Wilko wrote:
BCITORGB wrote:


Clearly, for you Americans, it is YOUR election and your
government.
Unfortunately, as a nation, you are so powerful and influential
that
who you elect has an impact on virtually every other soul on this
planet. YOU may have decided that the Bush right-wing agenda is
right
for America. Many (the vast majority) of us outside of the United
States do not agree.

Well said Wilf. It's funny to see people who are both politically
almost
off the far right side of the political scale complain about their
differences. It's troubling to see the ones representing them not
only
try to carry out those ideas inside the U.S. but also try to force
them
onto the rest of the world. It's even more troubling to see that they

are trying to export that what they call "democracy".

I find it curious and disheartening that America can be so out of
step
with prevailing global opinions. The rest of the western world is
clearly "blue". Likely we could color the prevailing
anti-intellectualism of places like Afghanistan and other
fundamentalist cultures "red".

It's very simple: the vast majority of the U.S. population just don't

care what anyone else outside the U.S. thinks. :-(
Being that out of touch with the rest of the world and behaving like
it
doesn't matter what anyone else thinks has one drawback though: it
does
have its consequences when other people get it in their heads to make
it
painfully clear to you that they have a differing opinion. Still,
nothing that can't be hidden (for a while) from the population
through a
thick layer of propaganda...

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

Wilko, I have said on numerous ocassions, that I am very interested in
what you have to say. You are one voice in Europe, and so I identified
you as Euro, and got plonked for generalizing. And yet you just
acknowledged that we here in US are out of touch with the rest of the
world. That is a pretty big generalization for someone who is only one
small voice in Europe. It sounded to me like you were speaking for a
whole lot of Euro voices, and others. That is why I identified you as
Euro, and why what you say is important, if in fact that what you say
is true, we need to listen. There was no denigrating slur intended in
refering to you as Euro.

Now having said we need to listen, does not mean that we will accept
your premise. We have our own concerns whch we have to address as best
we can from our perspective. That does not mean that we are totally
myopic, anymore than others around the world. We each look out first
for number one. We have local concerns and worldwide concerns.

I understand that what we do affects others around the world. Maybe not
as well as you in your international travels. But I also know that some
bearded warlord in Afganistan does affect us as well. I suspect that
was part of the biggest shock to many Americans on 9/11. Our bubble
burst. We all live in a world where we affect one another. This would
be true whether our government was right or left, and there will always
be some in the world, who are further right or left than ourselves.
That does not mean that we should just go along with the other parts of
the world, but that we should attempt to influence them with what we
believe. Eventually we work out our differences one way or the other.
Much like personal differences, just on a bigger scale.

So am I unplonked? TnT