See: If leftists (U.S. as well as foreign) can't depict the Indians as Buddhist-monk-like beings interested in only peace and harmony, it becomes much harder to depict (white) Americans as monstersOne of the demonizers of los Estados Unidos — as allegedly deaf to other peoples' voices, as allegedly indifferent to their customs — was pen Name who used that age-old leftist technique, the quote from a "respected" authority figure.
There is a long essay by Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and diplomat, concerning US policies in Latin America. In that essay he observerd that US was a protestant polity in which it was posited that there could be a one-to-one relationship between Man and God. This fundamental belief of Christian Protestanism had fundamentally shaped the psyche of North Americans - it had defeaned (deaf) them to the voices of other peoples (their concerns, aspirations, etc.) because the North Americans were absorbed in this ongoing conversation with the Almighty. Thus they went and did whatever they wanted in Latin America (and now in the Near East) while oblivious to the protesting voices of Lations (and others).
To which a No Pasarán blogger replied as follows:
Has it ever occurred to anybody that maybe they should be listening to the Americans, at least part of the time (instead of always demanding that the U.S. listen to them)?! I mean, unless I am very mistaken, the U.S. has made a better life for most of its citizens than has any of the Latin American nations (and others).
In any case, "pen Name"'s post is quite symbolic, although he doesn't seem to realize it; While castigating Americans' individuality, he takes other nations' alleged collectivist thought for granted (as does Octavio Paz). Apparently, one Latino protesting against Uncle Sam (Castro, Chávez, etc, their respective intelligentsias, etc) is supposed to speak for all the other citizens of his country, if not the entire continent. Isn't this way of thinking the root of the problem to begin with?
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