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6 traits which make Trump repellant....and an Ugly American

Brendon Connor joined the United States Studies Centre in 2009 as Associate Professor in American Politics.


Writing under the headline "Six types of ugly American, and Donald Trump is all of them" in The Conversation, Connor dissects Trump and the characteristics which make his so repellant.

"If non-Americans could vote for what is often called “leader of the free world”, Hillary Clinton would easily be the next US president. WIN/Gallup has surveyed world opinion and Donald Trump’s support is extremely weak (apart from in Russia). Trump support was polled at 15 per cent in Australia, 8 per cent in Germany, 5 per cent in Mexico, 4 per cent in Spain, and 3 per cent in Jordan, Japan and South Korea.

Some of this has to do with what Trump has flagged as his possible foreign policies: the Japanese and South Koreans are key allies one day, and on their own the next day with encouragement to nuke up. Mexicans have been told they are going to pay for that “tremendous wall” along their roughly 3200-kilometre border with the United States, which would cost approximately US$12 billion to build. This boast was unlikely to win Mexicans over to Trump.

However, while there is widespread disapproval of Trump’s nationalist, protectionist and racist policies, it is his persona that most repels non-Americans. Trump is strongly disliked across the world because he is the archetypal “ugly American”: obnoxious, uncouth, boastful, materialistic, and duplicitous."


****


"My research, which is based on reading over 100 travel books written by Europeans from the early 19th century, argues that six dominant stereotypes about Americans were constructed in the 1820s and 1830s. They have persisted ever since. These were: that American manners were extremely deficient; that Americans were often anti-intellectual, uncultured, and ignorant; that Americans lived ultimately bland lives; that Americans were particularly prone to boasting and annoying patriotism; that Americans were money obsessed and financially untrustworthy; and finally that Americans were hypocrites. Trump, for many, is the embodiment of these negative national stereotypes."


 



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