¡No Pasarán!: Cry, the Beloved Delusion

Cry, the Beloved Delusion

posted by Joe @ 10:53

I am tempted to look for the pull string in their backs when I hear over and over and over and over about the inherent wrongness of American social practices. One which always has as a counterpoint of the European supremacists the idea that something that is done right is explained as simply being European, always as if wasn’t the policy, idea, or measure that offers a planet holding its’ breath for wisdom to be thankful for, but something about their culture or race which conveniently explains anything that need not be explained to point to the superiority of whatever nutty example is brought out to make that point.

One bright American PoliSci major suffering through the Kabuki of being a straw man for his fellow students in Germany explains this tedious phenomenon which has been going on for centuries, with Europeans lecturing others even when they stand on the rubble of the lives they and their forbearers have thrown away idly.

As a student studying in Berlin for the year, I’m fighting that tired stereotype Europeans hold of the United States of America: that Americans are heartless and lack compassion. They point to our cutthroat capitalist system as well as our failure to guarantee a more equitable distribution of our nation’s wealth. They also bring up the disregard we show for the natural environment. One even mentioned our propensity to resort to violence, both domestically with our high incidence of gun-related crimes and internationally with our notion of foreign intervention.

All of which has a limitation on the things that are always dwelled upon – a narrow selection of things that Europeans tell themselves they don’t do, even as they employ themselves exporting a stunning number of handguns, and are littered with personal crime to a degree unimaginable to most Americans.

I stopped my selfish habit of simply placing my empty bottles in the trash can; I now prefer flinging them into bushes that homeless people must eventually sleep in, or setting them down right after I chug them on street corners, in order to save them some searching. I imagine as a sort of homeless treasure hunt, all facilitated by my heartfelt generosity.

Odd, is it not, that it took an American, brutal and heartless by definition, to find a small thing to do for the European homeless – a theoretically statistically insignificant if you take the “evil America” argument for what they are: the ravings of the emotionally bereft in what is still a limiting social framework where hatred and envy is supposed to salve the limitations that you’re placed under.

Guess what: boo hoo, Spankitos. You would be hard-pressed to find the individual voluntary spirit in Europe to the extent you do in the US, largely because of the ugly state of being that is seems most Europeans don’t want to face when one is helping the unfortunate.

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Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Cry, the Beloved Delusion