Tomorrow is election day in the USA.
I was looking at the current electoral vote predictions, and I’m worried. I look at all those States in the middle, and I can’t help but think of the “Ugly American” tourists and short-stay students I’ve met since I’ve been here. People who rarely get out of their own county, let alone State or country. People “proud to be American” without even knowing what that means in the world today.
I went looking for passport ownership figures, and found Phil Gyford’s own efforts in this area; I’ll take his 20% as a reasonable number; one in five. While reading through the comments on his post, one comment in particular made me think of those vast expanses of land in the Midwest:
| I don’t have any statistics, but I suspect if you compare the number of Americans who travel outside the US, with the number of Europeans who travel outside Europe, you would get a very different picture. My experience anecdotally, is that wherever I have travelled in the world, I always saw plenty of Americans. |
Perhaps your Typical American thinks traveling from one country to another in Europe is like going from Illinois to Iowa. If so, the Typical American is seriously confused, and needs to start getting their news from a source that isn’t owned by Rupert Murdoch. Perhaps this is why your Typical European can’t understand how so many Americans can have their heads lodged firmly up their asses when it comes to international politics and current affairs in the world today.
George W. Bush and his regime started a war with a sovereign nation on false pretenses, using the US media machine to their own ends to great effect. We have killed almost thirty Iraqi innocents for every one lost in September 11th–people who had no more to do with Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda than you or me. Who will avenge their deaths–who will be held accountable for these atrocities? No doubt, we’ll learn the answer to that question soon enough, and very possibly on US soil. Again. It’s called “cause-and-effect.”
It is not that the people of the world “don’t understand what the US is about”–indeed, they understand all too well.
Go vote.
Vote Cobra Commander he’ll sort things out!
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2463
Well said!
I think as the vote is meant to be so close that the number of people voting will be quite high, but we will have to wait to Wednesday to see whose favour that works in.
Will be an interesting few days.
Thanks for the interview, it was fun. We got to sleep about 1am after some networks called Ohio for Bush. We’ll have to see what the moderate republicans in congress do if Bush gets too righteous with his victory, maybe things will change, I hope so.
Rupert Murdoch. No point being smug if you can’t spell. :*