I have been calling out the US on her violence for ages, but having read this article published by the BBC, it gave even someone like me some perspective.
A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, “a gentler environment for bringing the kids up.”
Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.
I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.
“It seems so nice here,” they quaver.
[Snip!]
They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.
It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.
Feel free to read the rest of that article here.
The British authors of “America in the World” published something noteworthy on this topic:
Gun crime, inequalities in general and access to healthcare, in particular, are also used by America’s critics as ammunition. Michael Moore’s films – Bowling for Columbine and Sicko – portray a particularly negative view of America. American citizens have their own personal experiences which they can set against the films of Moore – and of the wider Hollywood – but for overseas observers they are often unchallenged propaganda. There are occasional attempts by opinion-formers to put contentious subjects into context – as the BBC’s Justin Webb recently did in his defence of America’s record on gun crime[13] – but these are exceptional.
This fact is very important. Only in America are Micheal Moore, Al Gore, Noam Chomsky et al challenged on some of their exaggerations, inaccurate fast facts, and generalized distortion of the truth. However, abroad, these people’s statements are digested without a burp!
Critics of America are very useful and have fundamentally good intentions, however, some of these multi-millionaires who critique this country get carried away beyond the facts to pure theatrical hyperbole.
If you are interested in this subject, you also may be interested in my posting about the flaws in Michaell Moore’s argument in his movie, “Bowling for Columbine”.
