Problem is, you overassume how much you’ve managed to pick up without in fact being immersed in the culture.
Not the same thing.
You think you know, but you don’t: it’s based on only some superficiality, on account of the disconnect.
E.g., your blanket comment on tea party members.
To make an analogy, the foreigners who endlessly comment on every detail of American politics and way of life are like people who have watched many bb’ing videos and read many articles, but have never been in the gym. Or perhaps did visit the gym during some 2 week vacation a number of years ago, but that’s it.
They think they know all about it, but having not actually been part of the culture, actually they are deluding themselves in thinking that their commentary has substance or usually much if any validity.
Or for another example: I had a post a while back where I made reference to Brown being thought to have a man-crush on Obama. I made no pretense of being an equal to the British in discussing such things. My take on it is little more than a caricature. I read a fair amount of British news because, although the writers are rather to the left, there appears to be no agenda to propagandize or drive outcomes, particularly with regard to events in America, and this quality represents a big improvement over most American news. But does this mean I have the same knowledge regarding British opinion that Brits do? Certainly not. I haven’t had the experience of myself experiencing my feelings change; I haven’t seen my neighbors and friends change their feelings or seen what caused them to do so; I haven’t been exposed to all the little things that don’t make the major papers and would be unlikely ever to be seen by a foreigner but are known to everyone in the UK.
Could I contribute intelligently to say a discussion on whether Brown’s reputation may recover or not, or any such thing? No, because of not having the experiences that result from immersion and which are not going to be picked up from afar no matter how diligently one reads news off the computer screen.
Could I offer an opinion on what BNP members on the whole are like, let’s say? Well I could but I would be foolish to do so, not being immersed in the culture. (And btw, the Tea Party movement is not a political party, so there is no direct comparison, but there’s some degree of analogy.)
It’s true that what I am saying is unlikely to get across: while there have been foreigners that have expressed the same knowledge of limitations on commenting on America as I have, for example, on any comments I might make on Britain, as for the ones that are convinced they know it all it doesn’t matter how many times it’s pointed out how fallacious this is. So I guess little is likely to be accomplished, but there it is.