Thursday, June 16, 2005

America the Beautiful

A colleague at work, having read my blog, accused me of being anti-american. I glibly replied: «Aren't we all?», but I felt bad afterwards for acting as if her opinion were not worthy of a more intelligent answer.


So, anonymous colleague [Let's call her Lisa S., or better yet, L. Simpson], here's - belatedly - your more intelligent answer.


During the 60s, I was living in what used to be called Saigon. My family was relatively well off, so we supported the government in power and the US occupation of Vietnam. My grandpa especially was a fervent admirer of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. My classmates and I were too young and too stupid at the time to understand politics or care about it, but we used to ogle those handsome GIs that were milling about in Saigon and we listened to US music every afternoon (and yes, to that Good Morning Vietnam guy). So you could say that whatever bitterness I have against the United States, I did not develop until much later on.


I'm not going to list all the sins and the stupidities of the present American administration, they are well documented on the Internet and in the foreign (i.e. non-American) press. Since the Vietnam War, I've learned to accept that every country acts to protect what it considers to be its best interests and that non-whites can be mass murdered by whites without any hope for redress or justice, at least during my lifetime. I also used to believe that somehow, the United States are special and that, being the only superpower left, they can afford to actually walk their talk. For if you are the strongest, richest, most influential country in the whole frigging world, shouldn't you also be the freest, most generous, most tolerant country? The centre of the universe, where people from every where else would want to congregate to bask in your wisdom and your glory? HAH! Big frigging HAH!


And that's why I am anti-american. Just as I think that women can be as stupid as men, but stupidity is forgivable in women because most of them are kept uneducated and ignorant, while men have all the chances and opportunities to become enlightened and yet they remain just as stupid.

2 comments:

Buddhist with an attitude said...

[Sigh] I'm sorry I couldn't express myself better. My point is: Noblesse oblige. When you're a Super Duper Power that can influence/bully every other country in the world, you are held to higher standards: you don't invade a smaller nation to steal its oil, after a campaign of lies and distorsions about your victim; you don't arrest/shoot/bomb/torture indiscriminately; you don't use your wealth and power to sabotage international agreements and programmes that could bring significant benefits to the rest of the world, just because you don't want to deal with issues like global warming, AIDS, gays rights, women health and education in poor countries, abortion,... because of pressure from some religious or corporate lobbies in your own country. One can compare the US Government to a superhero with overwhelming powers (Superman) that would act like a thug (Lex Luthor). As to my opinion about men and women stupidity, it was supposed to follow the same theme: men in general are supposed to be smarter and better educated than women because they have access to opportunities that are refused to women, and yet they are no better than women.

Buddhist with an attitude said...

It's a grammar issue, I think. The «american» in «anti-american» is an adjective mode describing the subject (me), not a noun indicating the object of my hatred (the Americans). Cause most people in the world love the Americans and their culture and dislike the present US administration.At least, that's how I understand it.