russ (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} goulo) wrote,@ 2003-12-08 23:34:00 |
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i wish the us wasn't so stupid sometimes
A couple of random links I just read:
Canadian flag causes flap in the U.S. Maple Leaf on baggage irks 'sensitive'Americans
http://www.canada.com/national/story.as
Wow. How dare those traitorous Canadians actually publicly admit and be proud of their being Canadian!
Excerpt of a NYT article on our tactics in Iraq:
http://tedrall.com/2003_12_01_archive.h
We're doing group punishment, bulldozing houses, erecting barbed wire around villages, continuing to arrest and kill innocent bystanders, etc. We seem to have learned techniques from the Israeli military, without learning the lesson that this sort of brutality doesn't help.
To me, this sort of stuff all ties in with learning languages. A lot of US citizens are just willfully ignorant about other countries, cultures, and languages (because, hey, doesn't everyone else want to be American, anyway, and everyone knows English anyway, right? And everyone wants to import fine US culture like McDonald's and Bruckheimer action flicks, right? Anyone who might be different is probably some crazy terrorist anyway, right?) ...This ends up getting reflected in individual day-to-day absurdities like Canada-bashing, as well as huge foreign policy disasters like the Iraq war. It still boggles my mind that we have a president who had never even travelled internationally till he became president.
A couple of random links I just read:
Canadian flag causes flap in the U.S. Maple Leaf on baggage irks 'sensitive'Americans
http://www.canada.com/national/story.as
For instance, an American from San Diego is quoted saying: "What bugs me about Canadians, if I may, is that they wear that damn patch on their bags, the Canadian flag patch. That way, they differentiate themselves from us."
Wow. How dare those traitorous Canadians actually publicly admit and be proud of their being Canadian!
Excerpt of a NYT article on our tactics in Iraq:
http://tedrall.com/2003_12_01_archive.h
We're doing group punishment, bulldozing houses, erecting barbed wire around villages, continuing to arrest and kill innocent bystanders, etc. We seem to have learned techniques from the Israeli military, without learning the lesson that this sort of brutality doesn't help.
To me, this sort of stuff all ties in with learning languages. A lot of US citizens are just willfully ignorant about other countries, cultures, and languages (because, hey, doesn't everyone else want to be American, anyway, and everyone knows English anyway, right? And everyone wants to import fine US culture like McDonald's and Bruckheimer action flicks, right? Anyone who might be different is probably some crazy terrorist anyway, right?) ...This ends up getting reflected in individual day-to-day absurdities like Canada-bashing, as well as huge foreign policy disasters like the Iraq war. It still boggles my mind that we have a president who had never even travelled internationally till he became president.
