Unintentionally Imperialist

The Danger Posed by Ignorance

When inhabitants of foreign (non-American) lands first encounter the average stereotypical American Tourists there are certain characteristics that they consistantly find surprising. For the sake of enlightening some Americans who have been overseas and were wondering what the locals were blabbing to each other about as they passed, I shall share a couple of these observations.

The first thing that many non-americans notice about americans is that Americans Speak Very Loudly. I'm not really sure what the reasoning behind this is, but perhaps it is due to the inherently loud nature of American Sport Utitilty Vehicles (they tell me everyone has one now), which preclude carrying on conversations at a normal volume in public places. I am also told that when the mobile ("cell") phone revolution hit America, the american companies were in such a rush to catch up with other industrialised countries that they forgot that telephone reception is an important aspect of the use of mobile technology, and as such Americans have been forced to adopt a Consistantly High Volume to be heard over what is generally referred to as "static," but which in America these days could be realisticially termed "the sound of Big Brother listening in."

The other, and perhaps more troubling, aspect of the Stereotypical American is that they are quite gullible. One of the most striking examples of this in my recent memory is the story of a group of American tourists who travelled to Denmark, and subsequently (and I am not making this up) sued the Danish Tourist Ministry for false advertising in saying (still not making this up) that "the sun is different over here." These particular american tourists actually believed that a different sun rises and sets over Europe, or specifically Denmark, than rises and sets over America. I'm sure that there are countless cases of locals having a bit of fun with the gullibility of their visitors from across the pond, so to avoid any unnecessary embarassment for our well-meaning visitors, may I extend the following warning to american tourists: If you ask a local where the nearest "burger joint" is, and they tell you to knock on the door of the third house on the right and ask for a "big one with cheese," when you do so and the elderly woman who answers the door starts swinging a broom at you, don't be perplexed or irritated; it's all in good fun.


However, believing everything one is told is not all fun and games. Americans have unknowingly allowed themselves to be turned into propagators of the greatest threat to international peace and security that the world has seen since Adolf Hitler set his sights on world domination. Among the consequences of this slide into blatant imperialism (as opposed to veiled imperialism which America has employed since its inception) is the increased likelyhood of a large scale global conflict, the increased proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the increase in popularity of and recruitment possibilities by dangerous terrorist organisations, the destruction of 2 soverign nations, the erosion of basic human rights principles, the erosion of personal freedoms for american citizens and non-citizens alike, and the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, not to mention the high likelyhood of a continuation of this unnecessary loss of civilian life.

One of the most distressing news items of the past couple of weeks was the report by The Lancet that put on paper what most Iraqis already knew: that the American invasion of Iraq had directly contributed to the deaths of roughly half a million Iraqi civilians. Due to the fact that a large percentage of Iraqi civilian deaths go unreported, Americans who bought into the professions of benign intentions in the invasion of Iraq are quick to dismiss such claims, choosing instead to cower under the umbrella of uplifting rhetoric provided on a daily basis by their manipulative leaders and passed on unquestioningly by their subjugated media. However, to immediately write off works of scientific scholarship in favor of an unfailing belief in the inherent piety of greedy ruling elites is to bury one's head in the sand as a sandstorm approaches; half a million people dead leaves countless millions of berieved angry family members and friends, many of whom might consider turing to violence "to avenge this" (to borrow the words of the Marine Staff Sargent in the recent film "World Trade Center"). This violence will manifest itself in what the US Government refers to as "terrorism," in other words "when others do to us what we do to them."

Another byproduct of this new blatant imperialism is the physical manifestation of the excuses given for the agression from the beginning: proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As anyone who has not been holed up in a cave in afghanistan without access to the outside world is aware, on Monday, October 9, 2006, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea to the west) tested their first Nuclear bomb. This unsurprisingly led to immediate worldwide condemnation, though not for the reasons that most Americans would assume. Many worldwide leaders condemned the action as a provocation: provoking the American government which has shown itself willing to engage in military conflict for far less substantial reasons.

However, Americans have allowed their government to become the Tyrannical British Empire that their forefathers fought a war of liberation from. How? It comes back to their inherent gullibility, or perhaps to put it more nicely to the fact that they have entirely too much trust in people who are not trustworthy.

I feel it is necessary to point out some painful but obvious truths to the American population, and I shall try to do so in a manner in which they may understand:

Your Government Lies To You All The Time.

Your Media Lies To You All The Time.

Those Who Claim To Be The Opposition In Your Government Lie To You All The Time.

You Need To Stop Buying All The Lies.

That is all.

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By the way, my absence from here was not intentional, and I have no intention to see it happen again.