Listening to the speeches at the election conventions you are confronted on the democratic side with brilliant , on the republican side with biased spiteful words, but all those speeches have one thing in common...they are full of patriotism and pride of the United States.
Now...I have been a child who grew up mainly after the 2nd world war and what I mostly learned about my country was that it started a war and that we have to live with and pay for a tremendous collective guilt. This, I think, is nothing to be proud of in your formative years. So over the years growing up I tried to develop myself into an openminded, interested ,unbiased individual, who started to be critical about her own country in the first place. And that brings me back to my point of viewing other countries and especially the United States.
O.k..America never lost a war in this and the previous century, but they have failed miserably in countries like Vietnam, Iraque and Afghanistan p.e. and they have not, till up to day managed to solve the problem with a minoity of their people whom they call african americans. The ancestors of those people have been brought to ,at that time America, against their will, have been kept as slaves and after they had been "freed" not integrated but left apart and alone without a chance to develop themselves into free people with equal rights. O.k. now you have a black president but alone the fact that he is called a "black" president speaks for itself.
So to be honest, I do not see a reason in this excessive pride in this country which is excercised at those conventions.
Mistakes and that goes for all over the world, should not be swept under the carpet but should teach us to strive for a better world.
I wish in the case of the US elections I could say...might the better one win, but I see no better one and I see one who will ruin the country and the world.
1 Kommentar:
I prefer the paraphrased, "America is great when it's good."
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