Patrick, I think you can tie anybody up and make them do anything.

Hmm… I am white, not Anglo Saxon by blood, nor am I a Protestant. Think I might still be able to tie people up and force them to eat Micky D’s?

HAPPY NEW YEAR, ALL!

The real annoying part about it all is that they complain about how stupid and ignorant we are and in doing so reveal their own stupidity and ignorance. These people are jokes.

The culture issue *really* gets to me, because it’s exasperatingly misunderstood.

First of all, culture isn’t a snapshot of what your region produced in the way of the arts and traditions 500 years ago (when, you know, people were open-minded enough to try new things). It’s what’s been innovated and enjoyed *today*.

The fact is that the US (and Britain) are far more culturally diverse and vibrant than mainland Europe. European music culture is pretty much 100% techno, which involves adding an electronic beat to an 80s American/British pop tune. It is pretty much the same across the entire continent; you can’t tell if the latest 80s techno incarnation is from Spain or Finland. It all sounds the f-ing same.

European art is still vibrant, but its literature is stale. Not so for American art & literature, and American music blows Euro music out of the water.

For better or worse, dance styles, cuisine, theater and film continue to evolve and innovate new forms in the US. In Europe, they’re still breakdancing (parkour is a clear, exciting exception), cuisine hasn’t been touched in 200 years, theater outside of London is stale or dead (depending on where you are), and European film has been in decline since the 1960s.

Europeans are the most frequent invokers of “there is no American culture” canard, but they’re, frankly, on weakest footing when it comes to arguing for your own culture’s vibrancy and diversity.

And Brazillian immigrants (some of Japanese ancestry) have it the worst there when it comes to social status.

Meanwhile, Aby can ask the Japanese why Korean people who were born and raised in Japan still need to carry foreign ID’s.

Aby “the liberal” is frighteningly ignorant as she bastardizes what the word, “homogeneous” truly means. Japan is a homogeneous country by definition. Ironically enough however, the average man in the street in Japan couldn’t be more polite, more gracious, and more accepting to the differences of all the countries that come to live and visit. It’s an amazing country.

I don’t think the definitions applied to what we consider a nation or country really apply, especially when it comes to its people and culture.

“Aby’s” chronic inability to understand this concept (and to differentiate the population at large from its incompetent government) is indicative of why diversity is so precious and so easy to destroy in a melting pot.

Especially in the last half of the 20th century, Americans, for the most part, have learned the delicate art of preserving heritage without it burdening the lifestyles of others.

As in: “I don’t have to like you. But I will put up with you… up to a point”.

The fact that she is unable to see beyond her own continent is, ironically, identical to the preception that the “America’s idea of the world” consists of itself, Canada, and Mexico.

“Europe” as a whole is diverse. But as you pointed out, individual “countries” within Europe are another matter.

You can walk into England, Ireland, France, Germany, Russia, India, China, Japan, and even Denmark all in the small space of Manhattan island. And I’m not even talking about the restaurants.

Now that’s diversity.

Happy New Year one and all!