Let's hear it for the "aspirational" humans.

The 'Pro-Americans'

Recently the Pew Global Attitudes Project released another of its international polls finding that, ho-hum, a lot of foreigners don't like America. But columnist Anne Applebaum has an interesting take on it. Noting that a significant minority in many countries--"some 43 percent of the French, 41 percent of Germans, 42 percent of Chinese and 42 percent of Lebanese"--are pro-American, she looks at the demographics of this group:
Advertising executives understand very well the phenomenon of ordinary women who read magazines filled with photographs of clothes they could never afford: They call such women "aspirational." Looking around the world, it is clear there are classes of people who might also be called aspirational. They are upwardly mobile, or would like to be. They tend to be pro-American, too.
In Britain, for example, 57.6 percent of those whose income are low believe that the United States has a mainly positive influence in the world, while only 37.1 percent of those whose income are high believe the same. Breaking down the answers by education, a similar pattern emerges. In South Korea, 69.2 percent of those with low education think the United States is a positive influence, while only 45.8 percent of those with a high education agree. That trend repeats itself not only across Europe but in many other developed countries. Those on their way up are pro-American. Those who have arrived, and perhaps feel threatened by those eager to do the same, are much less so.
In developing countries, by contrast, the pattern is sometimes reversed. It turns out, for example, that Indians are much more likely to be pro-American if they are not only younger but also wealthier and better educated, and no wonder. . . . Some 69 percent of Indians with high incomes think the United States is a mainly positive influence in the world, and only 29 percent of those with low incomes agree. This same phenomenon may also account for the persistence of a surprising degree of popular pro-Americanism in such places as Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines. They're getting wealthier--like Americans--but aren't yet so rich as to feel directly competitive.
There may be domestic parallels here. The most anti-American Americans seem to come from the ranks of the superrich and the overeducated. And "working class" support for the relatively free-market Republicans, which so mystifies liberal Democrats, is at least in part aspirational.
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today)