What we're up against

I put up a post last December about a Swedish ad that pokes a bit of fun at American unilateralism (as well as apparently recycling an old nautical joke). There seem to be a lot of people searching for information on the ad (using search terms like "USS Montana" and "lighthouse"), and I recently received a comment on this post from one "anonymouse" which went as follows:

You are a moron (and so are the ones that made it), lets look at it on the surface, lets say that the ships instruments did not tell them it was a light house. Nautical law (international law) which was made in the EU (you guys) says that the larger ship gets the right of way. In the text of the commercial, he says "... the second largest ship in the North Atlantic fleet..." and he probably has some idea where the largest one is, there for if there was another ship, that ship by international laws must give way, your laws you made over there.

Leaving aside the commenter's unclear logic and tortured syntax, as well as the fact that he failed to realize that I'm American - and if he assumed I'm Russian then he failed to realize that Russia's not an EU member (hence not one of "you guys") - I found it funny that he used the same "your laws you made over there" tone that one sometimes hears used by Russians talking about the United States. "Tam u vas..." is the equivalent of "over there," and it's of course conceptually opposed to "Tut u nas..."

People like this are inherently hostile to foreigners, especially when those foreigners poke fun at their motherland, and their mentality (unfortunately as common in the US as it is in Russia) is an impediment to broad-based international cooperation and understanding. Anyone who wants to promote taking a more critical view of their own country, especially if that country is a superpower or has been one in the recent past, and wants to promote looking more open-mindedly at other countries, is going to clash with people like this sooner or later. Unfortunately, the same globalization trends which have allowed Americans to become more productive and enjoy greater material benefits have also made it much more difficult for us to ignore or reflexively criticize the opinions held by people in other countries. The take-no-prisoners, brook-no-backtalk approach might work in the short term, but eventually it will lead to the US being isolated from and disliked by countries whose cooperation it needs. To paraphrase the immortal Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along here?"