|
MasterCaneman -> RE: American people are easily goaded and quick to temper- discuss! (9/2/2013 8:13:38 AM)
|
quote:
I think America is one of the least understood nations on Earth. Even Americans don't really understand America. We've been making it up as we go along.
That sums it up about as well as anything I've ever seen before. On another board I used to be on, I tried to explain the US in dog terms. We're like a big old sheep dog, all furry and happy as long as everything's nice and mellow, we've got a full belly and someone is scratching said belly.
The moment that comfort and leisure is taken away or threatened, off comes the sheep-dog costume revealing the wolf beneath. Not entirely accurate, but it seemed to fit the terms of that particular conversation. As many nations have learned, we're not a people to underestimate. We can be your best friend or worst enemy, but we let you make that choice because, well, we do.
In some ways, we're rather unfocused by choice, content with our own diversions and blithely ignorant of the searing red-hot issues other peoples' lives seem to revolve around. The rest of the world should prefer to keep it that way, because when they do something that causes us to concentrate our undivided attention on them, very bad things tend to happen. Most nations lose wars because their opponents are better armed, trained, and motivated. We lose them largely because we lose interest more than anything else.
I won't touch on road rage as a metric for determining a society's propensity for violence. I was in Canada a couple years ago, and I watched two otherwise sane and civilized gentlemen of that fine nation get into a knock-down drag-out fistfight in a Zeller's parking lot because one guy parked a bit too close to the other. Road rage is more a personal expression of inability to rationally handle a situation more than a bellwether of a society.
|
|
|
|
