Quote:
Originally posted by Dottore
The US is really a study in contrasts. I doubt very much from your posts that this applies to you - but many of my European friends who know the US only superficially tend to view it all as somehow the same. But no country of which I'm aware contains greater extremes - intellectually, culturally, socially, politically, geographically, financially - on just about any level you care to name.
Rural Alabama is as different from the Upper East Side as rural Iraq is from Paris.
It's always difficult to generalize about America and things American when you are there.
Equally, it becomes much easier to generalize about America when you are not actually there, because all one tends to see is the ugly side of America abroad: it's consistent foreign policy disasters; it's military adventurism; it's truly corrupt administration; the infantile media - led abroad by CNN and USA Today; and the cheap and nasty pop-culture and bad taste projected abroad - to say nothing of the hordes of overweight tourists dressed in shorts, baseball caps and fanny packs who genuinely have no idea whether they are in Brussels or Budapest.
It's very easy to see the US one dimensionally from abroad as simply a $hitty place. I have a couple of good European friends for example - who have travelled to every corner of the globe - except the US. You couldn't drag them to the US.
So from where I sit the US is a paradox: it seems to have the best and the worst of everything. In many areas - truly the worst. And in many areas - truly the best. It is a nation of extremes from which the middle - the cohesive common ground - seems to be slipping away.
End of rant.
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Well, then keep your euro trash ass out of the USA.
Quote:
Originally posted by scottbombedout
Bob, he was kidding. I've never been to America but that seriously put me off.
How can the USA go around the globe trying to install democracy when you dont even have freedom of speech in your own country. My first reaction to the petrol station owner was 'pathetic' . But she was kidding right?
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Well, at least something good came out of it.
Quote:
Originally posted by Dottore
I think my point was that parts of the US south are extreme in their intolerance of people who are somehow different in appearance or mentality. The reaction is one of suspicion, distrust and even aggression.
I don't know many places in the world where such general intolerance is accepted as being part of the 'culture'.
As svandamme points out correctly - in Europe the attitude to someone who looks different and doesn't fit in would be to "stand back and enjoy the circus" - not to get aggressive and ugly about it. (I'm of course not talking about the deep rooted ethnic animosities you find in communities everywhere - but rather about the general intolerance of others and other ways that you find in parts of the south.)
There's a much greater general tolerance and civility in Europe about such matters that you would be very hard-pressed to find in parts of the US south.
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lets see what would happen it you pained Hitler was Right, and swastikas on a few cars and drive around europe.
Yes, we do have Freedom or Speach, but you have to accept what happens when you abuse it, you can't yell fire in a crowd, if you painted "I heart KKK on a truck and drove through Watts, you would be treated much worse than Clarkson.
Funny, you make fun of people from the south, when someone goes out of their way offend them, yet here, in the liberal mecca of Cali, all you have to do is drive by with a nice car.
http://www.filecabi.net/video/oakland256.html
Of course, this is freedom isn't it.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/13/1347.asp