¡No Pasarán!: They hate us, they might hate us not. They hate us…

They hate us, they might hate us not. They hate us…

posted by Joe @ 16:15

Most of the time I couldn’t care less. Sometimes I get a laugh out of it. Either way, a great many Europeans resemble an obsessed and desperate stalker whose loins burn for America one sick way or another. While some pollster can take the temperature of the brainwashed, other writers in the same paper can try to disabuse them of said delusion.

Andrew Stuttaford in NRO’s “The Corner”, Richard North and Helen Szamuely writing in the EU Referendum blog, and others have covered the matter nicely.
I all remind me of an example of how the allergy of this anti-Americanism constructed in the press can lay itself out on people. Waiting for a car ferry to cross the channel a British woman was at first flirting with me, and at one point said after a little while:

“You’re American!” as if I didn’t know.
“I am” – I am, you see.
“You don’t get much holiday. I don’t much like that”
“I get all the ‘holiday’ I want, I only get paid for three weeks of it.”
“But that’s not nice.” - henh? Nice?
“You just have to plan for it, ya know – save up a little, set up your projects… some people prefer the extra money.”
“They shouldn’t do that. I don’t think many people know how to do that.”
“I supervise 17 people, and they all know how to do that just fine”

She went on to another subject of cultural complain. She begged for one retort after another. She needed more of this “why is the sky blue” conversation the accidental representative of the great demon of her life - Americur.

Hoping that the damn gate would finally open, after 20 minutes of being part of her gruesome self-entertainment, I told her to stop being so damn rude. “I’m AmeriCAN, not AmeriCA,” I finally said. “If you have so many complaints about American life, email the White House.”

She seemed shocked when I asked her if she wanted the same kind of interrogation. “No, of course not” as if I was being too touchy to be the generic punching bag of her life’s disappointments. She seemed sort of shocked at the notion that I was a human with a persona, and not the straw man of my nationality. It often takes a poke in the ego to realize that this kind of crap from a complete stranger might be nosy, misdirected, and unwelcome.
Maybe I just have that kind of face, but when in the UK I get this treatment about 2-6 times a day.
People who expect a stranger to take part in their imaginary mental arguments like that need to see a shrink or maybe get a pet. When going through such drills I picture that someday they might finally notice the sewer of envy and unimaginativeness they’re living in.

She’s right in one way. People sold on the life’s lowest common denominator, the state’s safety net as a means of planning your life don’t know how to do much of anything other than game the rest of society for their own well being. In a laissez-faire environment, one trades for one’s wants. It costs something because it isn’t yours’ - one doesn’t bilk they neighbor with guilt to seek the trappings that often come with the pursuit of happiness.

It also makes me wonder why I meet all of their serious go-getters in the New York and Washington, where many of them carry around the same index cards, although they yellow more quickly when they start living here and seeing for themselves that it isn’t the Hieronymus Bosch scene they were hoping it would be.

One of Rodney Dangerfield’s throw-away lines was “Want to feel tall? Hang out with short people.” It seems that the European MSM is pre-occupied with finding those short people and failing that, inventing them on their own and selling it to an unquestioning public.

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Monday, July 03, 2006

They hate us, they might hate us not. They hate us…