Two years ago there was a lot of talk by progressives about where they would go to escape the Unite States if Bush was re-elected. New Zealand was at the top of many people’s lists. I’ve never been there, but it looks like a great place to live: beaches, mountains, the ocean, wine country, and what I’d been told are friendly people.
Alas… things have taken a turn for the worse. The Kiwis don’t like Americans anymore.
Mr. Smith first arrived here in 2005 to teach at a high school in Dannevirke, a rural town in this North Island farming region not unlike the central California of his youth. The middle-aged American chuckles ruefully as he remembers early impression of New Zealand as a “perfect cultural match” for him.
That changed after verbal abuse from his students about his nationality got so bad that he filed a lawsuit with the country’s Human Rights Commission. Smith says he is seeking recognition that the anti-American vitriol has gotten too personal.
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For Smith, the growing coolness in a land where the US used to fit as comfortably as a hamburger in a bun is puzzling. “It can’t be just personal - it has to come from a wider concept about what America is and isn’t. But how did that happen?”
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Nearly 20 years ago, New Zealand enacted the world’s first statute preventing nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships from visiting its shores. The measure, which led to New Zealand’s suspension from the ANZUS tripartite defense alliance with Australia, proved popular at home, but it continues to cast a pall on ties with the US.
We’ve got nukes, and we’ve used them. There’s even been talk among the Bushies that we ought to use Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators (RNEPs), better known as “bunker busters,” in a war against Iran.
Kind of makes us look like arrogant bullies to the rest of the world.
We suck.
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