Re: OT: Troubles with military service

[Charles Boisvert and Catherine Clinton]

>Someone has been watching too many American films.

I think you have put your finger on one major problem.

Think about it:  here in Europe,  we only ever get to hear about the US
from two sources -  films and the news.  Neither of them give any real idea
of what day-to-day American life is like.  So we only ever get to hear
about the weirdest,  the most violent,  the most unusual (because it's
newsworthy or filmworthy).  As if there weren't enough nutters in the US as
it is,  if you got your understanding of that country through European TV,
you wouldn't believe it's mostly populated by ordinary,  peaceable people
who just want to enjoy life in an ordinary,  peaceable way.

The same is true of the picture of Europe in the US - I bet on that side of
the Atlantic most people never hear of Europe unless there's a war on.  Try
to convince people that Europeans don't spend their life at each other's
throats after that.  Yet most of us are ordinary,  peaceable people,  who
manage to be polite to each other (even though we don't carry guns :-).

>From that angle,  your description of ordinary American life is very
informative,  stupid as that sounds.  Here,  the nearest I've ever been to
a gun is on pictures.  You may know that in the UK even the police doesn't
carry any.  That makes me glad because guns only exist for one reason:
destruction...  Despite the fact that nobody's armed, there are no armed
robberies ;-),  no accidental gunshot wounds :),  no fear of gun freaks :).
 My sister is a hospital Doctor and she has never seen a gunshot wound -
probably never will.  Here Amadou Diallo wouldn't have died,  and the
police wouldn't have feared what he was searching for.  For a while in
Manchester I remember drug dealers walking with a pit-bull on a lease.  Now
they have to be muzzled (the pit-bulls I mean).  That's how we live.

Charles