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Juan Cole writes aptly and plainly about a Swiss decision to ban minarets. Imagine being told your congregation couldn’t build a steeple or display a cross.
Not to get all Lee Greenwood on you, but I never feel more American than when Matthew Yglesias returns from one or another of his European vacations and tells me about the casual — even cheery — racism and xenophobia displayed by important European functionaries. I might be mangling this story, but I think he told me about being shown around some German neighborhood before being told that a small proportion of the residents were “real Germans,” as opposed to Turkish immigrants. Obviously, we get that here as well. But we also recognize — or should — that to express a sentiment like that is to misunderstand what it is to actually be a real American.
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“Obviously, we get that here as well. But we also recognize — or should — that to express a sentiment like that is to misunderstand what it is to actually be a real American.’
“real americans” now there is an odd statement. The majority of Americans could give a rats ass about the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, injured, millions displaced as s direct result of a war based on a “pack of lies” They could give a rats ass about innocent people in Afghanistan or Pakistan killed by our drones. They cold give a rats ass about the potential deaths of innocent Iranians if Israel does their bloody work in Iran.
Let’s be real here Spencer, yes there are plenty of folks on blogs and who marched in the streets across the nation against the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq (I was against the invasion of Afghanistan)…but the majority of Americans are busy figuring out how they can get to the fucking mall to buy plastic and silk shit from China.
Those are the “real Americans”. Let’s be real
Your comment about the distinction over ‘real Germans’ reminded me very much of the Palin/Bachmann ‘real America’ chest nuts that segments of America are eating up like rabid squirrels. It looks all the more ridiculous when you consider they have no grasp on the fact that unlike Germany which has a very different cultural history, our cultural history is built upon pride in our diversity. Really makes you want to question the intelligence of ‘real Americans’.
They care, kid. They suffer under the inflicted weight of ignorance, powerlessness, distraction, of debt and illness and fear and the sense that they have done their part and held the baton out to be passed only to be treated with indifference by their foolish desperate peers. But they do fucking care, and you’d be more persuasive if you remembered it.
Don’t kid yourself. I have been out on the streets for over eight years talking with hundreds of them. Guaranteed the majority of Americans could give a rat’s ass about the death and destruction in Iraq and the deaths in AFghanistan and Pakistan. Now American lives is a different issue.
Go out and start asking for yourself. And I don’t mean ask your friends