Situations come and go and the faces and names change, but the national views remain depressingly the same
The UK wants to establish a world-wide canon of ethics for financial institutions, because they can't think any way but what you do when you own all the pink parts on the map.
The USA wants to go abroad and kick ass so we won't have to be afraid of the injuns, headhunters, and fierce salvages.
The French want to gift us with their stated involvement in the rest of the world.
The Germans, well, they want to take over.
There's an old saw I first heard on London 30-some years ago. It was about tourists and it went like this:
The English Act as if they own everything.
The Germans act as if they want to own everything.
And the Americans don't care who owns anything.
And all three seem horrified to find the people they colonized coming back to the motherland, whether legally or not (In England -- the Irish, Pakistanis, Indians, etc ... in Germany, the Turks ... in the USA, Spanish-speaking people, Asian people, African people.)
And all three are more and more horrified when those people appreciate the opportunities more and study harder, work harder, get better grades, and get jobs that pay more money.
And the kind of people we associate with those three countries (or rather, the kind of people these countries traditionally associate with their own countries) they all piss and moan and whine about how it's wrooong, that we're WHITE people and it's just wrooong and it means the end of the world when those darker-skinned fellows prove to be better at the game than old Jeb and Bubba and Lamar and Junior, the folks who are still trying to rule the world using the worn-out magical mantra: "My daddy said...".
Want a good wine from the Old South?
"They're giving THEM all the special privileges, all the special rights, letting THEM vote and get married and get welfare...")
(And not ALL the people in the South, either -- many don't fit this mass generalization at all, while a whole lot of yankees do.)
The USA wants to go abroad and kick ass so we won't have to be afraid of the injuns, headhunters, and fierce salvages.
The French want to gift us with their stated involvement in the rest of the world.
The Germans, well, they want to take over.
There's an old saw I first heard on London 30-some years ago. It was about tourists and it went like this:
The English Act as if they own everything.
The Germans act as if they want to own everything.
And the Americans don't care who owns anything.
And all three seem horrified to find the people they colonized coming back to the motherland, whether legally or not (In England -- the Irish, Pakistanis, Indians, etc ... in Germany, the Turks ... in the USA, Spanish-speaking people, Asian people, African people.)
And all three are more and more horrified when those people appreciate the opportunities more and study harder, work harder, get better grades, and get jobs that pay more money.
And the kind of people we associate with those three countries (or rather, the kind of people these countries traditionally associate with their own countries) they all piss and moan and whine about how it's wrooong, that we're WHITE people and it's just wrooong and it means the end of the world when those darker-skinned fellows prove to be better at the game than old Jeb and Bubba and Lamar and Junior, the folks who are still trying to rule the world using the worn-out magical mantra: "My daddy said...".
Want a good wine from the Old South?
"They're giving THEM all the special privileges, all the special rights, letting THEM vote and get married and get welfare...")
(And not ALL the people in the South, either -- many don't fit this mass generalization at all, while a whole lot of yankees do.)
posted by Saintperle at
1:40 PM
