I'd take your point, except that I'm not sure where Beliefs and England necessarily cross over. I have beliefs that I hold dear and in some circumstances I might even fight and/or die for them, but they have little or nothing to do with geography.
Interesting point. The geography bit was an extension as I was looking for quotes to back up my point and the ones tat seemed most poignant were from Americans which got me thinking.
TV seems to have replaced religion as the opium of the people and everywhere in this England I see people brain dead and comatose. There was even that stupid cow last year singing about wishing she was a punk rocker with flowers in her hair as if the fundamental cornerstone of punk was to behave like a fluffy bunny rabbit.
In some ways I am quite glad of this recession. It might wake a few slumbering heads up and shake them into action. On the other hand there will still be quite a few who sit around wondering where to start and look for someone else to blame. Still they can always keep themselves occupied by getting another bottle of hair dye and stocking up on tranquilisers.
I think its simpler than that. People look for something to blame and their gaze falls on the ‘new unfamiliar’. That could be a foreigner, a gay, a person of different gender, a person with different dress sense or even someone with a disability. Its all using the same prejudicial mechanism and has nothing to do with your nationality. The answer to all these things is to encourage personal responsibility and educate. The more familiar something is, the less likely people are to blame it.
I was reading some interesting comments yesterday on a friend's LJ about the whole Obama letting off the torturers topic, and they pointed out that the US keeps on like the terrorists are some horrible new breed of human, that will die for their beliefs so you have to torture them as it's the only way to combat such monsters. Never mind that "dying for your beliefs" is supposed to be a principle of being human, as the user (who I don't know pointed out) it's barely been seen as heroism, not being willing to die would be seen as treasonous and shocking cowardice. Which I thought summed it up quite nicely.
Though personally having lived in the states for so long I'm really glad not to have to be subjected to the level of nationalism (sorry "patriotism") that goes on there. I remember at 9 when I first heard about the pledge of allegience and thought that was the kind of brain washing one would expect from "commies" not from "the free".
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TV seems to have replaced religion as the opium of the people and everywhere in this England I see people brain dead and comatose. There was even that stupid cow last year singing about wishing she was a punk rocker with flowers in her hair as if the fundamental cornerstone of punk was to behave like a fluffy bunny rabbit.
In some ways I am quite glad of this recession. It might wake a few slumbering heads up and shake them into action. On the other hand there will still be quite a few who sit around wondering where to start and look for someone else to blame. Still they can always keep themselves occupied by getting another bottle of hair dye and stocking up on tranquilisers.
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And foreigners will be among the first targets of this search. Hence my problem with the whole 'countries' concept.
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Though personally having lived in the states for so long I'm really glad not to have to be subjected to the level of nationalism (sorry "patriotism") that goes on there. I remember at 9 when I first heard about the pledge of allegience and thought that was the kind of brain washing one would expect from "commies" not from "the free".
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