Withholding information

[raven]

There are still two and a half weeks until half term. I'm going to drop dead with exhaustion before then. Every day is so damn tiring, as well. It's because I have to actually pay attention to avoid losing track.

Anyway. At least I don't have a great deal of homework for tonight. In fact, I have very little homework (touchwood) compared to GCSE, so far. I would have had an essay, but this morning, the English rooms were being decorated for Open Morning on Saturday, so we were told to take the essay titles away with us and do them somewhere else. I stopped by the kitchen, made a mug of coffee and then realised there was no milk. So Gemma and I went down to the actual kitchens, got the milk and went back up. It all took up time, but I did have the allotted hour for the essay. I took my coffee up to the library, dug out the poems from the anthology, scribbled away in pencil and then in fountain pen, and actually enjoyed myself. Last year, I found lit essays the hardest thing in the world. They're still not exactly easy, but it's a very real example of practice making closer to perfect. I won't ever be able to do a lit essay with the ease of a language essay, but it's getting better. And I scribbled five minutes into lunch and handed it in. Voila.

Danny came up to the common room after lunch. Gemma, Meg and Kat are making life very uncomfortable for poor Verena. It was nice to see Danny again, though. Before he came, Gemma asked me about him, what did he look like, etc, and when I hesitated she said, "Let's put it this way. Would you..." - and some rather explicit hand gestures.
"No," I said. "Gay best friend, on the other hand..."
Danny is not, as far as I know, gay, but he certainly plays the gay best friend role for cucharita.

Which is all besides the point. After a while, he and Verena left the common room for some peace and quiet. I don't blame them. When they were gone, Rosie and co. suddenly decided they wanted to talk to me. "Was that Verena's boyfriend? What year's he in? What's his name?"

I took a certain perverse pleasure in withholding information.

Following all the excitement, I started falling asleep in Politics. Woke up for the debate on America, though. No-one is a fan of Bush, it seems. When asked, I explained the concept of the Pledge of Allegiance, and I asked Mr Evans why the Americans are so patriotic, and he considered and said some stuff about all Americans having immigrated at some point, so they need something to pull them together and that something is the flag. General consensus - America is a strange country.

After school, Becca wanted to go to Quirk's in the village to buy a CD. I noticed that Quirk's in Crosby is next door to Pritchard's - exactly the same as Quirk's and Pritchard's in Formby. And there is a Mr Pritchard. Becca and I both found this unaccountably amusing. We spent some time in the shop (Thomas came in, cue groaning from Becca) and she was going to buy Coldplay's Parachutes. However, she is nothing if not quick on the uptake, and asked me, "Am I allowed to buy it?"

"No," I said as expressionlessly as possible. She bought Travis' The Invisible Band instead. We walked home through a sweet-smelling evening, and everything was lovely, for a time. Everything is not perfect, because my mp3 player appears to be broken. Well, either it's broken or its charger is, and I'm desperately hoping the latter is the case. I can but wait and see.

And that is all.

Comments

[scarlatti.livejournal.com]

General consensus - America is a strange country.

*snort*

[cucharita.livejournal.com]

Danny wants to know what people are saying about him.
He is no longer a best friend. He insults my taste in guys & says that Verena is much more attractive than I. & he doesn't like her enough to go out with her. I refuse to be insulted in such a way.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* People are saying he's cute. That's all. And what's he going to tell Verena?

And are you coming on Saturday? If we're going to gossip I'd prefer we did it on person...

[cucharita.livejournal.com]

of course i am coming. Do not fear. Ooh, I may have a lovely dress to wear also. Yay.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Look forward to it. And that should have been "in person." I am an idiot.

Going to watch M*A*S*H, now...

[donnertheim.livejournal.com]

It's not that America is a strange country, any more so than Europe is a collection of strange countries. There are two major differences between America and any European nation.

1) We built a republic which derives its authority from the will of the people. This idea was completely central to the creation of our nation, along with the concept of free markets and property rights. Your own nation doesn't even have a Bill of Rights. In most continental nations the governments grant rights to the people. (Or at least, that's the idea I get from what the people in charge seem to say.) Furthermore, on the mainland there seems to be a general contempt for the working class in the elitist newspapers such as Le Monde. In America, legitimacy rests with that working class.

2) Socialism never took root here. This is incredibly enormous. Because that vile doctrine (no offense intended, if you happen to be a socialist) never took root here, we don't have half the nanny state that most European countries seem to have - not that our government couldn't afford to go on a diet.

As for American patriotism...
There's a lot here. You see, most Americans are not politically active. We realize that our nation leads the world economically and militarily, and that we have more political power than any other nation. On the other hand, we take it for granted. We don't think much of it. So we don't completely understand why we're so resented for our relative wealth abroad.

And we are resented. Americans just have to look around to find signs of Anti-Americanism in the world media. Le Monde celebrates every American casualty in Iraq, while forgetting that the momentum of their health care system let over ten thousand elderly Parisians die. Some of our political commentators have picked up the German word 'schadenfreude' (joy in suffering, roughly) to describe the German media's reaction to casualties. Even some British newspapers - and often, we regard you Brits as our only friends in Europe! - some British newspapers shrilly attack our government. Even the BBC tried to lie about the heroic members of our commando group which saved PFC Jessica Lynch. (Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, Beebs tried to accuse SEAL Team Six of staging the raid for media spectacle and using blanks and whatnot. Every rule of common sense should have pointed out just how ridiculous their case was.)

Of course, this is nothing new. We've been resented across the world for some time now, even before Iraq. Thing is, it was easy to ignore because it didn't really affect us any. We're safe, sitting across the Atlantic and Pacific from everything, right? But 9-11 drove it home.

Some Americans are patriotic because we have been attacked for the first time in the recollection of most people. Others, such as myself, are patriotic because we truly believe in our country's ideals, which our constitution spells out - I'm ready to devote my life to upholding and fighting for those principles. Some people don't really care whatsoever - they just go on about their lives without giving it a second thought. This is a greater percentage of people than one might think; I'd say they're in the majority. Trust me on this, however; your teacher is dead wrong about our patriotism due to being a nation of immigrants. In fact, many political scientists say we succeed in spite of racial heterogeneity, because that potent mix of races results in race politics. It used to be that we rallied around the flag, but since Vietnam it's been considered in poor taste and 'jingoism' to hoist the flag. Since Vietnam, a lot of things have changed - until Nixon's fall, we also rallied around the President. Now the Commander-in-Chief is the media's number one target.

Seeing as I'm a 'merrican, and a student of politics, I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have on American politics, government and institutions. I'd like to think that, being an American myself, I might be able to help you figure us out a touch more than your prof.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Firstly, I'm sorry about how long it has taken me to respond to this. I usually reply to LJ comments in a state of late-night somnambulism. This has actually required me to think. :)

Your first point then, regarding the Bill of Rights. I've always thought it interesting that Britain and other European nations don't seem to need a Bill of Rights - our laws and constitutions are less well-defined because of the greater ages of the countries, but without its being set rigidly in stone, we still have basic human rights for everyone. Except of course the obvious exceptions - the right to bear arms, for instance, doesn't exist here because there has never been a need for it.

I'm not qualified to speak about the European view of the working-class - all I can say there is that Britain had the world's first industrial revolution, and consequently the world's first class of people working in the heavy industries. There was a lot of party identification in this country before the Seventies, which led to the working-class association with the Labour party. Since then boundaries have blurred, and politics has much, much less to do with class distinctions, and therefore I don't believe there is "contempt for the working class."

At this point I need to say that while my personal views are far from rigidly defined, they are left of centre.

America is resented for its actions as well as its wealth, though I'm sure that its wealth is part of it. But part of the reason it's resented in the Middle East is its support for the Zionists at the start of the nineteenth century and lack of regard for the Palestinians, whose bitterness has been excarberated by their fifty-year tenure in the refugee camps. They need someone to blame and, well, America's it, as it's a superpower that is not blameless.

Britain is often acerbically referred to in the newspapers as "the fifty-first state" and not in a good way(!) Tony Blair has supported Bush over Iraq, but those who support Blair in the decision are in the minority. Generally, the British opinion of Bush is not high, and because Blair doesn't seem to share that opinion, public opinion of the Prime Minister himself has gone down. The Hutton Inquiry is no doubt something to do with it, but most people seem to believe going to war because America did is not a good thing.

But that's neither here nor there. It's just something to throw out there.

I will admit freely to knowing nothing about the reasons for American patriotism. What I didn't go into detail about in my original entry was my experience with ordinary Americans who are, as you said, not politically active, but nonetheless patriotic enough to hoist flags in their gardens and write "God Bless America" at the bottom of a No Smoking sign! It's that kind of thing that I don't understand. You said you're a student of politics; in that case, I fully appreciate why you feel yourself patriotic. You obviously know exactly what that flag stands for. Not everyone will be as educated.

I'll think I'll leave this there, for the sake of LJ's servers. :) Thank you for taking the time to comment; I've enjoyed reading through your arguments very much.

[donnertheim.livejournal.com]

I would disagree with you on a few things (being, of course, the contrarian that I am.) First, you say there's no need for guns. I disagree. Nations which have banned guns, such as Australia and your own, tend to have a lower murder rate than the US, but a much higher overall violent crimes rate (which tallies in such crimes as rape, armed robbery, attempted murder, etc.), which shows that gun control causes crime to increase. To use anecdotal evidence, Wisconsin or somesuch state recently passed a concealed-carry law (meaning that you can get a license from the state govt. to pack heat), and immediately businesses in downtown Madison put up signs reading, "thank you for not carrying in a gun," or "This store is not armed." Three such shops were knocked off in as many days. Guns result in more murders, but less overall crime and less victimization of innocents. But I love guns - a lot - and that's just my take on things.

You're right that there's less contempt for the working class in England. I'd say that England is in the same boat as us 'merricans on that one. I was mostly referring to the French and Germans. (Le Monde got away with printing, on the front page - concerning the Iraq War and American motivations - 'As usual, the masses understand nothing.' Nobody, not a single newspaper in the nation, would get away with that here.)

France supported Israel far more in its infancy than did we, and in fact invaded Egypt along with the Israelis and Brits in 1956. The USSR pressured us to pressure them to lay off before Israeli tanks were parked in Cairo; naturally, not wanting an incident, we caved. That's probably the last time we were seen as the 'good guys' in the Middle East. In any event, if they want any respect from us they should quit blowing themselves up in their failed fight with Israel. They need to accept that their societies are fundamentally messed up, backwards and on the wrong side of history. They need to take a deep breath and a long look in the mirror. Then, they need to deal with their own - the bloodthirsty savages who make up such groups as Hamas and Islamic Jihad - for without internal policing and true liberal modernization, there will never be peace in the middle east. It's not about territory or any such thing; it's about fundamentally flawed societies which need to be dragged into the modern era. Then again, that's just my take on the situation.

I'd heard that Blair was having political troubles. It's a pity, in my opinion. The man's highly respected, even without taking into account that he's a European. (and yes, I'll freely admit that anti-European bias is at a high point over here right now.) On the other hand, by getting in really good with the last superpower, he's re-establishing England's presence on the world stage - a presence which England alone does not have the force and influence to cause itself. America's power is highly coercive - playing along with us is always, always to your benefit in the long run. But that's a post in itself.

One thing about the flag: to me, the flag represents all which is good and right in this world. It represents the world's best hope for liberty and justice. It represents all those battlefields, all the young men who died in those hallowed places, for those hallowed ideals, at the Marne and Belleau Wood, Normandy and Iwo Jima and god knows how many other little pieces of hell strewn across anywhen. Not to sound overly corny - that's just how I see it.

To others, it represents coercive power used at its worst, greed, dictatorship, and true evil.

The flag is nothing but a symbol, and means only what you see in it.

By the way, if you're wondering why a random 'merrican keeps posting comments to your journal, here's the short of it. I found your journal via random search, and I was intrigued. Why? Because I've always been a bit of an Anglophile. I was fortunate enough to live at Woodbridge USAFB from 1986-1991, while my father was serving in the US Air Force, and I've never forgotten about England. I think it will forever have a hold on my mind.