Dear American Friend
I know "antiamericanism" is sooo last year, but sometimes you just ask for it.
In the course of several conversations with U.S. citizens in a cartoon forum,
(meaning a forum with people intelligent enough to to understand humour),
the following remarks were made concerning Greece:
-Thanks to the U.S.A. involvement in WWII, we can be free now to speak Italian (!) instead of German.
-The U.S.A. may not be the ideal democracy, but at least it is a democracy, as opposed to our form of
goverment which the poster has yet to specify.
-"And, anyway",the poster continues "we don't see people(s) jumping the borders to join your country".
I can understand that "protected by the oceans" you have neither the time nor the inclination to learn about the existence of every li'l country the size of half a state that isn't even worth invading.
But, dammit, we hosted the Olympics just last year.Did you watch the games in CNN, or RAI tv?
Your dark-skinned friend
Spi_der
(you couldn't pronounce my real name in a million years)
In the course of several conversations with U.S. citizens in a cartoon forum,
(meaning a forum with people intelligent enough to to understand humour),
the following remarks were made concerning Greece:
-Thanks to the U.S.A. involvement in WWII, we can be free now to speak Italian (!) instead of German.
-The U.S.A. may not be the ideal democracy, but at least it is a democracy, as opposed to our form of
goverment which the poster has yet to specify.
-"And, anyway",the poster continues "we don't see people(s) jumping the borders to join your country".
I can understand that "protected by the oceans" you have neither the time nor the inclination to learn about the existence of every li'l country the size of half a state that isn't even worth invading.
But, dammit, we hosted the Olympics just last year.Did you watch the games in CNN, or RAI tv?
Your dark-skinned friend
Spi_der
(you couldn't pronounce my real name in a million years)
posted by Spi_Der at 10/03/2005 12:58:00 pm
2 Comments:
Old story, my friend... I've had a million such discussions where the exact same "points" were made by proud American citizens, in several fora including those at imdb.com, isketch.com (while sketching, yeah), and a few others dedicated to famous book series and writers which I've stopped visiting quite a while ago.
I still hold true a discussion I had with a very good friend of mine. Nicole was 2nd generation American, and her mum was 1st generation American born to Greek immigrants. She had finished several courses at European schools since she was 16, and travelled around the continent quite much before deciding to study Sociology at the American College in Greece, so she "could live at her ancestral city" as she'd told me.
She had confessed that she hated going back home to visit her parents, and see two very intelligent and educated people being misled every day just because they chose to watch the news daily. That the level of misinformation is huge and just throttles normal people, because they don't really know where to turn for true facts, and wouldn't actually recognise a fact even if it danced naked in front of them.
That, even though the Internet was already part of everyone's life before 1995, it was rarely used for finding information about facts; rather, it was deemed very crucial to be up to date with all the fictitious blurbs about Hollywood actors and models and their shenanigans.
She had told me she hoped every time that she'd get back and see her family a bit more alert, more interested in actuality, and every time it was worse. That she didn't know whether she really could communicate with them any more, and didn't really know whether she had any common topics of discussion with them.
I've heard similar things from other acquaintances of US origin, but this was the most heartfelt one, from a girl that loved her country and wanted to go back and change things...
Τhe sad fact is that ignorance isn't an american monopoly.Greeks have their fair share of distorted worldview.
What makes american ignorance unique and inexcusable, is that what that country doe affects every other nation on the planet.
But more often than not,when you embark on a discusion about their foreign policy, they end up saying something along the lines of "mind your own business", never grasping the reality that their foreign policy often shapes our domestic situation.
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