Δεν ξέρω τι συμβαίνει, αλλά κάθε φορά που βλέπω κάποιο λευκό να με πλησιάζει, αγχώνομαι. Η καρδιά μου αρχίζει να χτυπά δυνατά, κι αμέσως αρχίζω ν’ αναζητώ μια οδό διαφυγής και τρόπους να υπερασπιστώ τον εαυτό μου. Τι γυρεύω σ’ αυτό το σημείο της πόλης μετά τη δύση του ηλίου; Μα δεν είχε πάρει το μάτι μου τις ύποπτες συμμορίες λευκών που καραδοκούσαν σε όλες τις γωνίες, πίνοντας Starbucks και φορώντας τα χρώματα της συμμορίας τους τιρκουάζ της Gap ή μοβ του J. Crew; Τι ηλίθιος που είμαι! Τώρα ο λευκός πλησιάζει πιο κοντά, όλο και πιο κοντά -και τότε- ουφ! Με προσπερνάει χωρίς να με πειράξει, κι αναστενάζω από ανακούφιση.

Οι λευκοί με τρομάζουν. Ίσως να είναι δύσκολο να το καταλάβετε -λαμβάνοντας υπόψη ότι κι εγώ είμαι λευκός- αλλά, βλέπετε, το χρώμα μου μού δίνει μια ιδιαίτερη αίσθηση. Για παράδειγμα, διαπιστώνω ότι είμαι πολλές φορές τρομακτικός κι επομένως ξέρω τι λέω. Πιστέψτε αυτό που σας λέω: αν βρεθείτε ξαφνικά περιστοιχισμένοι από λευκούς, καλύτερα να προσέχετε. Όλα μπορούν να συμβούν.

Ως λευκοί, έχουμε παρασυρθεί και νομίζουμε ότι είναι ασφαλές να βρισκόμαστε μαζί με άλλους λευκούς. Μας έχουν διδάξει από τη γέννηση μας ότι πρέπει να φοβόμαστε τους ανθρώπους με διαφορετικό χρώμα. Αυτοί είναι που θα σου κόψουν το λαιμό! Ωστόσο, καθώς ξανασκέφτομαι τη ζωή μου, βλέπω να προβάλλει ένα περίεργο αλλά αδιαμφισβήτητο μοντέλο. Όποιος μ’ έχει βλάψει στη διάρκεια της ζωής μου – το αφεντικό που μ’ απέλυσε, ο δάσκαλος που μ’ έκοψε, ο λυκειάρχης που με τιμώρησε, το παιδί που με χτύπησε με μία πέτρα στο μάτι, το άλλο παιδί που με πυροβόλησε με το όπλο του, ο διευθυντής που δεν ανανέωσε το συμβόλαιο για την εκπομπή μου, TV Nation, o τύπος που με παρακολουθούσε επί τρία χρόνια, ο λογιστής που εξαιτίας του πλήρωσα διπλάσιους φόρους, ο μεθυσμένος που έπεσε πάνω μου με το αυτοκίνητο του, ο διαρρήκτης που μου έκλεψε το στέρεο, ο εργολάβος που με υπερχρέωσε, η κοπέλα μου που με παράτησε, η επόμενη κοπέλα μου που με παράτησε ακόμα πιο γρήγορα, ο πιλότος του αεροπλάνου στο οποίο βρισκόμουν και τρακάρισε μ’ ένα  φορτηγό στον αεροδιάδρομο (μάλλον θα είχε να φάει μέρες), ο άλλος πιλότος που αποφάσισε να πετάξει μέσα από έναν κυκλώνα, ο τύπος στο γραφείο που αφαίρεσε επιταγές από το μπλοκ των επιταγών μου και μου έκλεψε συνολικά δεκάξι χιλιάδες δολάρια — όλοι αυτοί ήταν λευκοί. Σύμπτωση; Δε νομίζω!

Ποτέ δεν μου έχει επιτεθεί μαύρος, ποτέ δεν μου έκανε έξωση μαύρος, ποτέ δεν μου έκλεψε την προκαταβολή μαύρος σπιτονοικοκύρης, ποτέ δεν είχα μαύρο σπιτονοικοκύρη, ποτέ δεν συναντήθηκα στο Χόλυγουντ με μαύρο στέλεχος, ποτέ δεν είδα μαύρο ατζέντη στο κινηματογραφικό/τηλεοπτικό πρακτορείο που με εκπροσωπεί, ποτέ δεν αρνήθηκε μαύρος στο παιδί μου να μπει στο πανεπιστήμιο της επιλογής του, ποτέ δεν ξέρασε πάνω μου μαύρος έφηβος σε συναυλία των Motley Crue, ποτέ δεν με σταμάτησε μαύρος μπάτσος, ποτέ δεν μου πούλησε σαράβαλο μαύρος πωλητής αυτοκινήτων, ποτέ δεν είδα μαύρο πωλητή αυτοκινήτων, ποτέ δεν μου αρνήθηκε μαύρος ένα τραπεζικό δάνειο, ποτέ δεν προσπάθησε μαύρος να θάψει την ταινία μου, και ποτέ δεν άκουσα μαύρο να λέει: «Σκοπεύουμε να καταργήσουμε δέκα χιλιάδες θέσεις εργασίας εδώ – καλημέρα σας!»

Δεν νομίζω ότι είμαι ο μόνος λευκός που μπορεί να προβάλει αυτούς τους ισχυρισμούς. Κάθε άσχημη κουβέντα, κάθε απάνθρωπη πράξη, κάθε ταλαιπωρία και πόνος που έχω υποστεί στη ζωή μου είναι συνδεδεμένα μ’ ένα λευκό πρόσωπο. Γιατί, λοιπόν, θα ‘πρεπε να φοβάμαι τους μαύρους; Κοιτάζω γύρω μου τον κόσμο στον οποίο ζω – και δεν μ’ αρέσει να λέω ιστορίες για μικρά παιδιά, αλλά δεν είναι οι Αφροαμερικανοί που έφεραν τον πλανήτη σ’ αυτή την οικτρή, τρομακτική κατάσταση. Πρόσφατα ένας τίτλος στο επιστημονικό ένθετο των New York Times έθετε το ερώτημα «Ποιος κατασκεύασε την υδρογονοβόμβα;» Το άρθρο αναφερόταν σε μια διαμάχη που είχε ανακύψει μεταξύ εκείνων που διεκδικούν τον έπαινο για την κατασκευή της πρώτης βόμβας. Ειλικρινά δεν μ’ ενδιαφέρει καθόλου — γιατί ήδη γνωρίζω τη μόνη σωστή απάντηση: «ΗΤΑΝ ΕΝΑΣ ΛΕΥΚΟΣ!» Κανένας μαύρος δεν κατασκεύασε ή χρησιμοποίησε ποτέ βόμβα με σκοπό να αφανίσει χιλιάδες αθώους, είτε στην Οκλαχόμα, είτε στο Κολουμπάιν14, είτε στη Χιροσίμα. Όχι, φίλοι μου, ο λευκός είναι πάντα ο υπεύθυνος. Ας ρίξουμε μια ματιά στον σχετικό πίνακα:

* Ποιος προκάλεσε τη μαύρη πανούκλα; Ένας λευκός.

* Ποιος ανακάλυψε τα PBC, PVC, ΡΒΒ και τα τόσα άλλα χημικά που μας σκοτώνουν;

Λευκοί.

* Ποιοι ξεκίνησαν τους πολέμους στους οποίους έχει μετάσχει η Αμερική; Λευκοί.

* Ποιοι είναι υπεύθυνοι για τα προγράμματα του FOX;

Λευκοί.

* Ποιος ανακάλυψε το ψηφοδέλτιο-πεταλούδα;

Ένας λευκός.

* Ποιος είχε την ιδέα να ρυπάνει τον κόσμο με τη μηχανή εσωτερικής καύσης;

Ένας ασπρουλιάρης, να ποιος.

* Το Ολοκαύτωμα; Αυτός δυσφήμισε φοβερά τους λευκούς (γι’ αυτό προτιμάμε να τον αποκαλούμε ναζί και τους συνεργάτες του Γερμανούς).

* Τη γενοκτονία των Ιθαγενών Αμερικανών; Λευκός.

* Τη δουλεία; Ασπρουλιάρης!

* Μέχρι στιγμής, στη διάρκεια του 2001, αμερικανικές εταιρείες έχουν απολύσει πάνω από 700.000 ανθρώπους. Ποιος διέταξε τις απολύσεις;

Λευκοί διευθύνοντες σύμβουλοι.

* Ποιος μου κόβει συνέχεια τη σύνδεση στο Ίντερνετ;

Κάποιος μαλάκας λευκός κι αν τον βρω, θα γίνει ένας νεκρός λευκός.

Κατονομάστε το πρόβλημα, την ασθένεια, τα ανθρώπινα βάσανα, ή την απελπισία και τη δυστυχία εκατομμυρίων και στοιχηματίζω δέκα δολάρια ότι θα σας κατονομάσω την επόμενη κιόλας στιγμή ένα λευκό ένοχο.

Κι όμως, τι βλέπω κάθε βράδυ στις ειδήσεις; Μαύρους που υποτίθεται ότι σκοτώνουν, βιάζουν, κλέβουν, μαχαιρώνουν, λεηλατούν, εξεγείρονται, πουλάνε ναρκωτικά, είναι νταβατζήδες, κάνουν πάρα πολλά παιδιά, πετάνε τα παιδιά τους από τα παράθυρα, είναι ορφανοί, άθεοι κι απένταροι. «Σύμφωνα με τις περιγραφές ο ύποπτος ήταν μαύρος… σύμφωνα με τις περιγραφές ο ύποπτος ήταν μαύρος… ΣΥΜΦΩΝΑ ΜΕ ΤΙΣ ΠΕΡΙΓΡΑΦΕΣ Ο ΥΠΟΠΤΟΣ ΗΤΑΝ ΜΑΥΡΟΣ…». Σε όποια πόλη κι αν βρίσκομαι, οι ειδήσεις είναι πάντα οι ίδιες, ο ύποπτος είναι πάντα ο ίδιος απροσδιόριστος μαύρος. Απόψε βρίσκομαι στην Ατλάντα, και ορκίζομαι ότι το αστυνομικό σκίτσο του μαύρου ύποπτου στην τηλεόραση είναι ακριβώς το ίδιο με το σκίτσο του μαύρου ύποπτου που είχα δει χτες το βράδυ στο Ντένβερ και προχτές το βράδυ στο Λος Άντζελες. Σε όλα τα σκίτσα είναι συνοφρυωμένος, απειλητικός και φοράει το ίδιο καπελάκι! Μα είναι δυνατό να διαπράττει ο ίδιος μαύρος όλα τα εγκλήματα στην Αμερική;

Πιστεύω ότι έχουμε εθιστεί τόσο πολύ απ’ αυτή την εικόνα του μαύρου που φταίει για οτιδήποτε ώστε μας είναι αδύνατο να ξεπεράσουμε αυτή την πλύση εγκεφάλου. Στην πρώτη μου ταινία, το Roger & Me, μια λευκή γυναίκα στο γραφείο Κοινωνικής Πρόνοιας σκοτώνει ένα κουνελάκι χτυπώντας το μ’ ένα ξύλο για να το πουλήσει για «κρέας» αντί για κατοικίδιο. Μακάρι να είχα ένα κέρμα για κάθε φορά που κάποιος μου είπε τα τελευταία δέκα χρόνια πόσο «αηδιασμένος» και «σοκαρισμένος» ένιωσε όταν είδε να θανατώνεται μ’ αυτό τον τρόπο το «δύσμοιρο χαριτωμένο λαγουδάκι». Η σκηνή, είπαν, τους προκαλούσε αναγούλα. Ορισμένοι αναγκάστηκαν να κοιτάξουν αλλού ή να φύγουν από τον κινηματογράφο. Πολλοί αναρωτήθηκαν για ποιο λόγο περιέλαβα μια τέτοια σκηνή. Η ΜΡΑΑ (Motion Picture Association of America) αξιολόγησε την ταινία ως ακατάλληλη λόγω της σκηνής αυτής (κάτι που ανάγκασε την εκπομπή 60 Minutes να κάνει ένα ρεπορτάζ σχετικά με τη βλακεία του συστήματος αξιολόγησης). Δάσκαλοι μου γράφουν και μου λένε ότι χρειάστηκε ν’ αφαιρέσουν τις σκηνές αυτές για να μη βρουν τον μπελά τους επειδή προβάλλουν την ταινία μου στους μαθητές τους. Αλλά σε λιγότερο από δύο λεπτά μετά τη σκηνή με την κυρία και το λαγουδάκι, περιέλαβα μια άλλη σκηνή στην οποία η αστυνομία του Φλιντ πυροβολεί και σκοτώνει ένα μαύρο άντρα που φορούσε μια μπέρτα του Σούπερμαν και κρατούσε ένα πλαστικό παιδικό όπλο. Ούτε μία φορά —ούτε μία— δεν ήρθε κάποιος να μου πει: «Δεν μπορώ να πιστέψω ότι έδειξες στην ταινία σου να πυροβολείται ένας μαύρος! Ήταν φρικτό! Αηδιαστικό! Δεν μπορούσα να κοιμηθώ για βδομάδες!» Ένας μαύρος ήταν, βλέπετε, όχι ένα μικρό χαριτωμένο λαγουδάκι. Δεν σοκάρει η κινηματογράφηση της δολοφονίας ενός μαύρου (τουλάχιστον όχι για το συμβούλιο της ΜΡΑΑ που δεν είδε τίποτα το άσχημο στη συγκεκριμένη σκηνή).

Για ποιο λόγο; Επειδή ο πυροβολισμός εναντίον ενός μαύρου δεν σοκάρει πια — το αντίθετο μάλιστα. Και αυτό είναι φυσικό. Έχουμε εθιστεί τόσο πολύ να βλέπουμε μαύρους να σκοτώνονται —στις ταινίες και τις βραδινές ειδήσεις— ώστε φτάσαμε να το αποδεχόμαστε σαν δεδομένο.

Σιγά το πρόβλημα, άλλος ένας νεκρός μαύρος.

Έτσι κάνουν οι μαύροι – σκοτώνουν και σκοτώνονται.

Συνηθισμένα πράματα.

(Michael Moore – Ηλίθιοι Λευκοί)

(και άλλες θλιβερές δικαιολογίες για την κατάσταση της Αμερικής)

Schon immer haben wir uns gefragt, warum uns Bibliothekswesen so leicht das “Shhhhhh!” aus dem Mund entfleucht – manchmal wie von selbst, fast automatisch. Einer hat die Erklärung, nämlich Michael Moore; ja, der Michael Moore. Aber hier in Deutschland dürfte sie kaum jemand kennen.

Denn nur in der bei Penguin Books erschienenen zweiten Ausgabe “published for the English-speaking world outside of North America” seines ursprünglich Ende 2001 bei ReganBooks/Harper-Collins erschienenen Bestsellers “Stupid White Men” ist ein gesondertes Einleitungskapitel (“Introduction to the Penguin Edition”) erschienen, in dem er über die schwierige Veröffentlichungsphase seines Buches nach 9/11 berichtet.  Darin finden sich folgende Zeilen über BibliothekarInnen und ihre Neigung zum “Shhhhhh”:

Thank God for librarians! … Most people think of them as all mousy and quiet and telling everyone to “Shhhhhh!”. I’m now convinced that “shush” is just the sound of the steam coming out of their ears as they sit there plotting the revolution! You better believe they’re mad.

Wie kommt Michael Moore nur zu dieser lustigen Erklärung für unser “Shhhhhh”? Nun, daran, dass “Stupid White Men” überhaupt erscheinen konnte, haben engagierte amerikanische BibliothekarInnen einen wesentlichen Anteil. Die problematische Veröffentlichungsgeschichte des Buches lässt sich im Wikipedia-Artikel nachlesen:

Das Buch wurde vor dem 11. September 2001 geschrieben und auch gedruckt (die erste Auflage, 50.000 Exemplare, verließ am 10. September 2001 die Druckerei). Es wurde vom Verlag (ReganBooks/HarperCollins Publishers) jedoch zurückgehalten und erst kurze Zeit nach dem 1. Dezember 2001 vertrieben. Am Abend des 1. Dezember 2001 hatte Michael Moore aus dem – bis dahin noch nicht erhältlichen Buch – öffentlich gelesen. Dies löste – obwohl kein Pressevertreter anwesend war – innerhalb weniger Tage soviel Wirbel aus, dass das Buch dann doch in den Vertrieb gegeben wurde, und schnell in verschiedenen Bestenlisten Platz 1 erreichte. Der Verlag hatte vorher von Michael Moore verlangt, einen Großteil des Buches umzuschreiben und viele ‘unpassende’ Formulierungen zu entschärfen oder zu streichen. Die bereits gedruckten Exemplare sollten vernichtet werden.

Was im deutschen Wikipedia-Artikel fehlt (nicht aber in dem der englischen WP!), und was Moore in dem gesonderten Penguin-Vorwort erzählt, ist die Geschichte, auf wen der “Wirbel” eigentlich zurückgeht, der ReganBooks/Harper-Collins bewog, die 50.000 Exemplare in den Verkauf zu geben und nicht zu vernichten. Das ist nämlich die amerikanische Bibliothekarin Ann Sparanese. Sie war in der Veranstaltung am 1. Dezember anwesend. Im Anschluss daran verbreitete sie den Fall von Zensur ohne Moores Wissen in ihren bibliothekarischen Zusammenhängen im Internet auf Seiten, wie Michael Moore schreibt, “devoted to progressive librarian issues”. Sie bat alle, an den Verlag zu schreiben und zu fordern, Moores Buch zu veröffentlichen. Und das taten dann Hunderte, möglicherweise sogar Tausende von BibliothekarInnen in den USA. Kurz danach wurde der Autor von einem äußerst wütenden Vertreter des Verlages angerufen:

“WHAT DID YOU TELL THE LIBRARIANS! … We got it off the Internet. Some librarian is spreading the whole story. AND NOW WE’RE GETTING HATE MAIL FROM LIBRARIANS! … It’s all out in the open now.”

Der Verlag musste sich dem öffentlichen Druck schließlich beugen, und das Buch erklomm rasch die Bestsellerlisten. Moores Hochachtung vor den amerikanischen Bibliothekswesen gipfelt in dem Rat, den er seinem ersten Verleger ReganBooks/Harper Collins (und vielleicht der Bush-Regierung in Bezug auf den Patriot-Act) gibt:

Librarians are certainly one terrorist group you don’t want to mess with.

PS 1: Wie ich darauf komme, dass diese Geschichte in Deutschland kaum jemand kennt, auch Bibliothekswesen nicht? Machen Sie doch einmal eine Google-Suche mit dem String “Ann Sparanese”. Das bringt 15.400 Treffer. Führen Sie jetzt dieselbe Suche mit “Seiten auf deutsch” durch. Ergebnis? 65 Treffer, davon nur zwei aus dem bibliothekarischen Umfeld, und nur einer mit Relevanz.

PS 2: Welcher dieser eine Treffer wohl ist? Nun, auf die Geschichte mit Ann Sparanese und den Fall von versuchter Zensur hat Edlef Stabenau, mit präzisen Quellen, in einem recht kurzen Post bereits am 7.1.2002 im Netbib Weblog aufmerksam gemacht. Nicht aber auf Moores lustige Erklärung für das “Shhhhhh”. Aus Stabenaus Beitrag lässt sich schließen, dass ihm das Vorwort dieser speziellen Ausgabe nicht vorlag bzw. bekannt war.

PS 3: Auf das Vorwort, aus dem ich zitiere, kann ich nicht verlinken, weil Moores Buch natürlich nicht online ist. Mit der Amazon-Blick-ins-Buch-Funktion lässt sich aber nachprüfen, dass die beiden Ausgaben (die beiden ersten, die bei der Amazon-Ergebnis-Liste der englischen Bücher des Titels vorn stehen) verschiedene Vorworte haben, denn zumindest die Inhaltsverzeichnisse sind einsehbar.

Associated Press photo

Repugnican monkeyshines: Above is S.R. Sidarth, the Indian-American who in August 2006 captured Repugnican U.S. Sen. George Allen of Virginia on video calling him “Macaca,” which lost Allen his Senate re-election bid and effectively ended his political career. Today, Repugnican U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, who plans to run for a U.S. Senate seat for Missouri in 2010, apparently compared President Barack Obama to a “monkey” during a speech he gave at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. — the same gathering where last year boxes of “Obama Waffles” waffle mix were sold, replete with an Aunt-Jemima-like likeness of Obama.

In August 2006, then-U.S. Senator for Virginia George Allen, a Repugnican, of course, referred to a young American man of Indian descent as “Macaca.” In fact, Allen called the young man “Macaca” while the young man was video-recording one of Allen’s re-election campaign stump speeches. (Smart!)  

Wikipedia recounts it this way:

On August 11, 2006, at a campaign stop in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen twice used the word “macaca” to refer to [Shekar Ramanuja] Sidarth, an Indian-American, who was filming the event as a “tracker” for the opposing [Democrat Jim Webb's] campaign.

“Macaca” means “monkey” and is not a racial slur; it is generally used in Francophone African nations, which led to speculation that Allen may have heard the epithet from his mother, a Francophone who grew up in French-colonial Tunisia.

Allen apologized and later said that he did not know the meaning of the word. In 2008, The Washington Post speculated that, were it not for this single utterance, Allen would have been a strong candidate for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.

How calling someone with brown skin and who is a member of a race that historically has been shit and pissed upon by whitey a “monkey” is not racist escapes me. And why Allen would have used a term whose meaning he didn’t even know (but just happens to mean “monkey”) also escapes me.

Another Wikipedia entry states that the word ”macaca” most definitely is a racial slur, and notes that this is what Allen said to Sidarth on that fateful August 2006 day: “This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt — Macaca, or whatever his name is. He’s with my opponent… Let’s give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”

Never mind that Sidarth was born and raised in Virginia, while Allen was born and raised in California; Allen so warmly welcomed Sidarth to Virginia and to the United States nonetheless.

Welcoming an American-born-and-raised citizen to America because his or her skin is brown isn’t racist? Especially when you are a stupid white man doing the welcoming?

In any case, Allen lost the 2006 U.S. Senate election to Webb — “Allen’s re-election in the 2006 [Senate] race seemed inevitable until he was brought down by [the] video that showed him using a racial epithet when talking to [the] staffer for [Webb],” Wikipedia notes — and Allen has faded into political obscurity (where he belongs) since he called the young brown-skinned man “Macaca.”

So now, Salon.com’s War Room reports that today Repugnican U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, yet another stupid white man, told an interesting little tale at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C.:

…And then [Blunt] told a little story about a group of British soldiers who found themselves posted in a quiet part of India in the late 19th century or the early 20th century. It was, Blunt said, a “very lush, very quiet, very peaceful, very uneventful part of India.”

So the soldiers decided, without much better to do, that they’d build a golf course in the jungle. And then the story got weird. [Quoting Blunt:]

Almost from the day the first ball was hit on this golf course something happened they didn’t anticipate: monkeys would come running out of the jungle and then grab the golf balls. And if it was in the fairway, they might throw it in the rough. And if it was in the rough, they might throw it — they might throw it back at you!

And I can point to great and long detail about how many things they tried to eliminate the monkey problem, but they never got it done.

So finally for this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was, you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. And that is the rule in Washington all the time.

Yes, you read that right: the point of the story was that like British golfers, conservatives in Washington have to play the ball where the monkey throws it.

Adds the Salon.com writer:

Blunt, who’s running for [the U.S. Senate seat for] Missouri next year, didn’t explain precisely why he chose an analogy about monkeys to illustrate the difficulties posed by the party that opposes the country’s first black president. (They both like to screw up the white man’s golf game?)

You know, you don’t refer to a non-white person as a “monkey.” To call a non-white person a “monkey” is to dehumanize him or her, is to make him or her less than human, is to make him or her into an animal.

And then once you have dehumanized, animalized, him or her, you then can justify doing whatever you want to do to him or her, such as yelling “You lie!” during his or her nationally televised address to Congress — something that you’d never do to a white president.

These racists are putting their feelers out there, are testing the waters, are seeing how far they can go.

If we let their shit pass, if we let them get away with their blatantly racist bullshit, they will up the ante to the point where one of these white supremacists screaming “You lie!” at the president during a nationally televised address to Congress will be comparatively nothing.

Those of us Americans who don’t want the racist Repugnican Party to drag us even further back to the Dark Ages than the unelected Bush regime did during its eight long years of nightmarish unelected rule have a responsibility to confront racism every single fucking time one of these racist motherfuckers thinks that he or she can get away with it.

Even if it looks borderline, we have to confront it.

A Repugnican U.S. representative from South Carolina (the first state that seceded from the Union after Abraham Lincoln’s election) yelling “You lie!” at the nation’s first black president while being nationally televised: That is an act of racism.

Addison Graves (a.k.a. “Joe”) Wilson was not simply registering his differences of opinion with the Obama administration’s health-care reform ideas, as he and his ilk have since claimed. There is a time and a place for that, and it is not during the president’s nationally televised address to Congress.

Wilson’s intent, it seems to me, was to open the door for even further racist attacks upon the nation’s first black president. 

George Allen didn’t call an Indian-American man “Macaca” — twice – and “macaca” just happens to mean “monkey.”

Roy Blunt didn’t tell a parable that ends with the moral that conservatives in Washington “have to play the ball where the monkey throws it” and not mean it as a reference to President Barack Obama.

“Conservative” these days pretty much means “white supremacist.”

We Americans who are not white supremacists, we Americans who form the majority who voted for Barack Obama, need to search our souls and ask ourselves if we are going to allow the white-supremacist minority to take over our nation.

P.S. Take a look at the official photos of George Allen, Addison Graves (a.k.a. “Joe”) Wilson and Roy Blunt (below, in that order):

What do they all have in common?

All three of them were born sometime from 1947 to 1952, making all three of them baby-boomer assholes, and they all are Repugnican politicians who hail from states that used to be slave states. (And, of course, they’re all stupid white men.)

Be on the lookout for men who match this profile. They’re probably motherfucking racists.

I sommer har jeg lest bøker som har rørt meg,

bøker som jeg har vært enig med

og uenig med.

Jeg har lest historie,

og bøker jeg har lest før.

Jeg har lest bøker som falt i smak,

og bøker jeg måtte bruke lang tid på å fullføre.

De fleste har jeg lest fordi jeg ville, en fordi jeg må…

Den sistnevnte har jeg ikke fullført vel og merke, og i tillegg til disse har jeg lest to bøker av serien Sagaen om Isfolket (oh yeah, skal begynne i bok 40).

Updated below (Monday, July 13, 2009)

Associated Press photo

Repugnican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, shown above in an image from today, plans to beat up on U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings because Sotomayor doesn’t think, speak and act like a fellow stupid white man does.

Is it possible for the Repugnicans be bigger fucking idiots than they already are?

Federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate for her promotion to the U.S. Supreme Court begin tomorrow, and Repugnican Sen. Jeff Sessions plans to call a white firefighter who was involved in the affirmative action case that Sotomayor ruled in — that the right-wing, stupid-white-male-dominated U.S. Supreme Court reversed — to testify regarding Sotomayor.

The Repugnican Party is sinking because it still, in the year 2009, is the party of the stupid white man in a rapidly demographically changing nation. Shifting national demographics don’t favor the Repugnicans, yet here they are, making Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings a battle between the stupid white man and the “racist” Latina.

The Repugnicans already have dug their own grave; they now are throwing the dirt upon themselves.  

The “victimized” white man bullshit might fly with Rush Limbaugh’s audience and in Sessions’ podunk red state of Alabama, but nationally, it goes over like a lead balloon. That the historically oppressive stupid white man now is the “victim” because groups that historically have been oppessed by the stupid white man — women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, non-Christians, et. al. — are gaining more power is a big fucking joke to those of us who historically have been oppressed by the stupid white man.  

I encourage the stupid white men who comprise the Repugnican Party to beat up on Sonia Sotomayor as much as they possibly can. I encourage them to continue to criticize her because she does not think, act and speak just like a stupid white man does. I encourage them to continue their charade of being “victimized” because the nation is about to get its first Latina U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Since white people comprise no more than 74 percent of the U.S. population, white men comprise no more than a little more than a third of the U.S. population, yet seven of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices (more than 75 percent of them) are white men. Here’s photographic evidence:

And it would be unconscionable to the stupid white men if we had one more woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. That would be two of the nine justices being women, or fewer than 25 percent of them, even though women actually comprise slightly more than 50 percent of the U.S. population.

Yes, I encourage the stupid white men who comprise the Repugnican Party to bash Sonia Sotomayor as much as they possibly can this coming week so that the Repugnican Party’s grave is more quickly completely covered in dirt.

Update (Monday, July 13, 2009): Lest you think that my headline “Stupid White Men Set to Beat Up on Sonia Sotomayor for Being a Latina” is inaccurate and/or over the top, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the highest-ranking Repugnican member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, said this today, on the first day of Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings:

“I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their [sic] own personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their [sic] decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court.”

What Sessions is saying, essentially, is that Sotomayor isn’t allowed to be a Latina — unless she thinks, acts, speaks and rules just like a white man does. (A conservative white man, in this case, of course.)

When is the last time that a white male nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court was admonished against allowing his whiteness or his maleness or his “personal background” influence his rulings?

How can one’s race and gender, which shape one’s life, for fuck’s safe, not influence how he or she thinks and what she or he values and believes?

No, Sessions’ and the other stupid white men’s real problem with Sotomayor is that she isn’t a fellow stupid white man. She would be acceptable to the stupid white men only if she acted just like a stupid white man, like Sarah Palin-Quayle and Condoleezza Rice do.

It’s as simple as that: Repugnican opposition to Sotomayor is more about racism and misogyny than anything else. If she has to be a Latina, then she should be a “good” Latina as the Repugnicans define the term “good,” just as Condoleezza Rice is a “good” black woman and Sarah Palin-Quayle is a “good” white woman.

Times are changing and the stupid white men can’t handle it. The nation’s first black president has nominated the first Latina to the U.S. Supreme Court. This can mean only one thing: End times!

“President” George W. Bush, when he had the opportunity to replace two justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, chose two white men. He could have chosen a non-white; he did not. He could have chosen a woman; he did not. (He initially nominated Harriet Miers in 2005, in my estimation, only to give the appearance that he was willing to nominate a woman. He knew all along, I believe, that his eventual nominee would not be Miers, who ended up withdrawing herself for consideration for Supreme Court justice*, but that the nominee would be yet another white man.)

For all of their talk of “reverse discrimination,” the fact of the matter is that the Repugnicans want to see only conservative white males on the U.S. Supreme Court.

I rest my case.

*Wikipedia notes of Miers: “Miers’ nomination was criticized from people all over the political spectrum based on her never having served as a judge, her perceived lack of intellectual rigor, her close personal ties to Bush, and her lack of a clear record on issues likely to be encountered as a Supreme Court justice.”

Does this sound like a nominee that Bush really expected to get on the U.S. Supreme Court?

Associated Press and AFP photos

Meet the new “victims”: Stupid-white-male supporters Sarah Palin-Quayle and Carrie Prejean, who this past week was fired as Miss California, are now “victims,” as are all stupid white men in the United States of Amnesia. Sexy brainiac blogger Glenn Greenwald recently penetratingly wrote of these Nouveau Victimes, “the only victims they ever see are themselves, the only unfairness they recognize is to their own group, the only perspective they are capable of understanding is the tribalistic ones drummed into their heads from birth.”

My broad definition of the word “politics” is “the use of power.”

When power is abused, as it so often is in politics (as in life in general), I get pretty fucking pissed off. (Yes, eight long years of the unrelenting abuse of power by the Bush regime, which began with the stolen presidential election of 2000, had me fairly perpetually pissed off for years on end. See, I’d actually bought all of the bullshit that I had been taught as a budding Gen-Xer, such as that we actually have democracy and fairness and the rule of law here in the United States of America.)

Perhaps nothing pisses me off like the claims of groups that historically have wielded a disproportionate amount of power that they now somehow are “victims.”

Jews and Zionists (and again, Zionists are Jews but not all Jews are Zionists, I recognize) are perhaps the best at this — screaming “victim” when, in fact, they are ridiculously politically powerful.

I have written about this at some length recently (here and here), so I won’t repeat myself, but I will quote sexy gay brainiac blogger Glenn Greenwald (who, from his surname, I gather, is Jewish), who recently took up the topic of faux victimization in a post he titled “Tribalistic Self-Absorption” (the links are Greenwald’s):

The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: ”I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X — my group — is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly.” This claim persists — indeed, is often intensified –  even when Group X is clearly the strongest, most privileged and most favored group.

So intense is their need for self-victimization — so inebriating is their self-absorption and so lacking are they in any capacity for empathy — that, for all the noise and rhetoric, the arguments they make virtually always have this tribalistic self-absorption at its core.

Last week, Charles Krauthammer accused President Obama of treating every country in the world so well — except for one, the one for which Krauthammer bears great love and affection and with which he was taught from childhood to identify:

President Obama repeatedly insists that American foreign policy be conducted with modesty and humility. Above all, there will be no more “dictating” to other countries…. An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone — Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity.

The U.S. transfers tens of billions of dollars to Israel — more than any other country in the world. We demand that no country in the Middle East have nuclear weapons — except Israel. We fuel Israel’s wars with weapons transfers, ensure it is the most militarily powerful country in its region, and loyally protect it from U.N. sanctions using our veto power.

It’s virtually impossible to imagine one country that is more favorably treated by another than the various forms of largesse Israel receives from the U.S. But no matter. In Krauthammer’s eyes, the opposite is true: the U.S. treats every country fairly except Israel. That’s the country that, to him, is singled out for unfavorable treatment by the U.S….

I don’t know how much these “victims” truly believe that they are victims and how much they knowingly are misrepresenting themselves as victims, with the aim of at least maintaining the disproportionate amount of political power that they’ve already had, if not gaining even more.

Perhaps more ridiculous than the Zionists’ claims of victimhood are the claims of the stupid white men that they are “victims.”

Stupid white men (presumably heterosexual, “Christian” and overwhelmingly Repugnican) have controlled this nation thoroughly up until very recently. As do the “victimized” Zionists and Jews, stupid white men still have far more power than is proportionate to their actual numbers.

And Barack Obama, although he is the first half-white and half-black president, hardly is going to usher in the anti-whitey revolution that so many of the NRA-card-carrying talk-radio listeners seem to have believed is coming.

Indeed, if Obama didn’t act even whiter than the typical white guy, he never would have made it to the White House. The White House. He is an acceptable black guy, you see; he is “articulate” and “clean,” as Vice President Joe Biden infamously called him before Biden became vice president.

The “victimization” of stupid white men most recently has come in the form of Sonia Sotomayor, candidate for U.S. Supreme Court justice.

During her judicial career Sotomayor has made comments like this one: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better [judicial] conclusion [than would a white male judge, presumably].”

The likes of baby-boomer blowhard Rush Limbaugh, whom the largest number of people in a recent national Gallup poll identified as the apparent leader of the Repugnican Party, immediately jumped upon Sotomayor as a “racist” for such comments of hers as the one above.

Now, for more than two centuries in the United States of Amnesia, stupid white men never had to talk about their race or their possession of penises, because it was just a fucking given that if you were going to hold high political office in the nation, such as U.S. senator or U.S. Supreme Court justice, you had to be a white man. It was well understood and therefore there was no need to talk about it, that’s how entrenched white-male power was (and still is, although to a lessening extent, thank Goddess).

For Sotomayor, who presumably does not possess a penis and who is not white, life in the United States of America no doubt has been different than it has for the stupid white man. It does not make Sotomayor “racist” for talking about her minority experience as an American.

An I agree with Sotomayor 200 percent that the United States of America, which is teetering on the brink of collapse after the stupid white men have run it into the fucking ground, sure could use the wisdom and the perspective of other groups, such as women, non-whites and non-heterosexuals, to recover from the mess in which the stupid white men have mired it.

Stupid white men and their supporters, drunk and blind with power, aren’t fit to be behind the wheel, being drunk and blind. The sober vision of others is what the nation sorely needs now.

But the Zionists and the stupid white men aren’t the only “victims.”

Heterosexuals also are victims, too.

Carrie Prejean, who has a promising career in porn ahead of her, this past week was dumped as Miss California because, according to the Miss California USA organization, she was violating her contractual agreements by making unauthorized appearances (such as to deliver her anti-gay sentiments) and by refusing to make requested appearances.

But no, Prejean has blamed her overdue ousting on gays, whom her Taliban-style “Christianity” has taught her to hate.

Reminds me of how the Nazis blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jews. (And the Nazis persecuted and murdered gays, too.)

That was one of the actual “arguments” that I saw as the wingnuts were arguing for the anti-gay Proposition 8 here in California: that allowing legalized same-sex marriage actually violates their rights.

The “argument” is that if I believe that an historically oppressed minority group should be kept down — if that is my “Christian” belief — then it is a violation of my religious freedom if the oppressed groups that I believe should continue to be oppressed no longer are oppressed.

Yes, before the November vote I saw pro-Prop 8 signs that actually asserted that to allow same-sex marriage violates the First-Amendment rights (including freedom of speech and freedom of religion) of those who oppose it. There is no more fundamental American right than the right to hate and to feel superior to another group, right?

No, it’s quite simple: If your religious beliefs preclude same-sex marriage, then do not marry someone of your own sex. But keep your fucking backasswards, Taliban-like religious beliefs to yourfuckingself. Keep your toxic spiritual sludge off of the rest of us, who have the right to be free from your toxic waste.

I suppose that those white-supremacist “Christians” who believe that mixed-race marriage is wrong, according to the Old Testament, are having their First-Amendment rights violated because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that no state can outlaw mixed-race marriage. So let’s outlaw mixed-race marriage again in order to placate the members of the American Taliban!

Yes, let’s turn the United States of America into a Taliban-like theocracy, shall we? That’s exactly what the wingnut “Christians” want.

Speaking of whom, there also is Repugnican presidential wannabe Sarah Palin-Quayle out there constantly claiming victimhood, because apparently the way to show strength is to claim perpetually that you are a victim.

Palin-Quayle’s latest “victimization” is at the hand of late-night television talk-show host David Letterman, who, Palin-Quayle asserts, should apologize to all women because Letterman made some joke about one of her daughters.

No, the one who should apologize to all of the women of the United States of America — and of the world — is Palin-Quayle, who has set the women’s movement back by at least decades by supporting the stupid white male system that oppresses women. 

Palin-Quayle’s backasswards “Christo”fascist ideology threatens the typical American woman far more than does a joke by a late-night TV talk-show host. Further, Palin-Quayle and her ilk are a threat to freedom and democracy – to real freedom and democracy, not “freedom” and “democracy” as they define it, such as by stolen presidential elections, illegally spying on American citizens, illegally detaining — and torturing and even killing — individuals, and launching bogus wars for war profiteers (such as Dick Cheney’s Halliburton) and for the Israel-first lobby.

You know, if these historical oppressors truly want to be the victims now, how about those of us who have been historically oppressed by them — we women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, non-Christians, et. al. — not make them into fucking liars and start really victimizing them?

*With apologies to those who actually speak French. I think that I have that correct, but I am not sure…

Associated Press photo

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whom the Repugnicans would love to pin the blame for the treasonous and unelected Bush regime’s illegal and immoral practice of torture, is pictured in Washington yesterday.

The scandal du jour is whether Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was or was not informed by the Central Intelligence Agency in fall 2002 about the use of waterboarding, a form of torture — or, as the Bush regime euphemistically called it, an “enhanced interrogation technique” — that simulates drowning.

I suspect that Pelosi is telling the truth and that the good ol’ boys of the CIA are not telling the truth, but for the moment, until and unless actual proof materializes, it seems to be a case of she said, they said.

Nonetheless, the disempowered Repugnicans aren’t missing the opportunity to dog pile upon Pelosi. The facts never got in their way.

The fact of the fucking matter is that the Repugnicans have hated Pelosi for years. That she became the nation’s first female Speaker of the House in 2006 really rattled the stupid white men’s cages.

Just as the Repugnicans — who talk tough but who actually are pussies who refuse to take responsibility for anything — would love to pin the blame for the Bush-induced shitty economy on President Barack Obama, they’d love to paint Pelosi as the Torturer in Chief.

Nice try, motherfuckers.

Even if it turns out that the CIA did inform Pelosi in September 2002 of the waterboarding that the Bush regime was conducting, in September 2002 Pelosi wasn’t even House minority leader yet (she was not elected to that post until November 2002).

In September 2002 Pelosi was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. As a member of the party that so thoroughly was shut out of power by the Bush regime and the Repugnican-controlled Congress, how much power would Pelosi have had in the fall of 2002 – within six months before the Bush regime launched its illegal, immoral, unprovoked and unjust Vietraq War — to do anything about waterboarding anyway?  

While we’re talking about torture, can we go ahead and put Dick Cheney, the actual Torturer in Chief, on trial for his treason, war crimes and crimes against humanity already?

It’s clear that the assbite now is only trying to make a “case” for himself that he was just doing what he thought was best for the nation when he committed his felonies as vice president. Cheney is trying to sway public opinion such that enough Americans incorrectly view him as the innocent victim should he ever actually be prosecuted for his crimes.

He is anything but an innocent victim.

He should be imprisoned.

And I don’t rule out waterboarding for him.

Review by Mike Gange

Stupid White Men

Michael Moore

Reganbooks, $37.95, 277 pages.

Michael Moore has it in for U.S. President George W. Bush. It’s nothing personal and he is not threatening or dangerous. But Mr. Moore hates all those, like George W., who have used their position, prestige and family connections to grow richer, or to help their friends grow richer, at the expense of those who can’t. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore starts out as a rant, aimed at those in power who have repeatedly proven they are unwilling to work to make things better for the average Joe, the environment, the poor, equal rights, education, justice, the electoral process….

While the title implies Mr. Moore takes issue only with white males, he says that is because the predominant rule makers and oppressors are white males, but he includes all those who have forgotten about other social and environmental issues, no matter what gender or race. Just when you think Mr. Moore is a left-leaning wing-nut raving about everything, he begins to cite his sources. His argument then goes from shrill aggravation to be well researched and logical. Mr. Moore uses sources like BBC News, Miami Herald, Washington Post, PBS, U.S. News & World Report, NY Times and the World Health Organization to consistently make his points. And one of his points is George W. stole that election. While the voting hung in the balance for a couple of days, the outcome was already decided, says Mr. Moore, because former U.S. president George Bush, George W.’s father, called in favours from family, friends and even Supreme Court Justices to get Jr. elected. Under Florida Governor (and brother to George W.) Jeb Bush, the electoral laws were quietly changed months before the election, disenfranchising anyone who had been convicted of a felony. Many black voters were likewise eliminated from the polls because they might not have met strict residential rules for voting.

Mr. Moore sees the election of George W. as a disturbing trend and he is clearly upset by the right wing agenda he sees being pushed on the U.S. and the rest of the world. Mr. Moore’s anger stems from the abuse of all those issues by those in “Corporations USA” who have pushed, bullied, badgered or bought their way into the public awareness while leaving their social consciousness behind. Michael Moore’s style is extremely “in your face.” He successfully employed that with his hard hitting movie about automobiles in “Roger & Me” and for the most part it works here too. Sometimes Mr. Moore is really funny, making the reader gleefully laugh right out loud. Sometimes he is deadly serious. Other times, he is motivational and inspirational, issuing a call to arms, saying the only way to achieve change is to get politically active, to become involved at any level, whether that be running for school boards or city councils or beyond.

Throughout Stupid White Men Mr. Moore trashes the obsessive money culture and self righteous business agenda and the deceptive messages being sent. Remember the last recession? Mr. Moore wonders how the rich corporations could continue to make obscene profits for share holders, the executives could carry away huge pay packets, while the average worker was being cut back. How can the U.S. call itself a peaceful country, when it sells more handguns than many other countries combined, he says. How can we be concerned about the ozone when oil companies are allowed to work unfettered in National Parks, continues Mr. Moore. How can we be told there is an energy crunch when Detroit is still selling huge gas guzzling SUV’s, questions Mr. Moore.

What Michael Moore says isn’t always pretty, but it needs to be said. Some of the issues coming out lately in the news, stories like Enron, Worldcom, Exxon and the insider trading scandals, are proving Michael Moore is much more than just a left leaning wing-nut. Rave on, Mr. Moore.

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.

Associated Press photo

Repugnican former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, pictured on Jan. 30, when he was named to head the Repugnican National Committee, is in hot water again. First, he bucked Grand Dragon Rush Limbaugh; now, in an interview with GQ magazine, he appears to have bucked the Repugnican Party’s stance on abortion. Repugnican president wannabe Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas — whose former presidential campaign manager had vied for Steele’s job by distributing a CD including the song “Barack the Magic Negro” — has voiced his opinion that abortion rights violate the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of  happiness” guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. Of course, Repugnicans routinely deny the same “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to gay men and lesbians and other historically oppressed minority groups without a second thought.  

Repugnican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele — the first black RNC chairman who, the rumor mill has it, already is in danger of being booted from his post for not being Rush Limbaugh-y enough – uses his own birth as an “argument” against abortion.

Steele, under fire from Repugnicans and anti-abortion nuts for apparently having made statements to GQ magazine that suggest that he has a permissive stance on abortion, issued this official statement on his abortion stance:

I am pro-life; always have been, always will be. I tried to present [to GQ magazine] why I am pro-life while recognizing that my mother had a “choice” [WTF with the quotation marks?] before deciding to put me up for adoption. I thank her every day for supporting life.

The strength of the pro-life movement lies in choosing life and sharing the wisdom of that choice with those who face difficult circumstances. They did that for my mother and I am here today because they did.

In my view, Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided and should be repealed.

I realize that there are good people in our party who disagree with me on this issue. But the Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life.

I support our platform and its call for a Human Life Amendment. It is important that we stand up for the defenseless and that we continue to work to change the hearts and minds of our fellow countrymen so that we can welcome all children and protect them under the law.

Hmmm. The Repugnicans started the senseless war in Iraq that has resulted in thousands and thousands of wholly unnecessary deaths. (Well, OK, those deaths were necessary for the war profits of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and the other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp.)

And the Repugnican Party labels any real effort to help our nation’s children and others as “socialism.” Health care? Socialism! Education? Socialism! Environmental protection? Socialism!

But the Repugnican Party — which denies global warming, which, if unaddressed, threatens all life on the planet (addressing global warming, of course, equals socialism!) – deems itself “the party of life.”

Poverty in the United States increased every single fucking year that George W. Bush was “president.” (Poverty had been declining every year that Bill Clinton was president.)

Poverty kills. Is being pro-poverty being “pro-life”?

You know, the stance against abortion isn’t about the children.

The stance against abortion is about the continued domination of women by stupid white men.

Control his or her reproductive organs — be it being anti-choice or being anti-gay — and you control the person, no?

My stance on abortion is simple: While it’s unfortunate that a woman should conceive when she does not wish to carry a baby to term, I cannot see how I, a man, or how any other human being, could dictate to her what she may or may not do with her own fucking body. Roe vs. Wade seems reasonable to me as to how long a woman may wait until she has an abortion.

What about that “freedom” thing that the Repugnicans can’t shut the fuck up about?

A woman cannot have control over her own uterus but she can still have “freedom”?

The issue of abortion was decided for the nation — correctly – in Roe vs. Wade.

Gee, what other U.S. Supreme Court decisions would the Repugnicans like to overturn?

Perhaps we can segregate the public schools again and outlaw mixed-race marriage and start to police what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes!

Oh, yeah, the Repugnican Party not only is the “party of life,” but it’s the party of the future!

Updated (see below)

Reuters and Associated Press photos

New Repugnican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, pictured last month at top, has called wingnut-talk-radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh (pictured above chatting it up with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the White House in January) an “entertainer” whose shtick is “ugly” and ”incendiary.” 

It looks like a battle rages for the heart of the Repugnican Party. (I’d have written “heart and soul,” but the Repugnicans sold their souls to the devil long, long ago…)

Apparently there are two camps:

• The entrenched camp led by the bloated blowhard baby boomer (I know, I know, all of those redundancies…) Rush Limbaugh (the Repugnicans’ de facto leader, according to the pundits), which wants to try to continue to hold on to rule by stupid rich white men even though the nation and the world are changing to such a degree that the continued rule by stupid rich white men already has been made impossible (in no small part to the surreal excesses of the unelected Bush regime), and
• the less-insane camp led by Michael Steele (the titular head of the Repugnican Party [I just like writing "titular"]), which recognizes that continued rule by stupid rich white men is impossible and that therefore the Repugnican Party must change with the times or, like the dinosaurs whose existence the Repugnicans deny, die. (Personally, I believe that the rapidly changing demographics of the nation and rapid globalization, including the incredible power of the Internet [since information is power, information sharing is power sharing], already have doomed the Repugnican Party, which historically has relied on rule by stupid rich white men and by being able to keep power [including information] localized.)

Steele recently said of Limbaugh during a television appearance: “Let’s put it into context here: Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.”

Yikes.

Will the Repugnicans allow Steele, the first black chairman of the Repugnican National Committee, to diss Grand Dragon Limbaugh like that?

Will the same Repugnican Party that went apoplectic over the idea of the nation’s first black president allow Steele — whose election to the chairmanship of the RNC in late January no doubt was a knee-jerk reaction to President B. Hussein Obama’s election in November – remain in power?

Stay tuned…

Update:

So Limbaugh has responded to Steele’s comments, and is it me, or has Limbaugh issued a thinly veiled call for Steele’s resignation?

Limbaugh said: “I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be. I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican Party in the sad-sack state that it’s in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit. I might get out the hari-kari knife because I would have presided over a failure that is embarrassing to the Republicans and conservatives who have supported it and invested in it all these years.”

Yikes. “Hari-kari”?!? Are we going to lynch — er, blame — Steele, who has been the head of the Repugnican National Committee  for all of one month, for what BushCheneyCorp did to the Repugnican brand name over the past eight years? It’s all Steele’s fault that the Repugnican Party is on life support? It’s not the ideology of the Repugnican Party that the majority of Americans rejected in November? We can scapegoat just one person like that?

No, the problem is that there isn’t enough lipstick in the world to make the pig that is the Repugnican Party look pretty.

As much as I view Steele as a stupid sellout — an idiot who actually has believed that he has or ever will have the actual full acceptance of the party of the stupid white man — he inherited a political party that the drunken frat boys who comprised the unelected Bush regime trashed thoroughly, and not all of the king’s horses and not all of the king’s men can put the Repugnican Party back together again.

Still, Steele already has sucked up to Grand Dragon Limbaugh, which really doesn’t exactly lay waste to the claim that Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the tattered remnants of the Repugnican Party.

Politico reports that a backpedaling Steele today said, “My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate.… There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership” (his “leadership”?!?!) and “I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking. It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”

Nooooo, because that’s the role that Steele is going to play!

I mean, did you really think that the Repugnicans really were going to allow a black man to run their show?

No, Grand Dragon Limbaugh indeed is in charge of the Repugnican Party, as evidenced by the fact that the party’s actual head bows down obediently before him.

 

From rascism to sexism, the environment and the economy, capital punishment, education and homphobia, Michael Moore covers everything in his smorgasbord of delightfully crazed musings, Stupid White Men.

The new century  has started and Michael does not like the way things have turned.  A coup has taken place, the real president has been exiled, while George W. Bush, the “Thief-in-Chief,” has snatched the presidency for himself.  Mother nature seeks revenge, raising wtaer levels and exanding the ozone layer to 2 and a half times the size of Europe.  Women and Blacks still hold only a percentage of the rights a white man does, as they are being barred from voting and well paid jobs.  The education system is being neglected, leaving kids to rot in crumbling schools.  Everyone’s going to jail.  The rich are evading taxes.  Palestinians and Israelis are killing each other.  Michael’s reason for it all… stupid white men.

The tone is impassioned, sarcastic and sometimes scathingly hot, meant to entertain a younger audience not easily offended by harsh language or touchy subjects.  For example in the chapter “Kill Whitey,” Moore lists reasons why white people are to be more feared than black people,

• Who has started every war America has been in?  White men. 
• Who is responsible for programming on FOX? White men. 
• Who’s idea was it to pollute the world with the internal combustion engine?  Whitey, that’s who. 
• The Holocaust?  That guy really gave white people a bad name (that’s why we prefer to call him a Nazi and his little helpers Germans).  
• The genocide of Native Americans?  White man.  
• Slavery?  Whitey!

- Pg 58

Moore also enjoys pointing out the many ironies the US creates.  For example, when talking about how no other industrialized nation but the US executes child offenders Michael says,

Odd, isn’t it that a child’s diminished capacity for signing contracts is viewed as a legal barrier to enforcing a contract, but when it comes to the right to be executed, a child’s capacity is equal to that of an adult?

- Pg 206

For some very intriguing commentary on the state of the world, a good laugh, and some great lessons on politics, its definitely worth reading Stupid White Men by Michael Moore.

AFP photo

Pastor Rick Warren — who looks like a Jerry Falwell Jr. to me – has compared same-sex marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy and opposes a woman’s constitutionally protected right to have an abortion. Yet President-elect Barack Obama invited him to deliver the invocation at his inauguration anyway.

As I blogged at the time, when I had my ballot in front of me on Nov. 4, I was down to two choices for president of the United States of America: Ralph Nader or Barack Obama.

My heart mostly was with Ralph, but I figured that since Obama was going to win all of California’s 55 electoral votes anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and blacken the oval for the nation’s first non-white president.

But now, I regret that I filled in that oval. I feel majorly chumped — or punk’d, as the young ones still say (I think…).

The United States of America has many problems, but perhaps first and foremost is the problem that in the USA, lots of -isms are lumped together into one big ugly mass:

In no certain order, in the U S of A, Christianism = nationalism = patriotism = patriarchalism = sexism = heterosexism = racism = militarism = capitalism = white supremacism = xenophobism. (That’s not an exhaustive list of -isms, and I know that some of those -isms aren’t actually -isms, but as a blogger I can write whatever the hell I want.)   

So in the United States we have this huge ugly ball of wax in which one thing automatically means another such to the point that, for instance, it’s widely believed that God and Jesus hate faggots but love “freedom” bombs being dropped upon Arab and Muslim babies (kill ’em before they can become terrorists, nip it in the bud is the thinking, I guess).

One of the many national “leaders” who represents this ugly ball of wax is socially conservative baby-boomer pastor Rick Warren, whom President-elect Obama has chosen to deliver the invocation at his inauguration next month.

The millions of gay men and lesbians who voted for Obama and his bullshit promises of “hope” and “change” are pretty pissed off that Obama has chosen a pro-Proposition 8/anti-gay stupid white man from California to deliver the invocation.

Maybe Obama can invite the Ku Klux Klan Fire Dancers to perform at his inaugural. I mean: WTF?

With apologies to Bill Maher, New Rule:

The concepts of “inclusiveness,” “tolerance” and the like do not – NOT – encompass the extension of inclusiveness and tolerance and the like to haters such as Rick Warren, who represent the old, dying order of oppressive rule by stupid white men who hate and oppress women, non-whites, non-Christians, gay men and lesbians, those from other nations, et. al., et. al.

Barack Obama is not being “cool” or “inclusive” or “tolerant” or “open” or “democratic” or anything like that by inviting an oppressor to have a prominent role at his inauguration.

Obama isn’t thinking outside of the box; he’s thinking with his head up his ass, and he’s quickly losing the support of those who voted for him before he has even taken the oath of office.

If I could do it over again, I would have voted for Ralph Nader.

O apanhador no campo de centeio – J. D. Salinger

http://www.4shared.com/get/13708796/49e788d8/O_apanhador_no_campo_de_centeio_-_Salinger.html

A borboleta tatuada – Philip Pullman

http://www.4shared.com/file/51006336/5a0e90d6/A_Borboleta_Tatuada_-_Philip_Pullman.html?dirPwdVerified=46e38c1e

Conspirações , tudo que não querem que você saiba – Edson Aran

 http://www.4shared.com/file/42300212/302a6b0b/Conspiraes_-_Tudo_O_Que_No_Querem_Que_Voc_Saiba.html?s=1

Deus um delírio – Richard Dawkins

http://www.4shared.com/get/27000450/ac06e71f/Deus_um_Delirio_-_Richard_Dawkins_-_Versao_Completa.html

Clube da luta – Chuck Palahnuik

http://www.4shared.com/get/18931353/90949b57/Chuck_Palahnuik_-_Clube_da_Luta.html

Stupid White men , uma nação de idiotas – Michael Moore

http://www.4shared.com/get/17505787/6c16d4ca/Michael_Moore_-_Stupid_White_Men_uma_nao_de_idiotas.html

100 escovadas antes de dormir – Melissa Panarello

http://www.4shared.com/file/47382435/50b44c75/100_Escovadas_-_Melissa_Panarello.html?dirPwdVerified=46e38c1e

A couple weeks ago, I picked up Michael Moore’s 2008 Voting Book. After reading it, I decided I really needed to read more Moore!! LOL! (I have seen Fahrenheit 9/11 – - and LOVED it – - not too many surprises; although, the couple things that DID surprise me, just filled in the puzzle of its empty pieces.) The other day, I picked up Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country?…..and in the same area was Ann Coulter books. I thought to myself: “Self, if you are gonna give Moore the time of day, wouldn’t it be fair to give Coulter the same respect?” And I decided to pick up her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

I finished Stupid White Men and had started Dude, Where’s My Country? when I decided to just read a little of Godless. WOW – - Big Mistake!!
Now, I have heard her a couple times on TV – - and like Bill O’Reilly, a little goes a LONG way. In the first two pages I was so irritated that I had to put the book down. Within seconds of putting the book down, I realized that I would NEED to blog if I had any hope of getting to sleep tonight. (How sad is that?)
The offending sentence: “As a matter if faith, liberals believe: Darwinism is a fact, people are born gay, child-molesters can be rehabilitated, recycling is a virtue and chastity is not.” Am I that only one who feels like: 1) The ignorance of this woman is so overwhelming that 2) this drivel was enough to knock the wind clean outta you?

Firstly, I was struck with the word “Darwinism” – - and thought it odd. What does she mean by “Darwinism?” Is she referring to natural selection, evolution, Big Bang? So, I looked it up and according to Wikipedia: “ While the term has remained in use amongst scientific authors, it is increasingly regarded as an inappropriate description of modern evolutionary theory [....] In modern usage, particularly in the United States, Darwinism is often used by creationists as a pejorative term.” Ah Ha! She isn’t referring to a specific scientific study – - she is just trying to “imply contempt.” As she is not trying to pinpoint specific things and only put liberals into some sort of clumpy lump, I suppose I could argue the same thing: All conservatives believe: Creationism and The Flat Earth Theory are fact. Phew, yes, that is much better!
Oh, and as an aside, many people who believe the scientific evidence supporting evolution, do not necessarily “believe” The Big Bang Theory – - they are “open to the possibilities” and will continue to evaluate the scientific information.

Secondly, as with Creationism/Big Bang, Gayness is not KNOWN – - most liberals don’t really care how a person got their gayness – - they just want all people, including gays and conservatives to be treated equally….with the same liberties.

Thirdly, I’m not sure I know any liberals who COMPLETELY support ONLY rehabilitation attempts for child-molesters (CM). I think that most liberals will feel about CM’s the same as they do for most any first offense criminal. The first time should be about “rehabilitation” and allowing everyone one fuck-up – - and cuttin’ everyone a break. But, I don’t know many (liberals or conservatives) who would continue to advocate rehabilitation after the first offense. What about the Pedophilic Catholic Priests? Oh, that’s right, conservatives don’t want to “rehabilitate” those child-lovers – - instead, they will just move them to another child-infested Church.

Fourthly, recycling is a virtue? As opposed to what? Greed? Wastefulness? I think most liberals would be okay with that charge…..LOL!!

Fifthly, a woman who has been engaged several times is touting the virtues of chastity. Seriously? Well, I suppose that it IS possible that she is still a virgin. But, I digress. So, conservatives are a chastity bunch, eh? Do these names mean anything: Eliot Spitzer, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Randy Cunningham, Rev. Ted Haggard, David Vitter, Randall Tobias? I think it has less to do with left {wing} or right {wing}- – it has to do with getting’ a nut off. Typically, your leftist will be more “forgiving” because they don’t have the stigma of “perfection” attached to their actions. If a right-wing Conservative has an affair (whether gay or straight), it is INSTANT news….especially if the act happens to come in direct opposition to messages that they have been touting (look specifically at Ted Haggard.) It really wouldn’t surprise me if Ann was cleaning carpet.

Okay, I feel much better now…..thanks for listening!!

ADDED 11/26/2008….Karma:

…yet goes completely counter to the conventional wisdom.

Steve M. analyzes the results of a new Quinnipiac poll.  The really interesting part:

In the August poll, women favored Obama 53%-38%; now they favor him … 54%-38%. Almost identical numbers.

It’s the men who’ve switched — 48%-45% Obama in August, 53%-40% McCain now.

See?  Women aren’t stupid enough to let McCain’s sexist pick distract them from real issues.  Yet some men are that stupid.  Which ones?  To find out, Steve M. references a new Democracy Corps poll which finds the following:

…[R]ather than persuading Hillary Clinton’s supporters to vote for McCain, Palin drove Clinton’s primary voters further into the Obama camp, with roughly 80 percent of Clinton’s primary supporters now voting for Obama. Second, the McCain-Palin ticket has solidified the support of white non-college men who are now voting for McCain over Obama by 63 to 29 percent nationally (a margin virtually identical to what Bush achieved against Kerry in 2004) and by 62 to 31 percent in the battleground states.

Epic fail, John McCain.  Clinton supporters on the fence, being Democrats in the first place, were smart enough to see through John McCain’s absurd choice and have rallied around Obama.

Meanwhile, some stupid uneducated white guys see a pretty (and naïve) girl and buy into the bullshit.

Such a typical story.  It’s always the stupid white men who fuck things up.

However, citing Nate Silver, Steve points out that Sarah Palin’s polling numbers are starting to erode, and they’ll most likely continue to do so every time she faces a camera without a script.

(Because she’s grossly unqualifed, you stupid white male twits.)

Y sí. Vuelvo con Michael Moore. Para reafirmar mi opinión de lo grande que es este hombre, dejaré pequeños estractos de su libro “Estúpidos hombres blancos”, publicado en español, por cierto, por Ediciones B en marzo de 2005, y en la edición original (Stupid White Men) de 2002 por Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.  en el sello Regan Books.

- (Dirigiéndose a George W. Bush) “Haz que todos aquellos que aún creemos que existe una pizca de decencia en el clan nos sintamos orgullosos al comprobar que un Bush con sentido común es mejor que un Bush común y consentido”.

- (Dirigiéndose a George W. Bush) “Cuando se te preguntó por tu libro de infancia preferido, La oruga hambrienta, respondiste. Desgraciadamente, ese libro no se publicó hasta un año después de que te lincenciaras”.

- “Si les entretiene ver cada mes un tiroteo en escuelas y centros de trabajo yankis, si les parece que el hecho de que la tasa de mortalidad infantil en algunas ciudades supere a la de Nairobi en señal de progreso, si quieren vivir en un mundo en el que van recortándose progresivamente las libertades civiles, sigan nuestro ejemplo [el de EE.UU.]“.

- “Cabe recordar que la nueva ley antiterrorista USA Patriot Act prohibía a los bibliotecarios denegar a la policía información sobre quién está leyendo qué”.

- “En Gran Bretaña, parece que toda la atención de los últimos años (2.002 atrás) se ha centrado en el mal de las vacas locas…, dejando de lado a los hombres locos. El mero hecho de que no comamos hombres locos no es motivo para pasar por alto este grave problema de seguridad. Los políticos británicos y ejecutivos de las multinacionales hacen estragos, tratando de igualar los méritos de sus colegas de EE.UU. para mostrar al mundo que su estupidez no tiene nada que envidiar a la de los estadounidenses”.

- “Los bibliotecarios son, sin duda, un grupo terrorista con el que uno no desearía enzarzarse. [...] No debería sorprender a nadie que los bibliotecarios fueran la vanguardia de la ofensiva. Mucha gente los ve como ratoncitos maniáticos obsesionados con imponer silencio a todo el mundo, pero en realidad lo hacen porque están concentrados tramando la revolución a la chita callando”.

Nada que añadir.

I am finally beginning to understand Canadian Americanophobia. All I had to do was watch the movie, “Bowling for Columbine”. All of my answers as to how the AA Canadian public got their information was getting increasingly obvious. I used to blame it all on the education, child rearing in the homes, the CBC and the BBC. But there’s another element to consider:

Had I underestimated the power of Snake Oil Salesman, Michael Moore?

“The Culture of Fear” was tossed into my lap several times from so called “experts” on American culture. So, I thought about it and realized that this label is both accurate and inaccurate at the same time. Let me explain. But before we continue, it’s necessary for me to point out that there are two different definitions of the word, “fearful”.

• Fearful: being afraid
• The Americanophobic definition of “fearful”: Also known as Paranoid Schizophrenia or just simply being afraid of something that’s not there and/or having delusions that something fearful is there when it is not.

My main point with this blog entry is to explain the reasoning behind people owning guns (aside from hobbyists), why Americans look or act paranoid, and possible reasoning as to why Americans are more homicidal than those from other developed nations. Also as a disclaimer, please keep in mind while you’re reading this that I am *not* defending criminals. That’s the job of the Americanophobes – not me.

My opinions as to how we got so violent and out of control:

(1) First off, I don’t think many are aware of how most Americans are raised. Forget about history and past wars. If Americans walk around feeling “fearful” all their lives, there’s got to be a reason for it, no? One must look no further than how we are raised. Most Americans learn the difference between right and wrong via very violent and painful punishments in the home as toddlers, kids, and as adolescents. And many of our ancestors used to get their ass kicked in school by the nuns. There are gray areas when it comes to child discipline, and I’m confident to say that many forms of discipline over here are actually child abuse just veiled under the term, “discipline” to make the offenders feel better about what they do. Violent discipline varies from family to family and can happen on several different levels. We learn to fear our parents. If we are good boys and girls, we are only doing so to avoid a “can-o-whoop-ass” from our parents. We are not behaving because we have “learned” or because “we want to”. We don’t know the answers or why we do what we do, but for the most part, we’ll do anything to please our parents (until the end) and to avoid as much pain as possible in the process. We go out into the world as an “independent” adult carrying that same fear – although irrational. (Please keep in mind that I am generalizing here. If you want specifics on how I feel about violent discipline, read this.)

But wait. This way of being brought up isn’t specific to Americans. This “doing things to avoid an irrational or rational fear of getting spanked” isn’t specific to American culture either. I would like to bet, however, that there is more domestic violence (especially of the torturous kind i.e. tying kids to bed etc) in the US compared to any other developed nation. Or is it just that America talks about her violent problems more? Australia being similarly jaded, I’d be curious of what their crime rate is in comparison to America’s.

One in three Americans girls and one in 5/6 American boys are sexually abused in the US, and these are just the stats that are reported. There are symptoms of being sexually abused and those include hyper-vigilance, watchfulness, and the inability to trust like the unabused are capable of doing. This is to be expected. Even those victims who claim that they are over the rape still possess a somewhat paranoid nature to them that is to be expected. Another name for this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Add this in with the mixture of violent attacks on innocent Americans (whether it be coming from the home, school, or in the big wide open spaces) and you get a lovely cocktail of jaded Americans. Because that’s what we are.

Americans are jaded. This is a more accurate way of describing us. By calling us fearful (in the form of schoolyard bullying) is actually belittling and mocking all the victims of crimes here. It’s a condescending and pretentious way of spitting on people that have been hurt. Let’s see you do any better considering the circumstances. The fact of the matter is that one’s place of birth does *not* dictate how one deals with a traumatic experience. Unless you’ve been there yourself under the very same circumstances and past, you have no right to get on your high-horses and preach how someone is to feel their feelings – especially when you don’t even live here in a less than modest neighborhood to know what the hell you’re talking about. Now, this is no excuse for people to wave their guns at every suspicion, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about paranoid and fearful Americans, right? Americanophobes aren’t angry at the criminals here because they mourn their death when they get the death penalty. Americanophobes are mad at the peaceful gun-holders and non-gun-holders in America. Even though I don’t own a gun myself, I defend the responsible and peaceful law abiding citizens living here who are being unnecessarily attacked. Anyway, after reading this, I grew confused. It shows that Australian and Canadian rapes far outweigh American rapes. Hmm…. I am positive there is a connection between rape and jaded behavior, but am not convinced it causes violent behavior leading to one’s death.

(2) If you look at other developed countries, America is the only country where one must look after himself. We do have social services and welfare programs here, but compared to the rest of the world, the US stands alone and its people stand alone and must fend for themselves. It’s about the “I” not the “we”. This is very stressful for everybody living in the states except for those people who GENUINELY love their jobs (which are the minority). There’s much contempt here for others that don’t work as hard regardless of their excuse. (Who woulda thunk it?) There’s also much contempt for those countries that have more free time, work less, live longer, and enjoy life more. Superfrenchie displays very good examples of this here and here. There are many in the US who pretend that they love to work long and hard hours at stressful jobs, but deep down inside they are bitter, jealous, angry, and resentful and take out these frustrations on other people – namely those who are defenseless (their kids) and not working as hard.

(3) Putting the blacks through slavery has much to do with our violent beginning as well. Not that the evil whities weren’t already violent to begin with (hey, weren’t the British who were powering the world for 300 years with THEIR blazing firearms white too? Oops!?!? ), but it doesn’t help that the Blacks fought back very violently (and justifiably so!). Has not anyone ever heard the term, “violence begets more violence”? It doesn’t matter who’s the perpetrator or who’s the victim. Violence simply begets more violence. Now, whites beat/kill each other up, blacks beat/kill each other up and so on. Many countries (both past and present) have been guilty of keeping slaves (both black, white, and other races). And Americans held on to slaves the longest.

(4) Poverty: There is more unemployment in Canada and other socialized countries compared to the US. But this doesn’t mean that they are poverty stricken. My bet is that there’s more poverty in the states. My bet is that this contributes significantly to our crime rates.

(5) Could it also have something to do with the fact that we don’t have proper institutions for the mentally ill here as other countries have? Most of our severely mentally ill are the homeless that you see when you come here. Thanks to our “compassionate” government, this may be just another of several reasons why there is more crime here.

(6) More examples of bad parenting in America: Read from 1-4 in this article written by “Mohammed”. It is an opinion, but I concur with all that he says because I see this too much over here. It is hard to live in America, in my opinion. Don’t be fooled by the sunshiny smiley faces. Some of us pretend that we are happy just to keep our sanity. Life is very stressful here compared to other developed nations. Some Americans make bad decisions to have too many kids that are shoved into daycare centers while mom and dad work all day. They trust day care as the kids’s virtual parents more than they trust themselves. Parents don’t pay attention to the signs when their kids come home from school or the day care depressed or acting funny. If America has shown anything, it has shown that kids living here are not important. They are too little to worry about as adults are struggling for survival and have their own “adult problems” to worry about daughter and son. All of these bad choices and stressful living conditions that we are subjected to and subject ourselves to is bound to show on the people…somehow…someway, wouldn’t you think? Kids are treated here with no more respect than dust particles, so in the end they act the way they are treated: no self-esteem and running on auto-pilot until they crack. This is not a rocket science.

It’s not that uneducated and stressed-out people hump more than others. It’s that they don’t use birth control and want to make more kids so that they can feel in control and have others to powerhouse. These reckless parents come out of abusive homes too, and the cycle continues from one generation to the next. Where one feels powerless in their lives due to past abuses, they feel the need to establish power through making babies – or by making babies to have someone love them unconditionally, for once. It’s sad. And it’s a continuous cycle in America which begs that each of you reading this watch the movie, IDIOCRACY. Once seeing that, everything I’m typing here will make more sense.

With that said, those suffering from severe cases of PTSD and/or (REAL!) Paranoia will more than likely be purchasing a gun. Or not? PTSD is not just for vets and is more complex than what people make it out to be. Let’s look at the symptoms:

* sleep problems including nightmares and waking early
* flashbacks and replays which you are unable to switch off
* impaired memory, forgetfulness, inability to recall names, facts and dates that are well known to you
* impaired concentration
* impaired learning ability (eg through poor memory and inability to concentrate)
* hypervigilance (feels like but is not paranoia)
* exaggerated startle response
* irritability, sudden intense anger, occasional violent outbursts
* panic attacks
* hypersensitivity, whereby every remark is perceived as critical
* obsessiveness – the experience takes over your life, you can’t get it out of your mind
* joint and muscle pains which have no obvious cause
* feelings of nervousness, anxiety
* reactive depression (not endogenous depression)
* excessive levels of shame, embarrassment
* survivor guilt for having survived when others perished or for not having done more to help or save others
* a feeling of having been given a second chance at life
* undue fear
* low self-esteem and shattered self-confidence
* emotional numbness, anhedonia (inability to feel love or joy)
* feelings of detachment
* avoidance of anything that reminds you of the experience
* physical and mental paralysis at any reminder of the experience

This is not something to laugh at, by the way, as Canadians and people all over the world suffer from PTSD too. Even animals suffer from this.

All I’m trying to say is to dig behind and beyond the simplicity of just thinking all white Americans are born evil, non-human, and inherently violent, nuts, and paranoid. This is yet another case of the Americanophobes taking a COMPLEX subject and looking at it with a narrow black and white view. What else is new in Anti-America?

Can people be born evil? Or are the Americanophobes claiming that all white Americans are born evil? Most of us? Only the white people? Or just the white people BORN in America? If you say that people aren’t born evil, than you’ll be forced into a more complex route of admitting that the Americans that ARE criminal are under environmental duress and past abuse. Whichever the case, both answers show criminals to be victims as well. Criminals: victims or not should be treated as such: not with sympathy, not with empathy, but with punishment, in my opinion. However, the people the Americanophobes yell at are the non-criminal gun holders and non-gun holders which is very curious. Does anyone have any answers for THAT?

If you’re talking about those who possess guns and leave them lying around loaded for any kid to pick up and start shooting, then you’ve got an argument. We are then talking about irresponsible gun holders. If the access to guns decline in the US, so will the accidents. This is a HUGE problem here. I still stand by the 2nd amendment, but what I don’t stand by is how easily obtainable they are (just like in Canada and Switzerland) as background checks are a joke. There should be a more formal process in which the person trying to buy a gun is examined mentally with a fine tooth comb.

I am no arm-chair psychologist or anything. I, just like other curious people, wonder why we kill people so easily as we know it’s not so much to do with firearm possession as it is to do with the gun owners themselves! Suffice it to say, there are plenty of stabbings, stranglings, and other forms of homicide here that don’t involve guns.

One Brit flaunts his expertise on Guns in America.

(sic) Sorry, do americans not have fists like the rest of the world?

Since when was shooting a acceptable method of self defence? As for killing food, that can be done with other means.

He goes on to explain his point further:

(sic) My point is, it isnt exactly an acceptable reason to have a gun. If someone is armed with a knife, then its only right then that you defend yourself in the same way.

What would be better, getting rid of guns and decreasing the amount of deaths or keeping it for self defence and having those deaths at the same level?

Theres a reason, besides the huge population that USA has such high crime/homicide rate.. Its because the majority of the rest of the world dont let you own a gun for no reason. Just seems stupid that they continue to have it for self defence, when their are so many alternatives.

What are we debating here? Criminals (who kill PEOPLE as a sport) or gun holders (who are responsible and using it for defense or other hobbies not relating to murder)? You can’t conveniently blur these two together. There IS a difference. Irresponsible people with guns ARE the minority.

Do the Anti’s not realize that there are very nice law abiding citizens who have guns that only use them for defense and not offense? Do the Anti’s not realize that most of the people in the US who commit homicide out of OFFENSE are holding ILLEGALLY OBTAINED or stolen firearms? Do the Anti’s not realize that even though we own guns here, that British people have found the US to be a more peaceful place to live? Do the Anti’s not realize how EASILY accessible firearms are in Switzerland and how most males have them (and the same with Holy Canada)? As you can see here, simply HAVING a gun is VERY different than having urges to kill innocent people for fun. Is this concept too hard to grasp? If it is not just holding a gun that automatically makes one a criminal, then what is it? This just simply proves that we must look deeper to find the answers as to why Americans are more violent. And we ***shouldn’t*** just limit our research to gun crime, it should be ALL crime! It’s most curious how the Americanophobes talk more about gun control in America than they do about crime where a gun wasn’t used. Those crimes are completely blacked out. It seems more likely that they just want guns prohibited than wanting crime to decrease. I don’t think that the Far Left really care about innocents getting killed at all as their agenda to flex their supremest muscles at the yanks are more important than anything else. This is what the “morally superior” Far Left is all about: their agenda (not human lives).

Michael Moore was comparing the violence in the US with Canada. You’d have to be retarded *not* to understand why Americans are more fearful. The stupid Americanophobic Leftists are thinking that Americans live day in and day out thinking that some Black or Arab “boogie-man” is hiding in the bushes waiting to kill us whether we’re in our own countries or abroad. Naturally folks, where violence is MORE prevalent, the normal response to lock your doors and not walk alone at night in some areas of town is NOT “racially motivated” nor is it “unique” to Americans. I feel almost retarded myself for having to explain the obvious.

I was amused. One Canadian woman was interviewed by Micheal Moore in this movie (Bowling for Columbine) and she stated that her home was broken into AND vandalized while she was sleeping at night. She stated that the incident didn’t scare her , and that she continues to *not* lock her doors at night because that would be, yanno, too American she doesn’t want to disconnect herself from the rest of the world. I think she’d feel very comfortable over here in the US as we harbor the most mentally ill people in the civilized world, so she’d feel right at home. Welcome, drunk Blondie!

*sighs*

You know, it’s these people like HER that deserve to be vandalized and robbed! As a matter of fact, I could use some things as money is a little tight where I am. I wonder if she’d give me her address in Canada, and then I can come over and take what I like while she’s sleeping? She seems very generous to me. And hey, aren’t the AA Canadians all about sharing their money with the less fortunate? She should have gone one step further and just gave her address out publicly considering how “open to visitors” she is. One question, though: Do Canadians lock their door when they have sex? Hmm… OK, I know I’m getting hammy here, but if you had watched the film, you’d see what I mean. We UHHMERICANS are considered anti-social and again, insular, for locking our doors as well. After all, that’s not friendly behavior, right?

Surely, Americans are painfully and clinically “guilty” of locking their doors more than Canadians, but Michael Moore gives this impression that none of us over here leave our doors unlocked. And as a matter of fact, there are certain towns and neighborhoods where people feel comfortable keeping their doors unlocked in the US – just as there are town, cities, neighborhoods in CANADA where people LOCK their doors. How stupid does Michael Moore and Co. think Americans are??? And I don’t believe that ditsy Canuck who said that she wasn’t scared after the break-in. She was TERRIFIED. She’s just trying to make Canada out to be something that it’s not. I don’t care what country one is living in. At the end of the day, we are all people just trying to get by in the world. We all bleed the same blood and cry the same tears and feel the same feelings. I am not convinced, otherwise.

It’s funny how Americans are looked down upon for locking their doors, yet that was also the case in Japan when I was living there. I also had never heard of a girl living living in an apartment alone in Japan that kept her doors unlocked. (I’m sure they leave their doors open in the country areas, though.) My Japanese friends even told me to avoid certain areas as they were deemed “dangerous”. Hmm…. (are they ‘fraid of the blacks too?) Has any research taken place in other developed countries regarding this “issue”? Naw. It’s just got to be America, right? Well, of course!! Let’s not defeat the purpose of Americanophobia!

To move on, the perceived uniqueness of learning by “cause and effect” is not a phenomenon peculiar to the “American Culture”, either. Once again, look at the violence here in proportion to people “acting careful” to prevent such things happening to them.

Another question comes to mind. Should our media not cover crime news or perhaps not cover it as much? We know for a fact that it is real. It does happen. And anybody with 1/4th of a brain should realize that crime news is hardly covered in Canada because it DOESN’T HAPPEN ANYWHERE NEAR AS MUCH IN CANADA. So, what ARE the benefits of covering crime news? Is it just there to cater to the gore-loving, blood-thirsty audience? Is it there to make Americans realize what’s going on out there so as to take precaution and promote safety? What if there’s someone in the neighborhood that is a sniper killer? You know, it is so easy for a Canadian living in Peaceful Canada to lecture Americans on what and what not do do regarding safety. Don’t you think? What about the black people in the US that have guns and lock THEIR doors? Have you a fitting label for them? Paranoid? Fearful? Mentally Ill? Republican? They need to take measurements because they’re defending against the evil whities? Which is it?

Here’s my answer: I think that people all over the world should never be over-confident in thinking it’s not going to happen to them. I also think that people all over should never live in fear, either. What ever happened to this concept we call, “balance”?

Can we not learn anything from crime? I think we can. No. When I say “learn from crime”, I’m not talking about (after watching the news) running around waving your pistol because you heard that Jane Doe was brutally raped and murdered and the perpetrator’s on the loose. What I mean is that without crime news, we’d be a very naive and over-confident society leading to people trusting everyone thereby putting innocents in harm’s way. We don’t want THAT, do we? Learning from crime, makes intelligent people look for why these things take place to begin with as what was done here. My belief is that if we know what makes a killer, we someday will know how to prevent a killer. But you don’t figure these things out by having the reality of the world cut off from you. It may very well be the case that American local news is too centered on crime, and I can only guess it is there to raise people’s eyebrows. However, thanks to Michael Mooreisms, other countries are now successfully brainwashed to believe that the US media reports homicide only to make white people hate black people. Never mind the high number of crimes committed everyday between the Black and Mexican communities (gangs). Never mind the fact that most serial killers and sexual predators are WHITE!!!! Yes, that’s on our television channels too, people!

WE CAN SEE VERY CLEARLY THAT WHITE PEOPLE COMMIT CRIMES TOO! WHITE CRIMES, BLACK CRIMES, BROWN CRIMES, YELLOW CRIMES, PURPLE CRIMES, GREEN CRIMES, AND ORANGE CRIMES ARE ALL REPORTED E-Q-U-A-L-L-Y! But you clowns wouldn’t know that unless you lived over here! Or are living here with your eyes OPEN and not living in grandma’s basement.

At the end of the day folks, what does TOO MUCH CRIME NEWS do? It makes people numb and desensitized. Yes, you heard that correctly. Crimes news does *not* make the average American “paranoid”, or “fearful” nor is that why we “search the bushes for the boogie man”. Hearing on the news about another homicide for us is like hearing a commercial for Crest toothpaste. The reaction is the same, really. Some stories touch us and make us cry or shout at the TV, but generally speaking the surprise revolved around crime just isn’t there anymore. And in America, if we don’t want to watch about violence in the news, a remote control and cable television was invented for that very purpose.

I am furious with Michael Moore making this “unique” “culture of fear” to be about RACE… when it’s not. It was “Bowling for Columbine” and “Stupid White Men” that got lemmings both in Europe and in Canada to believe that if you have if you have African roots that you are innocent and holy by default, that if you have immigrated from another country, you are innocent and holy by default, but if you are white and born in America, you are guilty and inherently evil by default.

Additionally, it was absolutely deplorable to hear Michael belittle the victim’s families of 9-11 calling them and anyone else affected “a culture of fear”. If you don’t think that a terrorist attack has a effect on its people, you are callous and have just as much blood on your hands as the terrorists themselves. Interestingly enough, it is those countries living peaceful lives taking for granted what they have, that are the ones mocking the reactions of trauma survivors. You will always see the Americanophobic Canadians and Brits cry for those at the hands of our Capital Punishment system in America. But you won’t get that same “understanding” and “sympathy” from the Americanophobic scumbags regarding those “victims” that WERE ACTUALLY INNOCENT. There’s the blatant hypocrisy right there. Anti-America says that 3,000 innocent Americans from all over the world deserved the Death Penalty on 9-11 (even though 24 Canadians died in the towers as well). As the saying now goes:

“As someone who takes human rights seriously, I’m appalled by the lack of sympathy the left feels toward the victims of any regime other than the Bush administration. Let’s shout it to prisoners everywhere: If you’re not harmed by an American, your suffering doesn’t count.” –Erik Svane

When Americans watch “Bowling for Columbine”, they do so with a grain of salt (for the most part). Even liberal Americans do and even some leftists. We live here. We see what happens in our country. We know “Bowling for Columbine” is for entertainment’s sake and not to be taken too seriously. We are also well aware that Michael has lied and fabricated stories in his past pieces. We are aware of the manipulative tricks that he does with his footage to make people believe things that aren’t true. We know. We’re Americans.

BUT…

Those living elsewhere will take “Bowling for Columbine” to heart and because they hate Americans as well, will hang on to Michael’s e-v-e-r-y word. That is where Americanophobic Canadians and Brits go for their comfort food: The Michael Moore library.

And we know it’s not just UHHMERICANS that are vigilant after major disasters. Take 9-11 for example. Do some research on how following that day, people traveling coming from other countries took a downward spiral…for years. I was working at the airlines during that time and flight routes were canceled to and from other countries for years. Only in the last couple of years has travel from abroad increased since the attacks. Uh. Could it actually be that tourism declined because those from elsewhere were afraid of the Muslim that could be hiding in the bush to behead them? Hmm… Why, after 9-11, did the Japanese government begin fingerprinting all foreigners coming into the country if it is only Americans that are “taking precautions” against further attacks. In all actuality, nothing too drastic a change in the US has happened post 9-11 to show that we are seriously preventing further terrorism. The Iraqi war (creating more terror, in my opinion) and the Patriot Act are laughable. Airport security is a joke as it’s always been. Innocents from other countries as well as American citizens are unnecessarily being detained and abused too often while people board the planes with all sorts of weaponry. America is still a place where you can standby for a flight check in your luggage, miss the flight, and have your luggage travel alone (if that doesn’t say anything). What I’m trying to say is our “paranoid” measures to be a more secure country are about other things – NOT about being “fearful”. Please! And before you Anti’s get into your diatribe about “stupid Americans’, read this first and learn how you’re just as dumb if not more.

Right-wing Americans are always talking about “the war on terror” and how it’s “protecting us”. Propaganda is put out so that we do fear terrorists and submit to silly wars out of pure greed. But I’m also going to say that Americans are no more fearful than your average Canadian is about America turning on its side and squishing Canada. All this fear that the AA’s perceive is rather hype; it’s about following the crowd, the leader, the authority, it’s about the desire to belong and the inability for one to take responsibility for his own shortcomings. Weak people are seduced by power. This is the same way Americanophobia works. And it’s not too different from Nazi propaganda.

If you really want to explore racism in America, here might be a good start.

You want to pin an “Ugly American”? How about your beloved and millionaire Michael Moore himself?

MOORE MANIPULATES VICTIMS:
Moore held a screening of Bowling for Columbine in Littleton and charged admission the families of the victims.
• Columbine victim mother Anne Hechter: “It’s laughable that Moore attempts to portray himself as an anti-establishment liberal who is the voice of the common folk, when in fact he is no better than the greedy capitalists he shuns. Maybe now that he has made millions of dollars off the blood of our children he could toss a DVD or two our way to view.”
• Mark Taylor, one of the victims that Moore took to K-Mart headquarters, on Moore: “I am completely against him. He screwed me over. I had no idea what Moore’s agenda was. And he had an agenda. He had it all planned out, completely. I believe that every American has the right to have a gun. We should have the right to protect ourselves.”

Read more here about how “Bowling for Columbine” was a FICTION documentary along with the rest of his work. Credits to Mike, however. He is brilliant at what he does. His work is also very entertaining.

Lastly, when we examine the word, “fearful”, we must ask ourselves:

• Are all 300+ million Americans feeling this fear or just the gun-holders and the evil whities?
• What percentage of these people are fearing something real?
• Is it irrational fear brought on by a degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Is this fear really just Paranoid Schizophrenia that is being experienced?

Something interesting to note. The Americanophobes frequently call us “paranoid” and “fearful” by having invaded Iraq. But those same Anti’s said that we went to Iraq for oil and money for Bush’s rich buddies. Which is it? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You don’t want to sound like an opportunist, do you? So, pick one and stick with it.

Secondly, in the beginning of “Bowling for Columbine”, Michael shows how Americans weren’t reactive enough when suspicious noises from crimes being committed were happening nearby. But then later, he accuses us for not being suspicious enough. He needs to take a pick too.

For all I know, everything I write in this blog may be a fallacy. So, take me with a grain of salt as well. All I’m trying to say here is to not always take to heart everything you read and see in the media. If you Americanophobic Canadians and Britons are truly the smarter and superior ones, question and challenge the literature you come across and make sound and balanced arguments in the public forums you use to communicate. Only then can you say that you’re better than Americans. The Americanophobes are so obsessed with Anti-American news that the concept that there are other ideas out there is unknown or thrown out immediately without properly looking at all the angles in its complexity.

If you truly want to learn about American culture, take courses or read books about Anthropology, Sociology, and Criminology. Actually live in the US and move around while you are here with an open and curious mind. If you don’t know why these three subjects are important to understand groups of people, culture, sub-cultures, and society, than you are part of the dumbing down of the world.

To say that Americans are just simply fearful for the sake of fearing alone is to deny that America is a violent country. And you don’t want to deny such if you are Americanophobic.

Canada is afraid of America. Now, how’s that for a blanket statement? Sleeping with the elephant, right?

A few people that will remain anonymous made a big stink over my definition of Anti-Americanism claiming that I was a “racist”!

I will drag my definition along with the video that sums it up over here for easy viewing:

Q: What is Anti-Americanism (aka Americanophobia?)

A: Anti-Americanism is *NOT* about the disapproval of Bush and the Iraqi War; it’s *NOT* about the disapproval of past wars and whatever our government has failed to do right, and it’s *NOT* about hating the Republican Conservative individuals in America. Anti-Americanism is the indiscriminate hatred toward the American people (the white folk only) as a whole regardless of any American’s political positions and voting preferences. For more clarification, watch this video. It defines Anti-Americanism in depth.

Now, let’s determine what “Racism” really means:

Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another.

Racism has existed throughout human history. It may be defined as the hatred of one person by another — or the belief that another person is less than human — because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes.

Read this site for more information.

While I haven’t developed a solid opinion as to whether or not Americanophobia is a form of racism, one of my British friends, David wrote in his blog how he defines it as such.

So does Mish from New Zealand who wrote the following in my comment section – you may go here for the full story.

We can agree, perhaps, that “racism” IS an ambiguous term, but it’s hard to disagree (aside from those two cutting examples above) that it’s not overused and rather misused by insecure knee-jerk reactionaries as a crutch in an attempt to appear “morally superior” in front of the crowd because he really does feel “above all”. The formula for this knee-jerk reaction is simple:

I don’t like what you just said + you used the word “white” = You are a racist.

I don’t like what you just said + you used the word “black” = You are a racist.

Never mind the context in which the term “white” and “black” is used in. That’s irrelevant to one with an agenda. And ultimately, only HE knows what that agenda is.

However, what the mis-usage of “racism” really does is belittle those people who have actually been the target of racism and cause more friction between the masses (not less). The likes of Richard Warman automatically want to believe that someone is “racist” or “Islamophobic” even though they DON’T know what the word means! They are the cultural elitists/radical leftists, and in my opinion, the most INTOLERANT people out there! As a matter of fact, the same person that told me that I was a “racist” also unashamedly admitted to being an Americanophobic. They only care about themselves. Their “mission” to get the whole world undivided and all holding hands is disingenuous. Once again, we see the hypocrisy in Americanophobia. While Americanophobes may not be “racist”, we can all (free-thinking people) certainly agree that it’s prejudice, it’s bigotry, it’s discriminative and it’s *not right*.

Depending on where the Americanophobic person comes from, all depends on if they hate all Americans as a whole or just the white folk. My blog concentrates on the Americanophobes that live in Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Why? Because I find them to be the most vocal about it. What about the middle east? They hate us the most. This is true. But we Americans expect middle eastern countries to hate us.

If you’re going to call me a “racist”, then you better call Michael Moore, in his book, “Stupid White Men” a “racist” too. Why? Because his principles are aligned with the Americanophobic sentiment that I speak of in my blog.

Yes, he DOES point out valid flaws within the US, however, a lot of his work has been based on LIES, LIES, LIES, so have his movies!

But why just the “white man”?

Leaving Michael Moore’s book aside, when Americanophobes make blanket statements about Americans, they ARE referring to the “white man”. Please keep in mind the stereotype that you use to describe us:

nationalistic, paranoid, arrogant, fat, lazy, greedy, racist, spoiled-rich, slutty, prude, ugly, ignorant, stupid, humorless, loud, obnoxious, carbon-emitting, baby-killing, flag-waving, bible-thumping, gun-toting, inbred and self-centered hicks

Now, ask yourself if you apply this to the “white anglo-saxon protestant (WASP)” or do you apply the above including the Blacks, Mexicans, Cubans, South Americans, Asians, Haitians and all those who’ve become naturalized citizens of the US?

Perhaps some Americanophobes DO wipe that big brush over ALL Americans regardless of where they came from or what their national heritage is. But will they a-d-m-i-t to even hating the minorities and include them too?… that…. is a whole different thing.

Americans have faces. Don’t treat us as a face-less nation.

Keep in mind, this is my opinion. While I may be wrong, I feel strongly about this issue that I bring up.

American citizens can be Asian, African, or Hispanic/Latino too. Heck, there are even naturalized citizens that have in recent times come from Canada, Australia, and Europe and the list goes on! These people are exempt from the wrath of Americanophobia because of the huge backlash (due to the strain of censorship in a politically correct society) that would result in public humiliation for the offender. They would be called a “racist” and that is the biggest nightmare of the holier-than-thou and “morally superior” multicultural elitists. The big fat greedy white American guy is always fair game because it is more socially acceptable. Remember the video that you just watched about how it’s frowned up on in Britain to slander a Chinese person? (it doesn’t matter if he’s Chinese or a Chinese American!)

In a recent conversation with a Canadian that is against Americanophobia, the following only reconfirmed what I had previously felt. She states…

In Canada, one cannot say anything derogatory about any other culture without being politically incorrect or racist. Save the natives and the Americans, who are fair game. This is so ingrained in the “Canadian” culture that Canadians cannot/ do not think for themselves. If I said “French men are rude”, then GASP – Jenny! You are so rude and judgmental and how on earth can you look yourself in the mirror stereotyping an entire country like that! Yet, someone from Ohio comes into town and all the Canadians are whispering “That fucking American. He probably doesn’t even know we have a different currency up here. He is so ignorant and rude.” There is a blatant double standard here and I get treated like a pariah when I point this out.

In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if he were a French Canadian or a French American.

The likes of Richard Warman and political correctness having gone to such an overboard extreme, prevents people from taunting Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians (that have become or are US citizens) in the streets of Britain and Canada (or even online – once their heritage is discovered).

Here’s a hint.

—> Because being “racist” is one of the most typical stereotypes handed to us, WHO, really, are being called the “racists”: The minorities or the whites?

—> When you call Americans “white trash”, WHO, really are you referring to: The minorities or the whites?

—> When you say Americans are “oppressed”, WHO really are you referring to as the “oppressors”, the minorities or the whites?

—> What makes Canada so great and American so bad? Canada is “multicultural”. Who do Canadians believe are keeping America from being as “multicultural” as Canada: The minorities or the whites?

—> What will you tell America if Obama isn’t elected as president? What will you say if he gets assassinated?

Think about it.

I received this message from a Canadian who shared the following with me:

(sic) Its the fact that the american people and government are to ignorant to be able to embrace their multiculturalism and try to make everyone the same fat, stupid, greedy, obnoxtious asshole american people that the world tends to HATE.

…which inspired this post.

A French TV comedy shows an interesting example of this.

At 9:50 (toward the end of this video), a reference is made suggesting that the American military is “out to destroy the commies and the blacks”!

Why is comedy so funny? Because TRUTH can be found through comedy. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s a joke. But this IS the way the Americanophobes DO view us. They sympathize with the minorities and dodge the “white folk”. This evidently is not a reality that Americanophobes want to accept as, like I mentioned earlier, none of these self-righteous elitists want anybody to think that they are racist. What do I think? I think they are projecting.

But the radical left Americanophobes are damned either way. They’re in a really rough position as — if they really do hate all Americans meaning that they include literally ALL AMERICANS, couldn’t they be considered racist as they are including the minorities or those immigrated from other countries? If they are only talking about the “whites”, that is odd to me too because what makes America, America is EVERYONE – not just the white people. Come here and see for yourself.

Everyone makes this place what it is and contributes to any stereotype delivered to the “all American folk” determined by the Americanophobes.

This is why I define Americanophobia to be geared toward the white folk.

When Michael Moore did his research on “American Ignorance“, he evaluated indiscriminately, but named them in his book, “Stupid White Men”. See for yourself!

Do I feel like a target of reverse discrimination? Absolutely not. I’m just simply defining Americanophobia for what it is.

In short, the word, “racist” has been downgraded to mean anything, but “racism”.

You want to know the best way to put those yanks in their place? Just tell them, “You Amerikkkans are all stupid!” Tell them how low their IQ scores are, how they can’t pass the SAT, and how they cannot find any countries on the map. Tell them how they don’t know anything about their own countries let alone anything about the world outside them. If you still haven’t irritated them enough to get them off their “superior” throne of “religious patriotism”, one thing that is sure to make a yank fall flat on their feet and surrender to their holy righteous elitist friends across the pond and to the north of the border is to send them a link to this video.

By now, you should feel better. The yank has listened. He or she may become defensive, but you know in your heart that, “you won”.

But did you? Well, you may have fooled some yanks into thinking that they’re less superior to you. It is those yanks that truly don’t know about the rest of the world and about the people living in their own country. Pray (in the secular way, of course) your darndest that you’ve insulted a dumb yank. But what if you are insulting a yank who knows… a little something. We yanks who DO know a thing or two are a bit more common than you’d like to think. So, be careful — as you don’t know who you’re running up against.

So, did you really win?

Anybody who knows about this “jaywalking industry”, will also know that they interview hundreds of Americans and just pick the dumbest ones to broadcast on air. And this is another thing to keep in mind: (Courtesy of Bruce Bawer)

One reason why Europeans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don’t know something, we’re more likely to admit it freely and ask questions. While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naïve or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction.

I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” clichés may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a “sense of history” than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters—a belief in the future.

I will be the first to admit that there ARE many Stupid Americans. Yes! Yes! We ARE stupid! Very! We are stupid when we compare the US to …the US. BUT… when you compare the US to other countries, mmm…. things change a bit to the tune of…. well, we’re *not* all as “different” (in the department of smartness) as you Americanophobic Canadians and Europeans would like to think.

Why don’t we do a little exploring?

The problem with Americanophobia is a strong sense of “moral superiority” coupled with “over-confidence”, so much over-confidence to the point where Americanophobes typically filter what they read or learn to suit their own agenda leading to just about the same amount of ignorance that they accuse 300+ million Americans that they’ve never met before of. And here are pages and pages of examples of British unintelligence and ignorance.

People like me know that a lot of you Americanophobes get your information from the biased media, hearsay (mom and dad), Noam Chomsky, Al Gore, and your all time favorite hero, Michael Moore. (He’s the one man you excuse for being fat.) But is he FAT with knowledge when it comes to accurate statistic gathering and information?

Let’s take a look at that, shall we?

Remember that book you read so many times that you’ve lost count of called, “Stupid White Men” by Michael Moore? (Psst…. yes, that’s the same book that brainwashed you to believe that all Americans are white.) Anyway, some people took him to task and challenged his statistics. What did they find? They found data that Michael Moore conveniently left out. You can read the full rebuttal here, and I’ll just leave the key points for you to examine.

Case Study #1:

Many factors help to explain why so many adults demonstrated English literacy skills in the lowest proficiency level defined (Level 1). Twenty-five percent of the respondents who performed in this level were immigrants who may have been just learning to speak English. Nearly two-thirds of those in Level 1 (62 percent) had terminated their education before completing high school. A third were age 65 or older, and 26 percent had physical, mental, or health conditions that kept them from participating fully in work, school, housework, or other activities. Nineteen percent of the respondents in Level 1 reported having visual difficulties that affect their ability to read print.

Not to mention that 4% of those surveyed (1,100 of 26,000) were serving time in jail. Surprise: functional English literacy is not high among the blind and visually-impaired, people learning to speak English, and prison inmates. This hardly makes the US a place that “GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO REMAIN STUPID AND IGNORANT,” in Moore’s typically capitalized phrase. (SWM, p. 87). By the way, as the National Adult Literacy Survey confirmed, a disproportionate share of those Moore labels “STUPID AND IGNORANT” happen to be blacks and hispanics.

In any event, as Michael Moynihan points out, limited functional literacy is a worldwide event: “almost 20 per cent of Australian adults had inadequate literacy skills to be effective in everyday life;” “some 25 per cent of Irish adults are functionally illiterate and approximately another 20 per cent can perform only simple reading and writing tasks;” “American teenagers rank higher than the Germans in all three subjects (math, literacy and science); 30 percent of Germans drop out of university, roughly equivalent to Mexico;16% hold university degrees, compared with 35% in the United States.”

Frankly, if Mike was of the working class, instead of a pretender to it, he’d understand something that I learned back in the No. 1 tunnel at Pima Mines. These guys may not write like Shakespeare, or go home to read Neitzsche and Spengler, but they are smart, live in the real world, and know one heck of a lot about the things that matter. I was in college, working summers, eventually bound for a doctorate in law — and they left me in the dust when it came to knowledge of current politics.

Case Study #2: Is it purely an American phenomenon when it comes to the inability to read maps properly?

Young adults worldwide are not markedly more literate about geography than the Americans. On average, fewer than 25 percent of young people worldwide could locate Israel on the map. Only about 20 percent could identify hotspots like Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Of all the young adults in the survey, only about one-third in Germany, Sweden and Japan, could name four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons. In the rest of the countries that number dropped to less than a quarter. In France 24 percent did not know that that their own country was a nuclear nation.

The facts…

89% of Canadians couldn’t locate Iraq on a map, a higher “ignorance rate” than that of the United States.

81% of Canadians couldn’t locate Israel on a map

5% of Canadians couldn’t locate Canada on a map

90% of Britons couldn’t locate Iraq on a map, again a worse figure than that of the US

21% of Britons couldn’t locate the USA on a map

7% of Britons couldn’t locate the England on a map

Swedes scored highest in the poll — but even there 70% couldn’t find Iraq.

Case Study #3: A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation blunder?

And possibly the world record on geographical foulups? The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has a granite map of North America on the floor of its lobby. A few minor problems: it shows shows Vancouver Island as a peninsula, and shows no trace of the Queen Charlotte Islands. In compensation for that loss, it gives Canada the state of Alaska. As the Ottawa Citizen reported,

This isn’t the first time a bold new geography has been created for the North American continent. In July, the inaugural issue of the Canadian Tourism Commission’s magazine, PureCanada, contained a map that eliminated Prince Edward Island, Labrador, Halifax and Fredericton.

And just last month, Ottawa International Airport’s new terminal was opened, and a map in the baggage area located Atlanta in the middle of Alabama, Chicago in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., in Virginia. Perhaps the map was meant to indicate where your luggage would end up. You know, if you fly to Atlanta, you’ll have to pick up your bags in Alabama, and so on.

Case Study 4: Stupid British people

To show American ignorance isn’t different from Canadian ignorance, you may want to look at these two reads:

• Half of Canadians too Ignorant to be Canadian
• More on Ignorant Canadians here.

Oh Canadians love to exalt themselves above Americans for their lack of knowledge about Canada. Yet Canadians are equally ignorant and arrogant about even their own country. Surprisingly even the CBC seems to agree on this one:

“It’s not the first time I’ve encountered this kind of ignorance. When I arrived at Carleton University in Ottawa to study journalism, some of my classmates wondered if I was there because there were no universities in Alberta. I am not making this up! Others found it curious that my parents would choose such a province to live in. They never spelled it out but it was always, “Oh, you’re from Alberta? Really? I thought only cowboys lived there.” Then the ha-ha.”

But you ask, why do we always find videos about Stupid Americans on Youtube and on TV all the time?

Dumb Americans are a money-making machine in the US. We don’t mind internationally humiliating ourselves in public. Americans love to poke fun at the dumb just as much as you guys do! However, the difference between Americans and those from other countries, is the televised exposure of said ignorance. The very fact that you are entertained by our stupidity, puts money into our pockets. (Psst… remember, we’re the fat greedy capitalists that will do ANYTHING for money – ANYTHING.)

A blogger from a non-American country (I don’t know where he’s from) mentioned possible reasons as to why Americans can come off as “stupid”.

I feel quite perplexed sometimes as to why there is so much animosity towards American’s and their culture. I feel as though I have missed something because as far as I can see, and from friendships I have with American’s, I just don’t see anything wrong with them (on an individual level). They are the most positive people I have ever met.

Then he starts to talk about our TV over here:

“…Actually on that point, I believe that TV is the main culprit that contributes to the animosity towards America. Firstly the programs that we have on TV do not paint American’s as the most brightest of people.

We are all influenced by our senses, and what rewards those senses. When what we see on TV is full of a collective of people that are doing humiliating things then we are rewarded by almost feeling empowered that we are not part of that culture. Does that make sense? To me it does. I may seem quite bent against the media at the moment, which I am, and also is a quite contradictory as my family is full of people in the media – like my oscar/bafta winning sister – my internationally known photographer brother – etc etc – but I can really see that a lot of ills in this world are the direct consequence of what is on TV. Is that really a surprise though? We are all but sheep looking here and there for where to go. Even the most head strong of people are to a point easily influenced. We are all born a blank slate. I really did digress.. must focus!So I believe that a lot of what feeds this anti-American sentiment is the direct result on what we see on TV and read on the paper.”

Read the rest of his story here.

One commenter said the following:

When I was younger I travelled quite a bit but now that I have to pay my own bills I am forced to work, which has reduced my travel abroad.

Each country has their own strange quirky trait. But I’ve tried not to classify the people of that region based on that.

I am from the US, as you can probably tell, and the funny thing is that nobody in the US watches that kind of TV unless you are unemployed or brain dead.

I’m not saying you are, but for some reason this stupid TV is passed to other shores.

When I was younger, I based my opinion of Brits on Benny Hill.

Americans, for the most part are hard workers and care about the things that are important. Please note; just as in every society, in every country there are different levels of socio-economic classes. The US has the same.

It is very true that a picture of the average “Uncle Sam” is created in one’s mind from the TV that Canadians and Europeans secretly love to watch. They say that they hate these shows and only watch them to laugh at the Americans. Newsflash: That’s the same reason that those stupid shows are so popular over here. Why are they so popular in Canada, Europe, America and all over the world? Because we (everybody) actually DO feel “empowered” or better about ourselves when we watch a bunch of idiots making FOOLS out of themselves. I even talked to my husband about this phenomenon. I have my own short-comings as much as the next person, and by watching goofy people on Jerry Springer (which is 95% fake anyway), I feel that I’m not so bad after all. Any current problem that I may be tackling in the present is no longer the big issue I had thought it to be after watching someone on The Maury Show having banged 1554500645 guys and wonder whom the father is for each baby. My life isn’t so bad any more…..

And the end of the day, we’re all humans, aren’t we?

Next, if you read, “Hating America” by Bruce Bawer (an American living in Europe), you will see that Europeans put the same amount of smart cards on table as Americans. We’re just about even. Or are we?

I moved from the U.S. to Europe in 1998, and I’ve been drawing comparisons ever since. Living in turn in the Netherlands, where kids come out of high school able to speak four languages, where gay marriage is a non-issue, and where book-buying levels are the world’s highest, and in Norway, where a staggering percentage of people read three newspapers a day and where respect for learning is reflected even in Oslo place names (“Professor Aschehoug Square”; “Professor Birkeland Road”), I was tempted at one point to write a book lamenting Americans’ anti-intellectualism—their indifference to foreign languages, ignorance of history, indifference to academic achievement, susceptibility to vulgar religion and trash TV, and so forth. On point after point, I would argue, Europe had us beat.

Yet as my weeks in the Old World stretched into months and then years, my perceptions shifted. Yes, many Europeans were book lovers—but which country’s literature most engaged them? Many of them revered education—but to which country’s universities did they most wish to send their children? (Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world’s scientific research and wins most of the Nobel Prizes.)

Yep, you guessed it. America. Oh and the hypocrisy?

“…And while Americans’ relative indifference to foreign news is certainly nothing to crow about, the provincial focus of Norwegian news reporting and public-affairs programming can feel downright claustrophobic. Hertsgaard illustrates Americans’ ignorance of world geography by telling us about a Spaniard who was asked at a wedding in Tennessee if Spain was in Mexico. I once told such stories as well (in fact, I began my professional writing career with a fretful op-ed about the lack of general knowledge that I, then a doctoral candidate in English, found among my undergraduate students); then I moved to Europe and met people like the sixtyish Norwegian author and psychologist who, at the annual dinner of a Norwegian authors’ society, told me she’d been to San Francisco but never to California.”

Americans dominate medicine and science: US medical schools are at the top of the world. Doctors come from all over the world to train in the US with the biggest teaching hospitals being the Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins. We globally dominate the modern pop culture that YOU secretly devour. The most inventions and patents in technology are attributed to the US. Some examples are the lightbulb (Thomas Edison got the 1st one working *commercially*), telegraph: Samuel F. B. Morse (“Although many researchers had worked on similar projects prior to Morse, his was the first instrument that could successfully send messages across wires utilizing electricity”).

More information on our inventions can be found here.

James Dreyer has some insight on “Stupid Americans”.

Let’s define “stupid” before we begin to answer the question, “Are Americans really stupid versus the rest of the World?”. Webster defines “stupid” as being “slow of mind; given to unintelligent decisions or acts; lacking intelligence or reason”, etc.

Well, that clears that up.

Are Americans slow of mind? Some are; some aren’t.

Are Americans given to unintelligent decisions or acts? Sometimes.

Are Americans lacking in intelligence or reason? Some are.

Are all Americans stupid? No. Are Americans the only Nationality that are slow of mind at times, make unintelligent decisions every once in awhile, or may be lacking in intelligence or reason? No.

I think that the topic may have been better worded to ask, “Why do American Students appear to be lagging behind students in other part of the World?”. I have an answer for that one…

Read the full story here.

But then you ask for the 699885520048314th time, “But you elected Bush, not once… but twice!”. You are stupid!

No! You REALLY did ask THAT many times! Ignorance is bliss.

Usually when I’m asked dumb questions, I usually reply with dumb answers. But I digress…. I will answer this one for the 98500550300987th time.

Election #1 November 2000:

Al Gore won the POPULAR vote. Bush did *not* win.

Election #2 November 2004:

Bush won the popular vote AND the electoral college vote. He won by 2%

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have an electoral voting system in America that, in my opinion, is unfair and not indicative of a democracy. In EVERY election, the electoral colleges decide. The popular vote doesn’t really count.

So, to you yank-haters out there, no… we Americans don’t all think alike. With 300+ million Americans, how could anyone think that we’d all think the same? We’re very diverse in every way, shape, and form. And I like America because of this.

But really, we still have a problem with Stupid Americans. Here’s one man’s explanation. I find it to be very true. And at the end, he says something that we all should keep in mind:

It all boils down to the fact that knowledge and intelligence are two different issues. Rote memorization of world capitals does not equate intelligence.

I do find it interesting that Europeans have such strong opinions on this, considering that there are many more pressing issues to be concerned about. Perhaps the steady European refrain of “Americans are stupid” is a reflection of their own deep-rooted insecurity. You know — an inferiority complex.

By the way, I have an American friend who lives in Finland and her husband (a Finish guy) used to get PAID for going to college. So, if Americans ARE a few points down the scale in IQ compared some other countries, that can also be another reason. And for freaksakes, we’re only 1 point lower than that of Canada! To all of you Americanophobes, get the hell over yourselves, already!

Anyway, let’s just say for the sake of argument that ALL Americans are “stupid”. Why would that be something to get so alarmed about insomuch to wait all day for an American to pass by on the internet or in the streets of London to flame them? Why be obsessed so much with a group of dumb people? Do you argue with people who have Down Syndrome? Well, of course not! Then, why do you chase Americans around all day? There are American Pride groups on Facebook (not as much as there are Canadian Pride groups, mind you). Here’s what’s interesting for me. In every American Pride group on Facebook, the number of Britons and Canadians significantly OUTWEIGH the number of Americans in those groups. I find that quite the fascinating. Brits and Canadians purposefully search for American Pride groups for this purpose and this purpose only: to taunt. Now, if you don’t do this with the mentally retarded, why… oh why do you pick on the stupid, stupid fickle-minded Americans? If they don’t know what they’re talking about, why bother with them? Could it be that you’re just as stupid as THEM and you feel an irresistible emotional connection?

I will fess up. I argue with the Americanophobes. And, yes, I’m very stupid for that.

And when you call all Americans stupid (by the way), you’re not only wrong, you’re not only being inflammatory and juvenile, but you’re also being racist. Did it not ever occur to you that blacks, Mexicans, Asians…etc are all Americans too? But now that we’re on the topic of “racism”, you might not want to be too overly confident about your IQ scores.

In any event, if you cannot find any other ways to piss off the mentally-challenged AKA “the Americans”, you can always use this as a last resort.

Good luck and G’day.

I always find it interesting that there are celebrity men out there who will practice misandry with aplomb. Maybe they are trying to get into the good books of women and just like feminists, they know that there is no penalty for male bashing. Have you ever seen a woman practicing misogyny? NO. At most some women will speak out against feminists, but Misogyny against the gender as a whole? NEVER. Men who commit blatant unsubstantiated misandry need to be rebuked.

READ GLENN SACKS REBUKING MICHAEL MOORE FOR PRACTICING MISANDRY 

Isto é Sério?

Bah! Temos que invadir esses caras…

Hello Book Fans,

Well, here is the delayed report. Monday two weeks ago a female-only, fewer than usual group braved the lower north shore for a very interesting discussion about Michael Moore and Stupid White Men, as well as the general state of the world.

There was only one member of the Fellowship present (Joel) and he behaved impeccably. Luckily the other two members sleeping upstairs remained that way!

Without exception the bookclubbers agreed that Moore’s writing is annoying and simplistic and his research is inadequate. The book was badly written, simplistic, poorly researched and annoying. There were blatant similarities with No Logo, Fast Food Nation and the like with nowhere near the adequate data to back up his hypotheses. Everyone who had seen Bowling for Columbine and his television show felt disappointed that Stupid White Men was so inferior and we all agreed that perhaps books are not Moore’s best medium. However, the discussion then took several interesting turns. First of all, we spent a fair amount of time discussing the issues Moore brings up and then moved onto the war, Australia’s place in it and whether Australia would fair well under the same scrutiny as Moore places America. The tide was starting to turn more positively in Moore’s favour as we all realised that reading his book made us think more deeply about certain issues that perhaps we otherwise would have.

A quick summary of opinions: Mardi felt that it was good that the information Moore writes about is out in the public domain, it makes these ideas more accessible. She finds the whole campaign financing thing in America to be too political and brought up a suggestion she’d heard to boycott watching the Oscars as a protest – Liz stated categorically that that would be really too much of a sacrifice! Mardi felt it was not his best medium, but was important as a consciousness-raising exercise and gave it 1 and a half stars. Michelle was the most generous to Moore, feeling the book was worthwhile for the first chapter alone. She found the book quite humbling to read in that it asked the question “are WE stupid white men also?”. Michelle posed the question, what would happen if we were to research our politicians
more deeply? How would Australia’s record on the environment or civil rights add up? She also mentioned seeing Moore on an Oprah interview where he came across very positively – down-to-earth and a “good Catholic boy”. Michelle has also been inspired to get out and do something about unfairness e.g. emailing “Sunrise” about the private health fund rort. Michelle gave the book 4 stars based on combining it with his movie and believing that the experience was worth it.

Liz also felt that Moore was better suited to the movie medium, he is obviously not an academic! Liz had an excellent way of viewing Moore: as a “pamphleteer” in the old-fashioned sense of a prominent person getting his views across in a kind of melodramatic fashion. Liz felt this method of Moore’s meant people would read SWM who would not necessarily read other books, such as No Logo etc. She also found the ideas for action quite challenging. Liz gives Moore 3 stars because she was grabbed by the pamphleteer notion and thinks it’s vitally important that these issues be out there at the moment.

Yen started out by saying she couldn’t stand the book, the writing was bad, too many facts were wrong and the statements Moore made were not
backed up by adequate research. However, she did empathise with Moore’s message and understood his desire to get it across. Yen was also inspired by Moore’s recycling expose and is intending to track her own recycled stuff – she’s going to report back on what she finds!! Yen felt that it was a bit of a fraud to have sold the book as non-fiction and was going to give it half a star, but after the night’s discussion increased that to 1 and a half.

Elissa was glad that someone was getting up and having a rant, although, once again, the inconsistencies in the book were too many e.g. not enough teachers, but Moore encourages student rebellion. Elissa felt a bit cheated that we didn’t learn how stupid white men run the country, as advertised and she also, like Michelle, got the message that change begins at home – she and Simon write maybe 10 letters a year to politicians. Elissa felt it was a good book to read now but was disappointed that she didn’t learn a lot. 1 and a half stars.

Personally, I agree with everything everyone has said, particularly the importance of discussing these issues at this time. I was very disturbed by the lack of research especially when I got to the end and discovered most of Moore’s facts were taken from newspaper articles. However, Liz’s view about the pamphleteer nature of the book has made me view it in a more favourable light. I also really enjoyed the discussion about world affairs it generated. 2 stars.

Sorry this has turned out to be so long. As previously advertised, new books are: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own Steve Martin, Shopgirl Next bookclub: 28th April at Yen’s house. And I think we agreed the food theme should be “pink” in honour of our new little member.

Anne xxxx