The world is a tiny little place. It looks big, but it isn't. I understand that better than most people (you don't need to know why).
The truth is that within my lifetime, the Chinese and Indians will become the economic superpowers, and then white people - who have dominated history and treated everyone else as second-class citizens - will be painfully surprised to find the situation reversed and themselves as the trod-upon (q.v. novel White Lotus by John Hersey). Well, when I say "white people," I mostly mean "white men," since even white women have plenty of experience being treated like dirt by all men.
Anyway, humans are tribal. We divvy ourselves into "us" and "them," because our brains are small and we can only handle so much input and we need to know whom to trust. We also need to feel special - we are emotionally hard-wired to try to be big fish in small ponds.
Simply put, that's why I bitch so much about the USofA - I live here. It shapes my daily life much more than events anywhere else (even when those events cause the Rich White Men to Get Excitable). It's not as if I get all wet for the USofA. If I lived in Australia, France or Nigeria, then those would be the places I'd bitch about most. It's call "being human."
So, while I'm blessed to be getting hits from all over the world - and I mean nearly everywhere!! Woot!! - I'm not intentionally neglecting the human failings in Italy, Russia, Thailand or India - I just don't live there, so lack the first hand knowledge of the dumb things people do there. I mean, we're all idiots part of the time - welcome to the human condition.
But, like I said, humans are tribal, and we bitch most about what we know most about :)
The truth is that within my lifetime, the Chinese and Indians will become the economic superpowers, and then white people - who have dominated history and treated everyone else as second-class citizens - will be painfully surprised to find the situation reversed and themselves as the trod-upon (q.v. novel White Lotus by John Hersey). Well, when I say "white people," I mostly mean "white men," since even white women have plenty of experience being treated like dirt by all men.
Anyway, humans are tribal. We divvy ourselves into "us" and "them," because our brains are small and we can only handle so much input and we need to know whom to trust. We also need to feel special - we are emotionally hard-wired to try to be big fish in small ponds.
Simply put, that's why I bitch so much about the USofA - I live here. It shapes my daily life much more than events anywhere else (even when those events cause the Rich White Men to Get Excitable). It's not as if I get all wet for the USofA. If I lived in Australia, France or Nigeria, then those would be the places I'd bitch about most. It's call "being human."
So, while I'm blessed to be getting hits from all over the world - and I mean nearly everywhere!! Woot!! - I'm not intentionally neglecting the human failings in Italy, Russia, Thailand or India - I just don't live there, so lack the first hand knowledge of the dumb things people do there. I mean, we're all idiots part of the time - welcome to the human condition.
But, like I said, humans are tribal, and we bitch most about what we know most about :)
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