September 16, 2012
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Damn Yankees!
Wow what a difference a few days make in America’s world standing. Previously, people hated us. Now the violently hate us not for something our government did but for a movie that one of our citizens made. Oh, I’m sure they hate us for many other things, for example our constant meddling in the middle east, but they kind of just limited it to burning our flag in their country. Now they are attacking our embassies. All because of a movie that made fun of their so called religious profit. Jeez people, chill the fuck out, would you?
See this is the difference between our American culture and their culture. It is not just freedom of speech. It is not just the ability to take a joke or to be offended by something. It is our ability to rationally disagree or passively find something offensive. Sure, we protest. Of course, we write letters. And yes, we get angry. But, we know something that is said by somebody else that we deem offensive does not justify death. I may disagree with Republicans on damn near everything, but I don’t think they deserve to die because we have a difference of opinions. Sure there are some radical people in our country; people who we believe are hurting America or who don’t seem to respect others and who hate people because of their beliefs. But, very rarely does that result in a violent protest that kills people. We have our issues but respecting people enough to kill them for their freedom of speech is not one of them.
In my lifetime, America has never been as sharply divided as it is right now. EVERYTHING seems to be political, even things that would seem to be impossible to be political but yet, they still seem to turn political. It seems like people can’t seem to have a simple conversation without conservative or liberal values being invoked into the conversation. Yes, I’m guilty of it too. But, our mentality has always been the right to say what you want without fear of being murdered for how one believes.
Countries around the world are always going to hate us. It’s just the way it is when you are on top of the world. The question though, is how do we get them to stop killing us? How do we make it safe for Americans to travel the world? How do we spread our belief of passive disagreement to their world? I don’t know much about anything, but this much I am certain: this is not an easy problem to solve. It is not a problem that either Obama or Romney can solve. Anybody who thinks either side can fix this problem is simply fooling themselves. There is a lot of bad blood and angry, hateful, anti-American sentiment that lurks in the world, especially the middle east. It is not something that can be fixed overnight or even over the course of a few years. And it is not something that any president or political figure can cure by waiving some magic military wand that all of a sudden makes them love us. Or at least stop killing us. Or plotting to kill us. Or attempting to take us down. And it is not like we can just send them a survey asking them why they hate us so much. But, we do need to somehow start planting the seed of an olive branch so that they can eventually realize that violence is not the answer.
