Letters to the Editor
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Ah thoe Europeans
Soon after the war I was in Europe. The Brits were O.K.polite etc. In France people came up to us with "Your're an American, yes?" "THE TROUBLE WITH AMERICAN IS..." and the rolled out a long laundry list of their little bitches. They were still eating our food. People,Americans, were weeping openly at the rows and rows of our military grave sites. So here's the clue: Countries that have common interests are friends, when they no longer have a common interests they needn't be friends.
Therefore:
Brits pay attention you owe us big and straighten up, Germans, we beat you twice get a life you stupid people. If it wasn't for us you'd be calling yourselves Komerad and soaking up vodka.
France go screw yourself if you can muster up the energy to do so. Additionally you have welched on your World War I, yes World War ONE monetary debt to us! Pay up with interest and adjusted for inflation, of course we'd then own the damned place.
In 1816 Commodore Stephen Decatur said it all: "MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR WRONG." Hey liberal anti American Americans,read that a couple of times
Love and kisses from The Hunthorse
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Mostly I don't care.
When I visit my family in France and they pretend not to understand my wife's French because she doesn't have a Parisian accent I just move on to the next person. In fact the only time I really had a hard time communicating with someone I needed to was in the Marais. I needed to buy a Mezzuzah and the shopkeepers were either Yemenis or Iranians who spoke mostly Farsi, Yemeni Arabic and Hebrew. Very little French, no Yiddish. But on the whole I wonder why anyone would care who hates Americans or why or how much. Feel free if you like. Go home and scream to your wife and kids about the fat filthy Yankees you were forced to put up with. Kick the dog. I don't care.
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And for the record
Ken Burn's Civil War series spent exactly one third of only the first episode talking about slavery. One would think that would automatically disqualify him from the Salon family of soft furry multicultural tolerance.
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Ah, those Americans....
So when are you going to pay up, yes pay up, the debt adjusted for inflation that you owe to the French and Spaniards for the American Revolution?
And if we are seriously going to talk about debt, you better pray that them Japanese and Euros don't come knocking for their share of your national debt which makes the Marshall plan loans look like pocket change.
Yeeehaaa... indeed you ignorant buffoon.
Anyhow, I would take Mark Twain's wit over your knuckle dragger military quote any day:
"..Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick — a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor — none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong,"..
...Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?
For in a republic, who is "the Country"? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them...
... The nation has sold its honor for a phrase. It has swung itself loose from its safe anchorage and is drifting, its helm is in pirate hands..."
Listen, there are great smart Americans, and there are plenty of dumb idiotic Americans. Probably America has about the same distribution of smart to stupid, which in my travels I have pretty much narrowed to be following the universal law of 20-80 (20% of smart to 80% of stupid, everything in nature seems to follow this ratio... for example you will use 20% of your things 80% of the time and so on). The main difference between the U.S. and the rest of the world is that they go around calling themselves the best nation on earth.
I am tired of hearing, "look we are no perfect, but there is no better place than this" even though the person saying that has never left his hometown. So how would he know if there are better places?
What made this place great, is among other things, the fact that it was an open society that was a meeting place for the best and brightest from all over the world. Funny to see the knuckle draggers to be the first ones to take credit for other people's work...
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If you think that the main casus belli for the American civil war was slavery...
... I have a nice bridge to sell you.
Getting your history from movies can't be good a good thing.
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I am tired of hearing, "look we are no perfect, but there is no better place than this" even though the person saying that has never left his hometown.
Oh, please. I say it, and I've lived on every continent except Antarctica and have traveled to 43 countries.
A lot are great places to visit, but to live? Nowhere but the U.S. will do, warts and all.
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Tourists
An uptight German who expects a shop in Ecuador to open at 9 because the sign on the door says it will and gets upset and complains when the shop doesn't open on time doesn't really bother me a whole lot.
I can deal with a Frenchman who decides he won't talk with me because my French is substandard.
The most chirpy and fussy of Brits are generally not a nuisance.
The overweight, flag waving American tourist in Spain who yells (so that the Spaniard can understand him better):"Gimme a hot dog! A HOT DOG!!" at a vendor who clearly doesn't sell hot dogs is excruciatingly painful to watch. Everyone hates it - including a precious few of his fellow Americans.
And for the record, as far as the rest of the world (and the internet) is concerned: An "American" = "Yankee" = "someone from the United States".
An American is not a Canadian, A Mexican or a Costa Rican despite the fact that we all live in the Americas.