I used to be a bit of an America hater as a teenager/ during my early twenties... around the whole Iraq invasion period when hate for America was at a peak, it seems.

What I disliked most at that time was what I took to be arrogance, and self-importance. This was after meeting some Americans, too.

If you travel and spend time with a group of people with different nationalities, you might find it's not unusual that there's one American at the center loudly leading the conversation and the rest becoming increasingly silent.

Many people will take this as dominating the conversation, though the American might be wondering why everyone is being so quiet and not speaking their minds. I've been wondering about the latter myself and I've changed my mind about Americans mostly.

I appreciate the self-confidence and 'public' speaking skills many Americans seem to have. What I took to be self-importance and over-confidence is maybe also a kind of 'fake it till you make it approach' that's something I think a lot of others could learn from. If you talk about things like you knew quite a bit about the subject and your opinion is important.. I believe it can boost your interest, willingness to learn and discuss things. Too often I think to myself "it seems really complicated and there's so much to know that I basically don't really know anything, so what's the point in really having an opinion".

Actually, I grew up watching American TV and movies, listening to American music etc. so my opinions about America and Americans are a bit more complicated than anything I could write here. I think that goes for a lot of people all over the world.

America is more in the public eye, both in the news and through entertainment, than any other country (ever?). I've undoubtedly seen more Americans on TV than any other nationality, including my own.. so it's not really surprising people will have opinions and skewed impressions.

Also as a western-European, culturally we basically follow America, but we aren't America. Sometimes it's almost like being a second rate American and I think that's something Europeans have issues with, too.

China is opening up to and emulating America in a big way, too (sometimes indirectly through South-Korean pop culture).. and I'm sure they have some complicated identity issues about that, too. It's a love hate thing and it's complicated.