(no subject)

[prog]

A while ago I posted a hypothetical question designed to be asked at Bush-voting Americans (which I'd happily link to if LJ had a tagging feature so I could find it grumble grumble). It was, in essence, "If you could magically eliminate everyone in the world who is not American, would you?" I predicted that more than you might think would answer in the affirmative. Got some very thoughtful comments, many saying I was just riding my own cynicism to think so lowly of my countrymen.

At first I tended to agree, but I have thought about this from time to time since then, and found that I've gone back to believing that my original hypothesis would be true. I am reminded of it, time and again, in little ways. I am posting this now because I saw it again today in this Doonesbury discussion thread.

I probably first saw it years ago back when I read Lileks every day, and he went insane in this highly specific fashion. And -- it's harsh -- but I really do think that a great deal of otherwise rational Americans are completely batshit crazy in the same way.

Comments

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

Somebody we both know very slightly (no, it's not him) was unhappy a few days ago because he had gotten into an argument with four other people living in the U.S. who thought it was "okay" to torture people, and he was wondering how it had come to this opinion. But maybe only "torture-O.k." people happened to be around at the time by freak coincidence.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Good Lord, I don't even comprehend that post. "There must be, to have those who are wealthy, those who are poor, those who are not going to get a fair shake"--that's not even a sentence.

[queue.livejournal.com]

There must be (those who are poor, those who are not going to get a fair shake) to have (those who are wealthy)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Oh! That makes sense. Well, by which I mean, that's a sensible parse of the sentence, which is, I stress, terribly written. ("those who are X, those who are Y, those who are Z" looks like it should be a single list.)

And of course, it's not remotely true. I mean, perhaps if one wants a sense of superiority, one can't feel wealthy unless there are lots of people with less than you; but it's simply not necessary, for this guy to have as much money as he does, for other people to be poor. See Wikipedia's article on "non-zero-sum" games.

[xymotik.livejournal.com]

Your post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/prog/402660.html , from March 1st of this year.

from google search: "site:http://prog.livejournal.com/ bush"

people suck

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Of course if they _did_ eliminate all non-Americans, they'd have to work much harder themselves to maintain their way of life. Would serve 'em right.