Eric wants an explanation for the somewhat anti-american stand I took earlier, at the risk of digging myself deeper into a hole, fair game: Here goes. Let me first say that I actually do like both the USA and its inhabitants most of the time, I find the constitution and the “construction” of the clogs that run society fascinating (I also find the haphazard nature of Britain’s political system fascinating, and both become more intriguing when compared). I also agree with Eric that it was founded on sound ideals. The statement I made on the list in question that sparked the fury was in direct response to a post about the “let’s spy on each other” scheme, the original poster is from the US and was clearly not in favour. I understand the motivation for the suggestion, and I can see how it would seem like a sensible idea, but think that this sort of thing is highly dangerous, and there is no need to draw parallells to Nazi-Germany in order to demonstrate the flaws of the scheme; the last time the US tried something like this was during the McCarthy era, and I can’t believe anyone would want a similar situation today, terrorists or no terrorists. As far as Mr. Bush goes, I don’t have anything against him personally, and I’m not sure that Al Gore was necessarily the better man for the job, but any left-winger gets my vote over any right-winger, especially as the left wing in the USA is not really very left wing at all, in global terms, whereas the right wing has much clearer extremist tendencies (I am aware I am generalising, I am obviously not trying to portray roughly 1/2 of the US population as extremist…), and I am inherently suspicious of anything resembling extremism in both politic and religion (and especially because they usually get rather mixed up at that point). I was also not very impressed at the way the Florida to-recount-or-not-to-recount business was handled by Bush’s team, it is not advantageous to have “the leader of the free world” elected in a way that leaves a lot of people feeling they were cheated in one way or another.
Feel free to disagree volubly, either in the comments or in an e-mail (as usual; my first name @ my domain name). If you like, I’ll explain what I think is wrong with Norwegian politics in the next installment.
Because, of course, all this isn’t to say that Norway is the perfect country, we have our share of idiots, jerks, bigots and hypocrites (and sometimes I catch myself being one of them), it just happens to be the country I was born in. I wouldn’t want to live in the US, but that’s mainly because I have enough problems as it is trying to decide whether I would rather live in Norway or in Britain, and I have no need to add another country (or three, Canada and The Netherlands would have to come into it if the US did) to the equation.
Incidentally, the person who lashed out at me after my “Man, I’m glad I’m not American” statement, was not from the US either. I am inclined to suspect her of being from Canada, as she had put quotes around the term “American”. My brother suggested that if I really wanted to start a flame-war I should apologise profusely to anyone living on the American continent not in the US and say “but there’s no good term for them other than US Citizen, which is too cumbersome, and if American isn’t acceptible, we need something else. Would “Moron” do?” (That’s a joke! Irony doesn’t really come across very clearly in writing, but imagine a very ironic tone in my voice as I’m saying this. Or rather, imagine a really blank and innocent look on my face as if I had no idea that this could possibly be offensive in any way.)
Music in my head: Universal Soldier (whatever her name is, my mind’s a blank)