Roger from Oklahoma - Reality
Dear America,
I read many of these letters to America but they are really not addressed to America. They are addressed to the writer's concept and visions of America, a phantasm created by their own cultures media, American TV and movies, and their own personal experiences.
I live in America. People in America don’t consume energy at three times the rate of a European. People don’t go and buy buy buy. People don’t live in houses like those in American TV. They don’t have police stations in America like in CSI. People in America do not act like the Americans in TV shows. New York has almost nothing to do with the rest of the United States.
People in America do worry about money. They scrimp on gasoline. They pay enormous taxes to live in a house. They shop on craig's list. Many people have never been on an airplane. They have never traveled more than 500 miles from their houses. Many who live west of the Mississippi have never been east of the Mississippi. Many people in the South have never been in NY. People in Iowa dream of visiting San Francisco.
People in America are consumed by the work of daily life. They say live and let live, but dont impose your religion or morality or way of life on us. And "your" could be the morality and religion of Washington, or Paris, or Oslo, or Mogadishu.
People in America are puzzled by TV news which tries to lie to them by presenting versions of reality rather than news, to once great papers like the New York Times which seem to be run by college dropouts from Soviet Union think tanks, by fanatics like Al Gore or David Dukes.
People in America see danger around the world stemming not from armies massing in distant countries, but my a politicization of false beliefs held by people both within and without her borders.
About the Author:
Name: Roger Hornbeck
Age: 47
Country: United States
City: Tulsa
State: Oklahoma
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Retired
Experience With US: Currently Live in the United States
I read many of these letters to America but they are really not addressed to America. They are addressed to the writer's concept and visions of America, a phantasm created by their own cultures media, American TV and movies, and their own personal experiences.
I live in America. People in America don’t consume energy at three times the rate of a European. People don’t go and buy buy buy. People don’t live in houses like those in American TV. They don’t have police stations in America like in CSI. People in America do not act like the Americans in TV shows. New York has almost nothing to do with the rest of the United States.
People in America do worry about money. They scrimp on gasoline. They pay enormous taxes to live in a house. They shop on craig's list. Many people have never been on an airplane. They have never traveled more than 500 miles from their houses. Many who live west of the Mississippi have never been east of the Mississippi. Many people in the South have never been in NY. People in Iowa dream of visiting San Francisco.
People in America are consumed by the work of daily life. They say live and let live, but dont impose your religion or morality or way of life on us. And "your" could be the morality and religion of Washington, or Paris, or Oslo, or Mogadishu.
People in America are puzzled by TV news which tries to lie to them by presenting versions of reality rather than news, to once great papers like the New York Times which seem to be run by college dropouts from Soviet Union think tanks, by fanatics like Al Gore or David Dukes.
People in America see danger around the world stemming not from armies massing in distant countries, but my a politicization of false beliefs held by people both within and without her borders.
About the Author:
Name: Roger Hornbeck
Age: 47
Country: United States
City: Tulsa
State: Oklahoma
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Retired
Experience With US: Currently Live in the United States
Labels: 40's, consumerism, foreign policy, male, media, medium income, morality, oklahoma, retired
So what if many Americans have never crossed the Mississippi or never been to New York City? The bottom line is that you are causing much harm to the world by using more natural resources than any other country, polluting the environment that the entire world shares with you, imposing policies for your own good in the name of "democracy" and "liberating people", and looking the other way when your policies cause harm to others. These are all things that the government you elected is doing. Ignorance is no excuse for the harm that Americans cause to the world. I realize that not all Americans are as ignorant as you, and that not all Americans are direct contributors to these and many other problems. However, you must also realize that not all Muslims are terrorists either. The majority of Muslims are also consumed by daily life...just that our daily life involves not getting killed by stray American bombs and violence that was not present before the foreign invasion and occupation. If you had to face these problem in your daily life in America, you would probably care about what is happening beyond the Mississippi River.
Roger, I agree with you. Half of what people around the world think about us in America is wrong. But I am quick to add that half of what we think of them is wrong too. For a world so consumed with technology and fast travel, you'd think we'd all be able to find out "how the other half lives" per say. But none of us can trust the news anymore. The news is about as biased as anything. So we don't know what it's like to live in Romania and they don't know what it's like to live here in the US. So why don't we just stop trying to tell each other how to live or how things would be better if we all did such-and-such. No two places are alike and there is not a universal program that works everywhere. End of story.