is this independence day? i wonder, what gifts i should buy? btw, Ken, you forgot to mention the relocation of Guatemalans, toxic waste dumped on Texas, germ warfare testing on California, the number of americans killed during basic training for the unending wars/conflicts/disturbances perpetrated by forces, beyond our control... any one want to add to the list of atrocities?
feel free - while we "americans" have a vague concept of the "freedom" of speech
> David Bircumshaw wrote:> >>My post did not say 'anti-american' it was 'anti-americans'. I wrote that>>with a purpose as I am very well aware of the loadedness the phrase>>'anti-american' can bear.>>> I feel as though I am trying to read the white space on a page. In fact > I can do that better than I can intuit the essential difference between > the two terms.> >> Now, without being nasty, I do suspect you are>>living in a dreamworld, one in which the Japanese aren't pissed off with the>>USA for dropping two atomic bombs on them, remember,>>> I beg your pardon. I'm not even going to do the "my ancestors were in > Poland during slavery" routine, i.e., "Gee, I was only 18 months old > when my country bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Wasted breath. Someone > bent on the religious doctrine of Collective Guilt will pound on me 'til > I'm pulp. I don't know what the Japanese feel...as though there were a > unitary body called THE Japanese. I've never asked a Japanese who was > aware and of age in August 1945 what he or she feels now...I never met > one. I don't know what their children and grandchildren might feel. I > don't know what illnesses they contracted and died of. But I must tell > you that this is among the most reprehensible comments I have seen since > 1984, when I first began reading Internet postings. You also picked an > astoundingly poor target.> >> yours is the only>>nation to have done that to anyone, I know, all to well, about my own>>nation's guilt, the only thing I can say in self-defence was that neither I>>nor my antecedents took any part in it, but the myth, and the accompanying>>sentimentality, of American (which reads USA) innocence is more than I can>>bear.>>> Right, and we also slaughtered Indians, enslaved Black people, and > locked up our resident Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. You > left My Lai off the list. But do not, please, ask me where I believe > the bombing of a country in time of a war they started ranks on the > list. Please don't.> > Ken> > ----------------------------------------> Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com> > 39. Not observing the imperfections of others, preserving silence and a continual communion with God will eradicate great imperfections from the> soul and make it the possessor of great virtues.> --St. John of the Cross, Maxims on Love (The Minor Works)
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