Quote from wild:
The U.S. Needs to Open Up to the World
To this European, America is trapped in a fortress of arrogance and ignorance
Europeans have always looked at America with a mixture of fascination and puzzlement, and now, increasingly, disbelief. How is it that a country that prides itself on its economic success could have so many very poor people?
It's not that there are a lot of poor people here it's that the rich are absurdly so.
How is it that a country so insistent on the rule of law should seek to exempt itself from international agreements?
actually the US constitution allows disobeying unreasonable and absurd laws.
And how is it that the world's beacon of democracy can have elections dominated by wealthy special interest groups? For me, the question has become: "How can a country that has produced so much cultural and economic wealth act so dumb?"
it's human nature there are schmucks everywhere. so what?
But since Sept. 11, that vision has been eclipsed by a suspicious, introverted America, a country-sized version of that peculiarly American form of ghetto: the gated community. A gated community is defensive. Designed to keep the "others" out, it dissolves the rich web of society into a random clustering of disconnected individuals. It turns paranoia and isolation into a lifestyle.
so who's to blame americans or the terrorists.
But, unfortunately, over the same period, the mass media vaulted backward, thriving on increasingly simple stories and trivializing news into something indistinguishable from entertainment. As a result, a wealth of original and subtle thought â America's real wealth â is squandered.
It's always been that way the media caters to the average joe who cant balance his checking account, eats at mcdonalds, and loses money in the stock market.
This narrowing of the American mind is exacerbated by the withdrawal of the left from active politics. Virtually ignored by the media, the left has further marginalized itself by a retreat into introspective cultural criticism.
This idiot has never been in a U.S. university every weekend there is some dumb anti-racism anti-war anti-market anti-everything student march. And in the classroom some snob preaches either a totally negative or totally naive vision of US society. And let's not talk about the media, hollywood or the music industry, I can't believe so many mass-consumption bands have anti-american communist lyrics.
Well, we like some of it but could do without the rest: among the highest rates of violent crime, economic inequality, functional illiteracy, incarceration and drug use in the developed world.
Actually New York city is much safer than Paris to give an example, and I don't believe there is more drug use here than in Amsterdam.
Europeans tend to regard free national health services, unemployment benefits, social housing and so on as pretty good models of human progress.
"free"? right, people don't pay for it, not even taxes.
We think it's important â civilized, in fact â to help people who fall through society's cracks.
giving handouts is temporary relief but not help.
Europe has less gun crime and homicide, less poverty and arguably a higher quality of life than the U.S., which makes a lot of us wonder why America doesn't want some of what we've got.
so why russians and eastern europeans are desperate to come here?
I always hear americans are arrogant but arrogant why? because we don't kiss their unwashed stinky european a#$es? I think it's the european particularly the french who qualify for "arrogant" they are smug and rude.
