A compilation of short stories and articles
To answer the question of why the world hates us, what we need is a straightforward model we can understand. What we have are the New York Yankees.

The United States in the global community is not unlike the Yankees in the baseball community, and it is a fortunate coincidence that they are nicknamed Yankees, a derogatory term for Americans, and that their logo has Uncle Sam’s hat supported by a bat, likely a Rawlings Big Stick. Unless you are a Yankees fan, you hate the Yankees. Here is the analogy to the United States:

The Yankees dominate the economic landscape of baseball. They use their superior wealth and enormous media base to buy the best team possible. Anyone who goes to play for the Yankees strikes it rich in contracts and endorsements and has his superior, glorious lifestyle mass marketed/crammed down the throats of the rest of the baseball world.

Small market teams who cannot compete financially are exploited for their superstars and have their development programs stripped for an often unfair amount of compensation, which the poorer teams cannot turn down if they expect to stay in business.

Fans and supporters of the Yankees are arrogant. They look down their noses at other teams and feel themselves absolutely superior, often regarding other markets as backwater villages run by local boobs. Need proof? Listen to New York based sports-talk radio for five minutes (which can be heard in any market). Yankees fans pop up in every city and when you see one in your town you sneer at them for being a front running turncoat. They are the Al Hurra’s (the US sponsored Arab TV station) of the baseball world; the legitimacy of the argument doesn’t matter, because conversion to an outside force is not an option.

Worst of all, the Yankees act in their own self-interest and hardly ever for the good of the game. The mercenary based arms-race that baseball has become is bad for the game. It condemns 85 percent of baseball to destitute and hopelessness. The Yankees ask the other major league teams to be content with the occasional second place finish, a .500 record or a lucky trip to the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Yankees feel entitled to World Championships.

The Yankees feel they deserve, every year, that which 90 percent of baseball fans dream about and most have never seen in their lifetimes.

When the Yankees lose, they believe that they lost, not that the other team won, because it is inconceivable to Yankees fans that anyone could be better than them, in any moment, at anything. If a World Championship is not secured, the Yankees spend even more money the next season, plunder even smaller market teams and send out word that failure will no longer be tolerated when they have no idea of what true failure means; they mock the whole of the baseball community.

After all of this, they think everyone hates them because of jealousy, as opposed to their basic disregard for the global welfare of the game, or their absurd sense of entitlement.

How to change this? Conduct actions with grace, and end the narcissistic tendency to view the rest of the community as a means to support yourself. Taking without giving is not OK just because you can. No one likes those who feel entitled to greatness. Gain some perspective and realize that, if you trumpet that your standard of failure is achieving something most cannot even begin to aspire to, then you are effectively sending out the message to others that they are beyond worthless. Realize that our fate is intertwined with the community and that losses here and there will be beneficial in the long run.

Whatever the solution is, we need to figure it out quick because right now we are all the New York Yankees, and I hate wearing pinstripes.

Comments
on Dec 02, 2004
Nicely done.
on Dec 03, 2004
F*** You. Go Yankees! Go USA!
on Dec 03, 2004
Damn Alex, that's harsh.

I kinda liked the metaphor myself. A lot of the world sees us in this way. We are a bit arrogant at times. We do inflict our will on the rest of the world at times. But yet we get offended if someone calls BS on us.

Let's look at it a different way for a sec ( sorry to hijack here)

Say The US and....Oh i don't know...Switzerland switched places in the world order. If the Swiss tried pulling some of the stuff that we do, you can bet we would call BS on them every time. And rightfully so. There's no international law that says we have to like whatever the toughest kid on the block does right? We have Political free will. We have the right to think and say whatever we want. So do they. They play their games, and we play ours.

That doesn't mean that i like it when other countries bitch and moan about us. I think a lot of it is jealousy and envy for our political system, economy, and way of life. Do you really think Steinbrenner lays in bed at night crying because people don't like the Yankees (personally i DESPISE them....i'm a Sox fan)

I doubt it, he's laughing all the way to the bank.

on Dec 03, 2004
Do you really think Steinbrenner lays in bed at night crying because people don't like the Yankees


No, and I a huge Yankee fan! My whole family is BoSOX fans (from Mass.) So I got rripped this year! The only things that offend me are anti- Yankee, America, and Jewish stuff.
on Dec 03, 2004
Yuck the Fankees!!! Go Marlins! Go Fish!!!!!
on Dec 03, 2004
Go Marlins! Go Fish


But there going to loose Carl Pavanno and they lost bentiz