My aunt sends out this stupid email about our plane and our soliders in China during the EP-3 incident. It was all talking about how you can't tread on us, and give us our soliders back and you shouldnt buy Chinese good and blah blah blah blah. The email was titled...."Are Americans as dumb as we appear?" So I wrote this in response and sent it out to everyone on the mailing list she sent. I thought it was decent enough to share here. Thoughts? Well...yes..we Americans are as dumb as we appear. We are arrogant enough to think that the rest of the world should operate as we do, yet we are worse in many respects. Our education system is among the WORST in the world...We are consitently ranked in the lower bowels of international education rankings, which is inexcusable considering our great wealth. Our record of human rights is just as spotted as those records of countries who we deem foes because of such alleged rights abuses.... Our nasty habit of punishing smaller countries for perceived differences. (i.e....there is NO reason Cuba should still be under sanctions....Cuba's only offense right now is that they are still a Communist nation. So what? If they want that..so be it. Why should MY right to travel there and buy good from Cuba be curtailed?).... Notice our nasty habit of punishing smaller countries is directly proportional to the amount of trade we do with them? We punish the hell out of Cuba, but have favored trade status with China? You think this is the Chinese fault? Yea right. Americans smell cash. Americans also smelled cash during the Gulf War. Do you really think we were liberating Kuwait in some noble effort of being a friendly big brother? Yea right. We were fighting against Iraq's supposed increased aggression to other countries in the region. Now...is that neccesarily bad? No. Remember European neighbors looked the other way after the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia...and up until Poland did nothing. But..my problem with this is that we as Americans love to pat ourselves on the back..that we liberated Kuwait and helped their rightful leaders resume their regimes. It was all about money, oil, and the right to market control. Which is fine, but why dont we just admit it? To date we STILL have not fully converted to SI measurements...otherwise known as the metric system. But no worries, we are in good company in the world. The only other 2 countries to not go metric? Liberia and Myannmar. Wonderful company indeed. We are the only "civilized" or "major industrial" nation to still condone and actively participate in capital punishment. Other countries have even refused to extridate alleged criminals that face the death penalty. Other countries have dealt with this matter though, by voting us off the UN Human Rights Panel...a board that the United States was a founding member. How embarrassing. As a nation we are LIGHT YEARS behind other countries in promoting renewable sources of energy. We still depend on coal plants, heating oil power stations, and others. Europe on the other hand has been leading the world in wind power. This summer while I was there, you'd see large plains filled with these beautiful and graceful wind power generators. This technology is just now catching on in the USA. We are behind in some other major technology as well. Europe's mobile phone systems have been based on a single standard for years...thus allowing many devices, many customers in many nations to talk on the same networks. We let the standards go out the window. In fact, just in Seattle we have 3 different major wireless standards. GSM, TDMA, and CDMA. And it's only getting more pronouced as these new wireless standards are being ratified. Europe is uniting in the force of multiple soverign nations speaking many different languages. We can't even get states to agree on the same seatbelt laws. (Not that I even agree with seatbelt laws) We are behind..... If we don't wake up and smell the coffee, and quit resting on our "We won World War II and we are the greatest nation ever" laurels, then the world is just going to pass us by.... ....and it seems, we are so dumb that they'll be several hundred kilometers ahead before we realize it. -- Protect your web site with secure hosting solutions from HostNYC! Security, Speed and Reliability starting as low as $14.95 per month Visit HostNYC today! http://www.pop3now.com/go/hostnyc/1000 Pop3Now Personal, Manage 5 Email Accounts From 1 Secure Window Sign Up Today! Visit http://www.pop3now.com/personal
