Lefties are broadminded, well travelled, and tolerant. That’s why they hate Americans.
Now this is from a conversation with the sweetest, cutest person in the Universe who isn’t related by blood or marriage to me. For some folk, Leftism isn’t an active sin; but rather something they step in or that rains down upon them from a cloudy sky, and that they then trail after themselves across the world with their be-sandaled footsteps.
One regular salvo of the culture wars is that Americans are so parochial. Most of them don’t even have passports because they don’t travel outside the USA and so they know little, if anything, about the rest of the planet and the sophisticated un-American thinking that people of other nations therefore achieve thanks to their broad travels and their broader intellectual horizons. This is the Great Poets theory of American Imperialism Studies. You know how it goes: Byron travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean and therefore did good things like supporting Greek nationalism and had relaxed attitudes to, for example, his sister. William Wordsworth, on the other hand, only travelled to 18th Century Germany – as uncultured a place almost as the USA – and he eventually rejected the French Revolution, so what did he know? Shakespeare travelled all the way from Stratford to London, and so produced a body of work which, even though the jury’s out on all the history and the comedies and most of the tragedies and problem plays because of their inherent sexism, racism, unsanctioned anti-Semitism and nationalism, still has something of lasting worth to say about the human condition as long as it’s produced and directed by the right people.
If you don’t travel extensively, it seems, and to the prescribed party line destinations at that, then how can you be a free spirit and free thinker at all?
Please be aware of the science of all this. The jets that fly Lefties off to Cambodia or the Serengeti, and the ships that cruise around the coastline of Classical Civilisation, and the elderly Volkswagen campers that take them to ashrams in the Yorkshire Dales or Buddhist retreats in the Highlands and Islands don’t run on aviation fuel, marine diesel and petrol at all. Instead they are fuelled by the perfectly sustainable extra virgin olive oil, tahini and patchouli; whose only waste product is a colourless, odourless and utterly senseless gas known to outsiders as smug.
On the rare occasions that Americans do travel outside their birth states (apart from flying from Hawaii to the mainland to sign up with the most corrupt city and state administration anywhere in the continental USA, which is fine), they just don’t fit in with the subtle rest of the world. Whereas Home Counties or North London (or better yet educated Edinburgh or Assembly Welsh) accents sound just lovely in mysterious little ristorantes by the Rialto Bridge just add to the cosmopolitan feel of Venice, the nasal tones of New York and the Bible-quoting drawl of the South in Saint Mark’s Square ring out as just so crass. Or they kill people.
My friend and I are both taking professional qualifications at the moment to improve our career prospects and earnings potential within Britain’s bloated public sector. Our studies differ from each other in degree and subject matter, but they have the same egregious faults in their respective syllabuses. Firstly, each course is taught and will be examined solely in English. Secondly, the each lacks what you might call compulsory cultural background studies, specifically: Ethnic Classification (with special reference to non-Aryan breeds); Scientific Socialism and Dialectical Materialism; and Koranic Studies. Most Americans, it seems, do not even know where Wales is. However, writing as someone who’s grateful to be able to do government work without raising my arm higher than the water cooler each morning, and who does not require the Cyrillic alphabet to advance in my profession, and who does not need to bang my head on the floor five times a day ™, here is a short list of the places where unwelcome Americans have been initially ignorant of the local oil-rich geography but who have, sometimes permanently, mixed themselves in with that geography for whatever weird reasons they did travel to places other than Paris (but which did, one or twice, also include Paris.)
The Kasserine Pass, Salerno, Normandy, The Ardennes, Iwo Jima (don’t you just love those cute little computer games and cheap hi-fi – so much more fun than katanas and all that Japanese bowing and scraping and raping Koreans and Chinese!), Incheon, Kapyong (obviously anticipating the days of mass-produced carbon fibre badminton racquets,) the Saigon Brent Blend fields and the gushers of the Mekong Delta, and of course, Kuwait, Baghdad, Kabul and the heavy crude deposits of Kandahar and Bora Bora.
Of course, the Americans; ignorant of the diverse peoples whom they visit and their unique and un-American ways of life, left all kinds of pollution in their wake. Parliaments and multi-party democracies and working economies fit to feed and clothe and house un-American populations from Tokyo to Paris, Bonn and Copenhagen, Rome and Brussels and - eventually - Berlin and Warsaw and Prague. Like the arrogant British they also left all kinds of holes in the ground – many with crosses littering the landscape, and all kinds of brown stains.
They also took stuff other than photographs and oil supplies home to the States with them: wives and ideas; orphans and refugees and a higher per capita mouth–to-limb ratio than prior to their travels.
Now this is from a conversation with the sweetest, cutest person in the Universe who isn’t related by blood or marriage to me. For some folk, Leftism isn’t an active sin; but rather something they step in or that rains down upon them from a cloudy sky, and that they then trail after themselves across the world with their be-sandaled footsteps.
One regular salvo of the culture wars is that Americans are so parochial. Most of them don’t even have passports because they don’t travel outside the USA and so they know little, if anything, about the rest of the planet and the sophisticated un-American thinking that people of other nations therefore achieve thanks to their broad travels and their broader intellectual horizons. This is the Great Poets theory of American Imperialism Studies. You know how it goes: Byron travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean and therefore did good things like supporting Greek nationalism and had relaxed attitudes to, for example, his sister. William Wordsworth, on the other hand, only travelled to 18th Century Germany – as uncultured a place almost as the USA – and he eventually rejected the French Revolution, so what did he know? Shakespeare travelled all the way from Stratford to London, and so produced a body of work which, even though the jury’s out on all the history and the comedies and most of the tragedies and problem plays because of their inherent sexism, racism, unsanctioned anti-Semitism and nationalism, still has something of lasting worth to say about the human condition as long as it’s produced and directed by the right people.
If you don’t travel extensively, it seems, and to the prescribed party line destinations at that, then how can you be a free spirit and free thinker at all?
Please be aware of the science of all this. The jets that fly Lefties off to Cambodia or the Serengeti, and the ships that cruise around the coastline of Classical Civilisation, and the elderly Volkswagen campers that take them to ashrams in the Yorkshire Dales or Buddhist retreats in the Highlands and Islands don’t run on aviation fuel, marine diesel and petrol at all. Instead they are fuelled by the perfectly sustainable extra virgin olive oil, tahini and patchouli; whose only waste product is a colourless, odourless and utterly senseless gas known to outsiders as smug.
On the rare occasions that Americans do travel outside their birth states (apart from flying from Hawaii to the mainland to sign up with the most corrupt city and state administration anywhere in the continental USA, which is fine), they just don’t fit in with the subtle rest of the world. Whereas Home Counties or North London (or better yet educated Edinburgh or Assembly Welsh) accents sound just lovely in mysterious little ristorantes by the Rialto Bridge just add to the cosmopolitan feel of Venice, the nasal tones of New York and the Bible-quoting drawl of the South in Saint Mark’s Square ring out as just so crass. Or they kill people.
My friend and I are both taking professional qualifications at the moment to improve our career prospects and earnings potential within Britain’s bloated public sector. Our studies differ from each other in degree and subject matter, but they have the same egregious faults in their respective syllabuses. Firstly, each course is taught and will be examined solely in English. Secondly, the each lacks what you might call compulsory cultural background studies, specifically: Ethnic Classification (with special reference to non-Aryan breeds); Scientific Socialism and Dialectical Materialism; and Koranic Studies. Most Americans, it seems, do not even know where Wales is. However, writing as someone who’s grateful to be able to do government work without raising my arm higher than the water cooler each morning, and who does not require the Cyrillic alphabet to advance in my profession, and who does not need to bang my head on the floor five times a day ™, here is a short list of the places where unwelcome Americans have been initially ignorant of the local oil-rich geography but who have, sometimes permanently, mixed themselves in with that geography for whatever weird reasons they did travel to places other than Paris (but which did, one or twice, also include Paris.)
The Kasserine Pass, Salerno, Normandy, The Ardennes, Iwo Jima (don’t you just love those cute little computer games and cheap hi-fi – so much more fun than katanas and all that Japanese bowing and scraping and raping Koreans and Chinese!), Incheon, Kapyong (obviously anticipating the days of mass-produced carbon fibre badminton racquets,) the Saigon Brent Blend fields and the gushers of the Mekong Delta, and of course, Kuwait, Baghdad, Kabul and the heavy crude deposits of Kandahar and Bora Bora.
Of course, the Americans; ignorant of the diverse peoples whom they visit and their unique and un-American ways of life, left all kinds of pollution in their wake. Parliaments and multi-party democracies and working economies fit to feed and clothe and house un-American populations from Tokyo to Paris, Bonn and Copenhagen, Rome and Brussels and - eventually - Berlin and Warsaw and Prague. Like the arrogant British they also left all kinds of holes in the ground – many with crosses littering the landscape, and all kinds of brown stains.
They also took stuff other than photographs and oil supplies home to the States with them: wives and ideas; orphans and refugees and a higher per capita mouth–to-limb ratio than prior to their travels.
Are Americans dumb, or what?
6 comments:
It's the second great un-resolved logic breakdown, after this one.
Americans never leave the USA* = bad.
Americans are always stinking up the rest of the world = bad
Lefty logic can always overcome this dichotomy. It doesn't need explanation and if you don't get it then you must be fick or something.
*Despite the USA being 3000miles wide, incorporating coast, prairie, desert, mountains, tundra, tropics, etc. And until recently Americans could travel freely through Canada, Mexico and most of the Caribbean with just their driving licence.
Now this is from a conversation with the sweetest, cutest person in the Universe who isn’t related by blood or marriage to me. For some folk, Leftism isn’t an active sin; but rather something they step in or that rains down upon them from a cloudy sky, and that they then trail after themselves across the world with their be-sandaled footsteps.
Beautiful and a pox upon it.
For what it's worth - I luv ya!
If my country (UK) had a warm bit and a cold bit and the scenery you have, I might not have travelled so much.
Currently working in the south of france, nice climate. If I could do that without having language problems, currency exchange issues (currently going my way), rip off rates for mobiles / data (3G data stick 8 euros per DAY! £10 per month at home), I might not bother so much.
As it is I'm enjoying the different culcha and language - it's just that I can see why the USA makes it easy to say 'home'
bon weekend
stay home...I meant stay home
Excellent post.
"Byron travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean and therefore did good things like supporting Greek nationalism and had relaxed attitudes to, for example, his sister."
Genuine LOL from me at that line.
Blognor Regis;
ah, yes. Anyone else with parents born here would have had a cordon victimaire strung around their homes by the race hustlers tootsweet, but not our beloved Royals. Great link, thanks - before my time, so I hadn't read it.
James, we're the pox upon it. Let us always be virulent and incurable.
Gendeau: welcome, and thanks for your comment and, hey, I spoke your name. Nice handle. Hope it never suits you. Don't be a stranger now, despite your being in a country that Caesar once found to be divided into three parts...All of them private ones.
DB, thank you also. And don't be stranger: I'm rude to my betters five times a week, and always slip a joke into one of my posts. Keeps the corduroy elbow patches at bay, don'tcha know?
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