1) On Twitter, #proudtobecanadian is trending. Yet, it’s not okay for Americans to say that they are proud to be American?

2)Americans are not the most patriotic people. On the 4th of July, liberal Americans (which make up at least half of this country of 310 million) take the time to acknowledge the natives that suffered at the hands of European-transplants who tortured, oppressed, raped, and killed American aboriginals. (Note: This tragedy also happened in Canada.)

Canada is predominantly a liberal country (well, that’s at least their testimony). To contrast, on Canada Day, it is celebrated with high-strung nationalism. It is also celebrated to be the best country in the world. It is also celebrated to be not America.

I guess I’m starting to become like the same people I complain about. I just cannot apologize for generalizing Canadians. When you see day in and day out Canadians behaving the same way, it’s very hard to see the silent pariahs whom are afraid to speak out against the hypocrisy, the misplaced anger toward Americans, the lies about health care, the propaganda, and the overall immaturity.

I have changed. I feel better and more real being prejudiced and bigoted toward Canadians. It’s how I really feel. If anyone understands my hatred, it would only be Canadians themselves.

Daniel Lessard, the former Radio-Canada bureau chief in Ottawa who currently animates the political show Les coulisses du pouvoir, gratuitously remarked, “There is not a great cultural culture, if you allow me the expression, among the Conservatives. They are people who mainly watch American TV.”

via Duhaime: Billion reasons why CBC bias stinks | Columnists | Opinion | Calgary Sun.

Business as usual?

1) How could Canada be the laughing stock of America when we don’t even know you exist?

2) The remaining Americans who have heard of Canada, love it and hundreds of Americans move there every year because we LIKE you. Not jealous, but like you. Big difference.

3) Unlike what your media reports and unfounded rumors like to present to you all, Americans judge their country very harshly and critically.

4) Nobody can criticize Americans more than Americans themselves. That’s what our music does, our street protesters do, our comedians, our TV shows, our books, our media, and our print media. If you live in America, you will know that Americans hate each other and probably ourselves more. This may explain our high levels of depression, drug and alcohol addictions, our eating disorders. our extreme behaviors, our low self-esteem, our indifference, our violence, our paralyzed rage, our teen pregnancies, our belief in things that don’t exist, our child abuse and sex crimes, and all other serious mental illnesses. We are ALL aware of this even if we don’t admit it and cover our hopelessness in red, white, and blue.

And the other half of us … *openly* self-loathing…

If the world sees Canada as anything it’s for those loud obnoxious individuals whom are so self-congratulatory and jingoistic. Not America. Canada. Americanophobes just cannot stop thinking about America, and that is where I see the jealousy.

5) The most important point I’d like to make here is the blatant irony. Read this photo VERY carefully. If you don’t see the irony/paradox, then… you must be a Canadian.

Oh Canada. Nice job, peaceful folk.

Since I have been living in France I have survived a number of attempts on my patriotism. Despite their claims to open mindedness and tolerance it seems like Europeans are always getting down on Americans. Actually the perception is a bit off. The truth is it’s just a very vocal minority raising all the ruckus. And most what they say about America is just rumour, distorted “facts”, and is often just plain wrong. (did you know the second amendment to the Constitution was written AFTER the American Civil War? – I just learned that from an enlightened European…)

So on Wednesday May 10, 2006 I took a very public shot back at them and got them (the minority) all in an uproar and some of the peace-loving open minded Europeans were on the verge of threatening physical violence for my public (and full of verified facts) criticism of their European (trade) Union.

The very next day I was approached by a number of Europeans who told me “good going”, “we don’t know what their issue was”, etc. Among them were several Danish guys who could pull my arms off. I have since discovered that Denmark was one of the only (non UK) European countries to support the US in the Iraq war from the beginning. And even though I opposed the war, it felt really good to know that we have friends in the world who don’t forget that they are our friends when times are good. Another nation that supported us from the very beginning was Poland.

Read more…

It’s ridiculous to dwell on American nationalism when we see cases like the above quite often if you just read. In America, we’ve got people burning and pissing on the American flag both on our turf and abroad.

And it’s…… no problem. No laws broken – no formal apologies demanded.

Try this in Japan, Russia, and Canada and stand back and watch.

Yep. This is what I get a lot.

Me: How do you think you know about Americans?

Them: I’ve seen you on TV.

The WikiLeaks documents, by contrast, show Washington pursuing privately pretty much the policies it has articulated publicly. Whether on Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or North Korea, the cables confirm what we know to be U.S. foreign policy. And often this foreign policy is concerned with broader regional security, not narrow American interests. Ambassadors are not caught pushing other countries in order to make deals secretly to strengthen the U.S., but rather to solve festering problems.

Continue reading —> WikiLeaks Revelations Show the Skills of U.S. Diplomats – TIME.

McDonald’s Japan launched a home delivery service on a trial basis. So long as your order is roughly 15 dollars or less.

“I just read an article on today’s MSN homepage called Are We America the Ignorant? and the accompanying gallery entitled America the Ignorant—Dumb Things Americans Believe. Sheesh. I’m so sick of being made to feel embarrassed to be American! It’s not helping anything, because it pits people against one another, as readily evidenced in the comments. Because the issues we’re divided on are so emotional, we can’t have a conversation about them and that is indeed pathetic…and of course the issues are related to either politics or religion.

Articles like these are on the rise as it becomes more fashionable to hate America. We are stupid, ignorant, decadent, racist western filth. The media as an industry has the power to create its own spin on our culture and shape how others see us and how we feel about ourselves. In this article they’ve taken things a minority of people believe and given it an America-Land-of-the-Idiots twist.”

Continue reading by clicking on the above link.

Looks like the biggest urban legend in the world has been smushed… that Americans were the most materialistic. Well, … that’s just what everyone wants to believe… Yes?

More than two-thirds of Koreans consider money the most important sign of success, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Korea and China topped the poll of 24,000 people in 23 countries on the question at 69 percent.

They were followed by India (67 percent) and Japan (63 percent).

But respondents in Western countries regard money as a less important indicator of success. A mere 27 percent of Canadians thought money spells success, followed by Swedes (28 percent), Dutch (29 percent), and French (32 percent).

Even in the U.S., only 33 percent of Americans agreed that money means success, and 67 percent disagreed. The worldwide average is 43 percent.

The young are more materialistic, with 48 percent of the under-35s seeing money as the hallmark of success, compared with 35 percent of those aged 55 and older.

Eighty-four percent of Koreans, Japanese and Chinese said money is more important than it used to be.

We can deduce from this easily that stereotypes are bullshit.

And celebrity obsession is an American phenomenon?

I was never dumb enough to believe it was, and it was crystal clear to me that the ‘worship’ of stars was alive in well throughout the years I lived in Japan.

I was bullied so this touched me deeply.

A few days ago I posted a rather harsh article about bullying. You can find it here. In the article (and ensuing discussion) I told of how I had been bullied as a child. I argued that it is quite difficult to forgive and forget, and that bullying can leave scars decades later. I argued that bullies need to be dealt with severely – that we need to bully the bullies. I still believe that. Writing that article and engaging in the ensuing discussion … Read More

via The Hippie Professor

The saddest part of this is that the author, Jim Dougan, died of a massive heart attack just a few days later.

Hmm? I thought Americans were the most sexist and violent.

My opinion?

I have done much traveling and have lived in Japan for 6.5 years. I don’t understand what this “phenomenon” has to do with Americans? I read this entire article. I want YOU to read it too – in full. I see the author’s points as characteristic of being HUMAN as opposed to being “American”. Why must we continue to divisively throw people into little boxes and place labels on them? Substitute Americans with Mexicans and watch the viewer input: racism. Racism, you call it right? Wouldn’t this be the same if the label was substituted with Canadians too? Minorities don’t make a difference in public outcry. RACISM, they’d call it!

But when you have to stack people into piles, place them inside America because Americans can take it, right? Well, we are as human as any other people of any other nation. That means we have feelings too.

But making it about Americans is a great way to get hits, though.

Other than that, I really enjoyed this article. Beautifully written and made a lot of sense for me assuming it was about the human race……..

Leave nations of people out of labels.

Let me just end this by saying that I doubt that the author is prejudiced. He’s American, afterall. I think he was rather using “Americans” to be either academic, self-critical, or provocative. I am just simply using his piece to make a point.

Canadian Americanophobes need to face the fact that every nation (including their own) has its children learn history through the narrow scope of jingoism in hopes to create a citizenry that will do anything to protect and defend the honor of their country. We all do it. It is time to come to terms with this.

Name one country – one country who uses textbooks that DO weigh in all angles of every event in World History?

There are none.

So, this is why Canada thinks they won the war of 1812, and why they think THEY burned down the White House.

Wake up, Canada?

The United States congress declared war on Britain 38 days later, and their first move was to invade Canada. The United States army was very much unprepared, but was thrust into war, and it should go without saying that the British army in Canada was likewise unprepared.

Because Britain was waging a war against Napoleon, they had few troops to spare, yet were still able to repel the American invasion of Canada. By 1815, after Napoleon had abdicated in Europe, the British were able to spare the needed troops to make 3 attacks into the United States:

1. Toward Baltimore. The British were able to capture and burn down Washington DC, but were unable to capture their main objective of Baltimore, and sailed back up to Canada.

2. Toward New York, but were defeated early in the attack at Plattsburgh.

3. Up through New Orleans, but were defeated at the battle of New Orleans.

Read the full story here.

As a child, we have an excuse to be ignorant, always. However, as an adult, if we’re going to be public with our opinions – especially about such delicate and sensitive topics such as war, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves…. if only for the reason to be taken seriously by others.

Idiotarianism is a world-wide phenomenon. But we don’t hear about any other country. We only hear about America. Why is that? It is ONLY because we are the most powerful country (this is not a pat on the back, mind you).

Let’s say Japan takes over the whole world (hypothetically, of course). Guess who is going to make the headlines in literally every category humanly possible? Guess whose living habits will be highlighted and exaggerated, made-up and fabricated? Guess whose IQ scores will be the only ones known and conveniently not compared to the other developed countries in a fair and balanced way? Guess whose media will be mocked for being overly insular and inaccurate? Guess whose materialism will be exposed? Guess whose pop-culture will be made fun of for its superficiality? See how the new empire’s madness will be linked directly to every single citizen of Japan unfairly? Guess who will be accused of thinking all alike and not having a mind of their own as a result of the “dumbing down”? Guess whose text-books will be made fun of for teaching hyper-chest-pounding-jingoism? Guess who will be the new subject of unintelligence displayed in Youtube videos where cherry-picked citizens are taped and broadcast for the world to laugh at their wrong answers? Guess whose flags will be burned world-wide? Who will be the new dummy on the block, folks? Anti-Japanesism will become a fad that is distributed throughout the world like soup being rationed off for the starving. And your average Japanese citizen will be smeared by the school yard bullies that is the rest of the sheeple-filled, willfully ignorant and angry world.

I say this because we all know from history (I’m assuming everyone remembers all the empires of the past, right?) that ALL superpowers ABUSE their power and MANY people die as a result of it. Well, then… we don’t blame the governments responsible, do we? We naturally (yet pathetically) blame the average man on the street that lives under said regime. We selectively forget that the citizens of the new empire have just as much control over their political leaders as we do.

Just like with our parents: If they were abusive, we rarely blame them. Rather we misdirect our anger on others who remind us of our parents. Racism, bigotry, and prejudice is ALL misplaced anger and frustration. Why do you think some people are more susceptible to being brainwashed than others? Well, it depends on how much bottled up rage you have inside and how desperately you need an outlet.

It is NOT a peculiar American phenomenon to believe every form of rhetoric we hear on TV. Nor is it a peculiar American phenomenon to be easily subjected to parental and scholarly indoctrination including and not limited to peer-pressure from our “friends”. You know what? If it is convenient for YOU, you will believe EVERYTHING that you hear. And it will taste good.

Deny it all you like. Get angry, even. Defy me. But I believe this to be true. It doesn’t matter where on planet Earth you live. This is the downside of humanity and is part of being human. And this is one human characteristic that is negative.

Most humans need SOMETHING to believe in, some rhetoric to follow blindly, and crowds of people to “ditto” without personal inspection or critical thinking.

You will never see the dirty laundry displayed about Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the continent of Europe, the continent of South America (Yes, it IS a continent), and so on. And I am saddened by the ignorance of many as to WHY we never hear about these countries. It is not because they are morally or intellectually superior to us. It’s because they are not an “empire”.

Even if Japan right now were to kill 248646985435435 people just because? So long as America is the “empire”, nobody will give a toot or a hoot about the lives lost. Only a few will care. Why? Because they are too busy focusing on America – addicted like crack addicts. And if they happen to overhear about 248646985435435 lives lost by ANY other country than the US, they will just say conveniently, “Oh, it’s their culture; leave them alone, you racists.”

We all need to go outside – further than our own backyards and have an open mind. It’s only then that we are further exposed to the truth – as opposed to the hype.

“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told — and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.” ~ Michael Crichton

“Ignorance is not the sole province of Americans or the right wing or even religious fanatics. This kind of willful refusal to look critically at the world is nearly a constant among the poor and the indoctrinated around the world and throughout history.” –Mike Hein

My conclusion? We are all human first …AKA idiots.