"Born to deep political connections including the Gore and Kennedy clans," (gore vidal)
geesh, i wonder why he is opposed to Bush?
pasadena paper? for godsakes man!
for someone that is clearly very intelligent, highly educated, eloquent in delivery, lucid and respected by at least myself, you clearly are ill informed and don't understand
the american culture/s.
you have to understand that there is a huge middle in this country, that doesnt speak up and say much, you know, the flyover country. those that live in flyover country are not ignorant by any means.
i really think your perceptions of america are skewed to the coasts, hollywood, newyork , florida, etc. and all the liberal speak that comes out of those places.
no, that's the weird thing about it, I've met *loads* of yanks (OK by definition because I have never been to the USA they are all that subset of US citizens who travel abroad) and talk to loads online.
of that loads I've met very very few bigoted, small minded, stupid, dumb or anything else, perhaps the sample I have met have been loaded in favour of being ex servicemen, but apart from that, from all over the us, all colours and religions
I'll have to quote one of them now when this very subject was last discussed, "not in my name"
Trust me, the rest of the world does not equate "USA" with the average american citizen.
Nobody thinks the average american citizen lives in a 12 bedroom house, has kids who drive mint mustangs from the age of 16, owns 47 different automatic weapons and the odd anti tank or aircraft weapon, or is a retard out of a stephen king novel.
Everybody thinks, and this is a view often agreed with by ex-pat americans, that the sheer size of the states and the history of the federation means most of you ain't got a clue about the rest of the world (imagine travelling from north dakota to south dakota to find and entirely different language, currency, cuisine, history, and a 1000 year tradition of fighting wars with each other)
but, and this is 100% serious and factual
go to most of europe and ask what is the most notable thing about americans, and the answer you will get most is this.
"they have bigger canadian flags on their luggage / backpacks than the canadians do"
You can probably quite accurately lay 95% of the blame for any anti-american prejudice that *does* exist right at the door of hollywood
The new / current hollywood movie about marie antionette is literally upsetting more people in france (the country that gave you the statue of liberty) than all the comments about cheese eating surrender monkeys and hairy women who don't wash could ever have done.
Europe has a reverance for history, and sneers at attampts by the state to intervene in the affairs of man.
We have a thousand years of history, even if some regime holds sway for 50 years, we put it into perspective, what we don't like is outsiders re-writing it for us.
Here's an example, back in the day I rode an old HD FXE all the way to moscow, this was at a time when people will tell you all you had in moscow was queues of people lining up for loaves made of sawdust because of the latest crop failure, with every third person in the queue being anally probed by the kgb. I didn't see any of that. Nor did I see anyone homeless, or in a home they couldn't afford to heat, I couldn't have sold a pair of blue jeans or an elvis tape for more than the price of a beer, not because it was illegal, but because everyone who wanted such things already had them.
Yeah, there were shortages, if you wanted a coke or a big mac you were shit out of luck, but nobody went hungry, everyone I met eat really well, drank really well too. Biggest thing I learned about the russians was a flair for the tragic, their version of country and western music I guess...
Come here and sit in a bar and hear people talking about our german queen with her greek prince consort, shit, the queens jubilee year the sex pistols were number one in the charts with anarchy in the UK, closely followed by such classics as the queens got VD and so on.
Go from bar to bar and try to find someone who has any respect for prime minister blair, or indeed just about anyone in parliament, shit, we put our members of parliament in prison on a regular basis, that is apart from the odd juicy one like the homosexual MP and his lover and the hit man who missed and shot his dog instead.
I think we do understand americans and america, hell, we've done it, all you need to do is read the history books, I'd say the common attitude here is that americans and america don't understand us, you're too young, 200 odd years ain't enough.
I can trace my heritage back, every single generation and the names of each one, back a thousand years, lot of history in there too, the relative on the lusitania, the relative who stood by napoleon bonaparte, the relative dragged up in front of the church in 1700;s holland to explain how he had gotten a girl pregnant out of wedlock, my grandad who went to america to make his fortune and worked for the young henry ford, my dad who went to canada and then the far east.
we know about flyover culture and the silent masses, when a european speaks about bush, or enron, or haliburton, he isn't talking about the silent masses, not because he doesn't know they exist, but because he does, and his own country had them too, hell, 1930's germany had them, vichy france had them, we have them here now, over one million, that's 2% of the population, so the USA equivalent would be 6 million people descending on DC, and protesting against the war, and every one of them knew there were no WMD (which was the sole excuse at the time) and it didn't change a bloody thing.
I challenge you to find a single thing, good or bad, that USA or anyone else come to that has done that we haven't done to a greater extreme, even concentration camps were a british invention, as was medical experimentation on inmates (feeding alum to the africans) and black hole of calcutta anyone? firebombing dresden? heard of cromwell? slave trade? exploiting foreign lands for resources?
Hell, as I type everyone is pissed off because england and germany can't replay WW2 in the world cup, 1966 was the last time of note...
So Gore Vidal is biased because he knew the Gores and Kennedy's, and?
No, the fundamental difference is that here in europe institutions and people just don't get the respect they do in the states, classic example is the ID card system.
In the states you'd get a few liberals screaming about it and being ignored, a few claiming it will curb illegal migrant workers, and most people just wondering if it means they don't need their zip code and social security number to buy something.
Here in the UK it gets a lot of the "german queen and her greek prince" talk, the kind of talk americans seem to take personally and take offence too, no, it ain't a "Homeland security freedom card", it's a piece of shit that won't work, it won't work because government is doing it, and nothing government ever does in times like these works.... the only time governments do anything that works is in times where shit has to be done and no-one cares about niceties, like the post war depression when we got a national health service.
My girlfriend is pregnant, so far I've taken her to the hospital twice (one all that untrasound shit where they measure the fetus to give a birth date and look for things like downs syndrome etc) and doctor three times and midwife twice, she's sixteen weeks gone so far, no charge, never more than a 30 minute wait, no question of second grade medical staff, equipment or treatment.
We can go anywhere in europe tomorrow and that won't change.
Next week I have to go to the dentist, too many years of travelling and rough conditions have taken their toll, I can't be assed any more so I made the choice to have em all out and have dentures, no charge.
If you're 18 and can't get a job the absolute minimum dole payment is 54 pounds, about 100 bucks, a week, not means tested, not limited to a few weeks, not meant to cover housing, so nobody has an excuse to rob someone else to eat
If you live here you'd think tony blair and london is all that exists, except you wouldn't, and we here in europe don't think bush and DC speak for america any more than blair and london speak for us.
SNAFU, an american saying, didn't mean they weren't believers in their country or were press ganged into service....
Bush isn't the USA, but americans don't seem to like that being said.
Blair isn't the UK, and you have to search long and hard for an englishman that will disagree, apart from Blair himself of course...
two peoples separated by a pond and a common language, but a different culture.
Let's bring it back on topic.
Listers. What;s unique about them, how do you know it was an english engine and not say a german one?
It's upright.
___THAT___ is culture.