Friday, February 14, 2003
[posted by jaed at 6:39 PM]Laughing so loud I startled the cat:
In one of the NYT's ain't-America-awful articles, German writer Peter Schneider has this to say: "I would say that even in the Vietnam years, I've never seen so much anti-Americanism all over Europe as I see now. This is something America doesn't realize." This is the sort of statement that is deeply ignorant - so clueless - that it makes me laugh out loud.
Gosh. No, it's true. We had no idea. I mean, when the Guardian told us it was All Our Fault 36 hours after the WTC fell on three thousand people, we just brushed it off as a misunderstanding. And when the Germans held an anti-America protest a week and a half later. And when the French told us their purpose for the EU was to oppose the United States. And when Pilger announced that we're all Nazis. And during the whole spew of verbal filth aimed at us from across the Atlantic for the last seventeen months.
Aren't these people paying attention at all? Yes, we realize you think we're both evil and stupid. We've heard you use "cowboy" as a term of opprobrium, because the cowboy is the typical American folk hero, and we understand the implication you're trying to get across. We've seen you use the crudest of anti-Americanism to win an election. We've heard you say the 9/11 attack had its good side, because it might take us down a peg.
We realize you'll cheer the body count at the news of the next attack here.
And we understand that if there's an attack in Europe, we'll be expected to help out with rescue teams, with medical aid, with money. (We also understand that if that happens, French and German backstabbing will go into the memory hole, and we'll be vilified for not preventing it from happening.) We understand that you expect us to defend you, even while you attack us. We understand that if, in fracturing the EU in the way you've done, you fools have managed to sow the seeds for yet another bloody war among yourselves, ten or twenty years from now, we'll be the ones expected to put a stop to it and to leave more thousands of our dead buried in your ungrateful soil.
We know you better than you think. We certainly understand you better than you understand us. And we don't like you much these days. Do you realize that, Herr Schneider?
