Remember those Woody Allen movies, or that episode of the Simpsons where it was illegal to be in a bad mood. Does anybody see shades of them in this? It is possible, from my experience of Americans and pop culture, that the plan is to create a new slew of Americans that simply smile vacantly and do what they are told. I must admit, if this is the beginning of such an Orwellian situation, it's going to be fun for non-Americans to watch how this plays out and developes...unless WAVE spreads...
(*It may seem like I've deviated from the original topic of the thread, but bear with me and you'll see where I'm going*) I recently went to America...I expected to find a modern, cutting edge type of place. I expected to find a liberal people. I expected to find a people oblivious to their own negative points. How wrong I was... For such a young country, much of it seems bogged down in traditions and ceremonies. I'm not going to read into that, but it's just a fact. And in America, the liberalisation of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties (ranging from Hippies to Punks to Geeks) seems to be localised around cities such as New York and places such as California etc... I am truely shocked at the conservatism of the American people; they seem less tolerant than the people of the other countries I've been to. It well hidden beneath a veil of PC, but it's there and it's strong. But what surprised me the most was that these same people knew that the 'rest of the world' (I use the term liberally) laughed at America. They knew why as well, despite the sickly sweet tripe served up to them as news on TV: America has a bad education system as far as publically funded primary and secondary (High-) schools go. SATs are a joke, and spelling seems more important than anything else. (This is my third time re-writing this - I keep getting carried away with examples and writing paragraph after paragraph. So, for the sake of brevity, I'll curtail myself.) America insists on the right to hold arms. Obtensibly to defend oneself, one's family and one's property. Defend them from....other people who share this right to hold arms. These weapons are responsible for countless deaths each year. SO basically, people engage in American bashing because, despite the above bad points, and many more unlisted(ahem: Cuban blockade, Grenada, trade wars, muscle flexing, two party system), America has enjoyed successes accross the globe. And we all enjoy benefits from America(Cornflakes, transistors etc...). So how does this all tie in with WAVE? Well, when America sneezes IONA(Britain and Ireland) and Western Europe, tends to catch the cold. People are afraid because if something like WAVE takes off in the USA it could spread to Europe. It establishes precedent etc... So my plea to those of you on the net is "Don't victimise those who express some slight anti-American tendancies on the net; net spelling is American, net dominance is American....world dominance is American. The pro-USA, sickly-sweet propagana never ends(perhaps you don't even notice it anymore), so indulge us once in a while"
Kuzinov's probably right, the 'Anonymous Coward' above makes his point in such a way that he probably is British(by-the-by, I'm Irish and hopefully unbiased against Americans). It's like he's(or she's) trying to dissect American society with a meat-cleaver rather than a scalpel and I can see why that would make Americans angry. What many of us 'non-Americans' tend to forget is that places like New York, Texas and Washington are vastly different to each other...so much so that it lends credence to the idea that each American state is basically "...a nation unto itself..." Even within each state the vast difference between the rich and poor tends to further divide the state into two, with two distinct set of viewpoints, access to services and life-experiences.(I've stayed with 'well-off' relatives and been privy to the poorer sights of Illinois and it is immediately obivous to the casual observer that these two sets of people have entirely different ideas of what America is). That's why the idea of WAVE won't sweep America by storm, let alone any other country: too many people that potentially would have been affected have risen to postions of influence(ahh! Thank God for the rise of Geekdom!) - too many ordinary people would also have found themselves affected by a concept such as WAVE. You're then faced with 30(-ish) states where, even if politicans are in favour of an idea like WAVE, the ground-swell of public opinion and the backbone of industrial and commerical employers will be set firmly against WAVE, in its current, non-governmental role. Anyway, from the recesses of my memory, wasn't there something like this before? It kind of reeks of Victorian concepts.....remember for some time in the Victorian era in Britain, the landed gentry and nobility would gain admission to certain schools only if the dimensions of their heads matched prerequisites; those with large foreheads were almost guaranteed a place at one of the better colleges, the theory being that those with bigger foreheads had bigger brains. But WAVE could very well be symptomatic of the stage of life that America is at. I'll leave the interpretations of that one open to debate.
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Remember those Woody Allen movies, or that episode of the Simpsons where it was illegal to be in a bad mood. Does anybody see shades of them in this?
It is possible, from my experience of Americans and pop culture, that the plan is to create a new slew of Americans that simply smile vacantly and do what they are told. I must admit, if this is the beginning of such an Orwellian situation, it's going to be fun for non-Americans to watch how this plays out and developes...unless WAVE spreads...
(*It may seem like I've deviated from the original topic of the thread, but bear with me and you'll see where I'm going*)
I recently went to America...I expected to find a modern, cutting edge type of place. I expected to find a liberal people. I expected to find a people oblivious to their own negative points. How wrong I was...
For such a young country, much of it seems bogged down in traditions and ceremonies. I'm not going to read into that, but it's just a fact. And in America, the liberalisation of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties (ranging from Hippies to Punks to Geeks) seems to be localised around cities such as New York and places such as California etc...
I am truely shocked at the conservatism of the American people; they seem less tolerant than the people of the other countries I've been to. It well hidden beneath a veil of PC, but it's there and it's strong.
But what surprised me the most was that these same people knew that the 'rest of the world' (I use the term liberally) laughed at America. They knew why as well, despite the sickly sweet tripe served up to them as news on TV:
America has a bad education system as far as publically funded primary and secondary (High-) schools go. SATs are a joke, and spelling seems more important than anything else.
(This is my third time re-writing this - I keep getting carried away with examples and writing paragraph after paragraph. So, for the sake of brevity, I'll curtail myself.)
America insists on the right to hold arms. Obtensibly to defend oneself, one's family and one's property. Defend them from....other people who share this right to hold arms. These weapons are responsible for countless deaths each year.
SO basically, people engage in American bashing because, despite the above bad points, and many more unlisted(ahem: Cuban blockade, Grenada, trade wars, muscle flexing, two party system), America has enjoyed successes accross the globe. And we all enjoy benefits from America(Cornflakes, transistors etc...).
So how does this all tie in with WAVE? Well, when America sneezes IONA(Britain and Ireland) and Western Europe, tends to catch the cold. People are afraid because if something like WAVE takes off in the USA it could spread to Europe. It establishes precedent etc...
So my plea to those of you on the net is "Don't victimise those who express some slight anti-American tendancies on the net; net spelling is American, net dominance is American....world dominance is American. The pro-USA, sickly-sweet propagana never ends(perhaps you don't even notice it anymore), so indulge us once in a while"
Kuzinov's probably right, the 'Anonymous Coward' above makes his point in such a way that he probably is British(by-the-by, I'm Irish and hopefully unbiased against Americans).
It's like he's(or she's) trying to dissect American society with a meat-cleaver rather than a scalpel and I can see why that would make Americans angry.
What many of us 'non-Americans' tend to forget is that places like New York, Texas and Washington are vastly different to each other...so much so that it lends credence to the idea that each American state is basically "...a nation unto itself..."
Even within each state the vast difference between the rich and poor tends to further divide the state into two, with two distinct set of viewpoints, access to services and life-experiences.(I've stayed with 'well-off' relatives and been privy to the poorer sights of Illinois and it is immediately obivous to the casual observer that these two sets of people have entirely different ideas of what America is).
That's why the idea of WAVE won't sweep America by storm, let alone any other country: too many people that potentially would have been affected have risen to postions of influence(ahh! Thank God for the rise of Geekdom!) - too many ordinary people would also have found themselves affected by a concept such as WAVE. You're then faced with 30(-ish) states where, even if politicans are in favour of an idea like WAVE, the ground-swell of public opinion and the backbone of industrial and commerical employers will be set firmly against WAVE, in its current, non-governmental role.
Anyway, from the recesses of my memory, wasn't there something like this before? It kind of reeks of Victorian concepts.....remember for some time in the Victorian era in Britain, the landed gentry and nobility would gain admission to certain schools only if the dimensions of their heads matched prerequisites; those with large foreheads were almost guaranteed a place at one of the better colleges, the theory being that those with bigger foreheads had bigger brains.
But WAVE could very well be symptomatic of the stage of life that America is at. I'll leave the interpretations of that one open to debate.