Not wanting the American Way of Life is fast becoming a survival strategy
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, May 11, 2003 By: Paul Volgyesi
Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 21:33:03 +0200 From: Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: Way of life
Dear Editor: VHeadline.com commentarist Oscar Heck pretty well summed up what reasonable people think of the US these days, Canadians or not...
The only only thing you seem to have gotten wrong ... and I'm certainly not blaming you for it, since I was as much surprised by it as most people will be, is "...most people in Canada do not own guns."
According to Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine", Canadians actually own more guns per capita than "Americans" except that ... as you rightly got it this time in the second part of the same sentence "... violent crime is minimal."
Ironically, this seems to vindicate the N.R.A's motto: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Anyway, for the "way of life," I suggest replacing the present US anthem with the song "Sixteen Tons," changing the title to "Sixteen Cards" and "company store" to "MasterCard n' Co."
As for Chretien, I'll rip you off the part of your piece about him and email it to him, since as much as I despise politicians as a race, he deserves to be thanked for what he did ... you just saved me the time and effort to formulate!
And to extend your extolling the virtues of "unsanitary" food outlets on beaches and streets ... and considering the number of Venezuelans they kill each year compared to "sanitized" Global Fast Food joints-created endemic global obesity ... I'd say that as long as you have to live under state or other terrorism (wherever, whichever), you're ultimately much better off and freer in a Latino Mickey Mouse than in a WASP "Law and Order" (whose?) environment, where nanotechnology permitting, they'll soon charge for (privatized) air inhaled.
It may be more violent (though the ultimate numbers may not even support that), it also more humane, even when inhumane. (Hope I'm still on this side of comprehensibility)
In respect to this American Way of Life ... which 90% of the citizens of the Third World dream of (no kidding, just watch what they watch on TV and what they buy, eat and drink when they can afford it!), I was asking myself whether it was worth it quality-wise back in the 60s ... knew it wasn't in the 80s ... and can't figure out today how come anybody ever got conned into it. It's so gross!
And I'm not even dreaming it. The New York Times ran a piece a couple of weeks ago saying that Americans work 350 hours more per year than Europeans. That's nine weeks a year, and Europeans are still fighting to work less!
Weren't we all told as kids that progress was about man working less, machine working more?
Since all that happened, ever since is about man working more, woman working even more and kids dropping out of school for having to work, anyone who can't figure out we got the Grand Screw Royal is mentally retarded and fair game for Global Manipulators, since they're asking for it, sorry, begging for it.
In over 40 years of watching the world around me, I've never seen any serious American movement for decent vacation, meal and rest time. This doesn't fit into Protestant work ethics. In good old sloppy Catholic Middle Ages ... adding religious feasts to Sundays ... the peasant worked less than 180 days/year. Since Protestants started working 480 and felt guilty for meal and sleep time, they all got richer than Catholics, individuals and countries alike.
The US is the epitome of this ... basically for having been colonized by Protestant Fundamentalists. They also eat ... or rather gulp in ... food largely unfit for humans, and get neurotic and aggressive from it and for being overworked and kept in constant anxiety. Don't take it from me, it exactly agrees with Michael Moore's works on the causes of American agressivity. (Finally a social student who comes from the "social" and not from politics or academe.)
So not wanting the American Way of Life is fast becoming more of a survival strategy than a political statement of fad.
Keep up the good works,
Paul Volgyesi sanbasan@interware.hu