy. Imagine how someone who didn't grow up in our culture feels when they're first exposed to it.

We've come a long way from Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington to that Mapplethorpe guy shoving a bullwhip up some guy's rectum and taking pictures of it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not for burkas. Hell, I think even our own Bible-thumpers go too far. But if you're wondering why our murder rate is so high and you want a reason for it other than guns, you might look at the fact that we seem to be running a national experiment to see just how much we can overload people's senses.

Oscar Wilde once said that a cynic was someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. It seems to me we're a long way down that particular highway. It's probably a cheap shot after all this time to pick on George W. Bush, but I'll never forget that after September 2001 and the attacks, he urged us to get back to normal.

Our president told us to go shopping.

I think I know why they hate us so much.

I think all you need to do is look at how many countries don't have Walmart, or McDonald's or KFC or a h