You instigate a conflict and then label those who respond by tearing down your arguments as defensive. One should expect a defense proportional to one's offense, a lesson you should perhaps contemplate before you attempt to escalate your pretensions against others.
>I'll summarize for you again, and maybe you'll read what I'm putting in the text as opposed >to things that I didn't explicitly write: it doesn't matter what you think of your country >when dealing with stereotypes. It doesn't matter what the truth of the situation is.
You're disingenuously backpedalling as I've watched you do numerous times with other posters who've called you on your anti-Americanism. You've argued for more than an image problem-- You've argued that anti-Americanism, in the crude and hypocritical forms in which you have expressed it is completely justifiable. There's no benefit to concealing your malice once you've announced it to the world.
You've defended those who single out America for their scorn in this forum and such people rarely apportion blame equally amongst China, Russia, and the United States. Your favoritism is there, inferrable from context-- Despite yet another attempt to backpedal. Not all communication is explicit. More than 50% of what you say, in fact, is reflected in how you say something or what you choose not to say, as opposed to what you explicitly state as a matter of record, and most implicit communication inferences people draw are well defined within a particular language group. I saw what you were saying, and I called you on it because it is illogical and hypocritical, for no other reason.
Regarding the softwood lumber issue I'm inclined to think the US government is too agressive in trying to selectively enforce international agreements to its benefit but you took aim at the population as a whole and provoked my response in that way. I'd never object to your point about softwood in proper context, although it is an odd one from the mouth of an environmentalist hippie. I suppose I also find the sudden concern for athleticism and health of Americans to be a bit unusual if you're not prepared to condemn the equally unhealthy pot smoking and acid dropping that exemplefies hippiedom. (Not that I didn't dabble a bit myself in the early years:)
My biggest concern with anti-Americanism is not legitimate criticism of American government, culture, or society, but hypocritical criticism emanating from three sources:
1) Envy of America's preeminence 2) Resentment of American capitalism (the debate with socialists is fine but they shouldn't invent pretexts to criticize America that they're unwilling to apply to countries that practice their ideals) 3) America's defense of Israel. The world is unreasonable on what it expects Israel to tolerate from its Islamist enemies. China and Russia in particular would resort to genocide on a neighbor sooner than be subjected to the barrage of missiles that came from Lebanon into Israel recently, yet they pounded the table and demanded that Israel cease military operations. This dark double standard looms like a spectre over international relations, and I believe the US has erred in compromising too much with it, if anything.
When you start nitpicking something like our energy consumption while admitting your own per capita is worse, and saying nothing about the clear-cutting of rain forests in Brazil because it's not expedient to pick on them right now, I see you as part of a trend of anti-Americanism that goes beyond the rational problems we should be seeking to solve in a spirit of cooperation. And that hypocrisy, representative of a kind of irrational ill-will, that invariable points to 1 through 3.
I'm willing to solve the real problems that America has, but 1 through 3 are not our problems. They are the shortcomings of our enemies.
It is completely inane of you to suggest that my writing style was intended to change your stereotypes, rather than simply to deconstruct your arguments and condemn your obvious hypocrisy. There's no way to change the perception of close-minded people like you, but you can be refuted for the benefit of others. Others who share your stereotypes don't validate your position any more than they can validate the fallacy that Yao proved Poincare.
You wrote about your Canadian nationality rather than your ethnic roots, and that is what I was responding to. But since you've implictly compared China and Russia favorably to the US now, I may as well deconstruct what you have to say about imperialism. You're using the Marxist definition of the term (unsurprising). But the standard definition of imperialism which involves in effect annexing a territory that is independent and wishes to remain independent applies to China and Russia in this century more than the US (compare China's policy towards Taiwan and Tibet or Russia's policy towards Chechnya, the Ukraine, and Georgia, involving assertion of direct political control at the expense of democracy with the US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan where a somewhat beleagured attempt to set up democracy is being made despite widespread authoritarian theocratic tendencies in the populations there).
I have plenty of criticism of the US leadership but refuse to allow the real issues to be confused by hypocritical criticism from others who are sympathetic to things that are even worse. I think you just have avoid letting various forms of excessive nationalism influence your thoughts, and then you could be more objective. Apparently you're not the only one with this problem. Maybe you and Yao can learn together. Perlman could be your teacher.
The generalizations you've posted are morally no better than other forms of bigotry which you doubtless hypocritically decry as a leftist. Your comparison of recent elections in the United States and Ukraine is grotesquely distorted, and you foolishly cite the six year tenancy of a moderate conservative in the White House as the basis for your contempt for an entire society. Your ironic choice of context to make this criticism in an article pitting a Chinese mathmatician against a Russian one makes your behavior doubly inappropriate. Yet you refer to Americans as overbearing and crude. Take a look in the mirror friend.
My refusal to respond in kind with dimwitted generalizations about Canadians by no means vindicates your offensive behavior. It merely means that my problem is with your behavior as an individual, and does not extend to your nationality.
The accusation of American wastefulness raises some more subtle questions. It is not the quantity of resources utilized by a human life, but the sustainability and environmental impact of that resource usage, that must be considered. While the American regulatory framework is clearly deficient in assessing the true environmental cost of certain activities at this time, and properly apportioning responsibility for environmental damage, the somewhat ascetic high tax and high regulation Canadian and European social models have not addressed this problem either. Merely restricting consumption through taxation and haphazard regulation is not a tenable long term solution because of the growth in population in the third world and the necessity of modern amenities for optimal human health and development. What is going to be needed is rapid engineering of new non-carbon energy sources and environmental resources management tools on a grand scale, and an accompanying culture of technology necessary to support this endeavor. It is by no means clear that developments in Canada have moved humanity closer to that goal than developments in the United States have over the past ten years, if one is truly objective about it. America's robust culture of computer technology, environmental academics, and energy entrepenuership and resourcefulness will likely have a significant role to play in what will ultimately become the solution if one is devised. Most of that solution is going to be the result of engineering, organization, and hard work, not political self-righteousness or the authentic original hippie ethos (although today, things have changed so much that much of the engineering WILL be done by those who consider themselves hippies, but that doesn't weaken the point). While I would not characterize Canadian society as embodying either political self-righteousness or hippie ethos, these are clearly things you value and thus worth downsizing by comparison. The lone voice of extraordinary leadership in this area in the past five years has been the much-maligned Tony Blair, whom you perhaps despise. But the United States has been more responsive to Blair's core tenets to date than Canada, from what I've seen in the press. I'm interested in working with sincere people in any country, including yours, to collaborate on a solution to the world's environmental problems.
I also might be interested in working with you someday, after you grow up.
Slashdot Mirror
You instigate a conflict and then label those who respond by tearing down your arguments as defensive. One should expect a defense proportional to one's offense, a lesson you should perhaps contemplate before you attempt to escalate your pretensions against others.
>I'll summarize for you again, and maybe you'll read what I'm putting in the text as opposed >to things that I didn't explicitly write: it doesn't matter what you think of your country >when dealing with stereotypes. It doesn't matter what the truth of the situation is.
You're disingenuously backpedalling as I've watched you do numerous times with other posters who've called you on your anti-Americanism. You've argued for more than an image problem-- You've argued that anti-Americanism, in the crude and hypocritical forms in which you have expressed it is completely justifiable. There's no benefit to concealing your malice once you've announced it to the world.
You've defended those who single out America for their scorn in this forum and such people rarely apportion blame equally amongst China, Russia, and the United States. Your favoritism is there, inferrable from context-- Despite yet another attempt to backpedal. Not all communication is explicit. More than 50% of what you say, in fact, is reflected in how you say something or what you choose not to say, as opposed to what you explicitly state as a matter of record, and most implicit communication inferences people draw are well defined within a particular language group. I saw what you were saying, and I called you on it because it is illogical and hypocritical, for no other reason.
Regarding the softwood lumber issue I'm inclined to think the US government is too agressive in trying to selectively enforce international agreements to its benefit but you took aim at the population as a whole and provoked my response in that way. I'd never object to your point about softwood in proper context, although it is an odd one from the mouth of an environmentalist hippie. I suppose I also find the sudden concern for athleticism and health of Americans to be a bit unusual if you're not prepared to condemn the equally unhealthy pot smoking and acid dropping that exemplefies hippiedom. (Not that I didn't dabble a bit myself in the early years:)
My biggest concern with anti-Americanism is not legitimate criticism of American government, culture, or society, but hypocritical criticism emanating from three sources:
1) Envy of America's preeminence
2) Resentment of American capitalism (the debate with socialists is fine but they shouldn't invent pretexts to criticize America that they're unwilling to apply to countries that practice their ideals)
3) America's defense of Israel. The world is unreasonable on what it expects Israel to tolerate from its Islamist enemies. China and Russia in particular would resort to genocide on a neighbor sooner than be subjected to the barrage of missiles that came from Lebanon into Israel recently, yet they pounded the table and demanded that Israel cease military operations. This dark double standard looms like a spectre over international relations, and I believe the US has erred in compromising too much with it, if anything.
When you start nitpicking something like our energy consumption while admitting your own per capita is worse, and saying nothing about the clear-cutting of rain forests in Brazil because it's not expedient to pick on them right now, I see you as part of a trend of anti-Americanism that goes beyond the rational problems we should be seeking to solve in a spirit of cooperation. And that hypocrisy, representative of a kind of irrational ill-will, that invariable points to 1 through 3.
I'm willing to solve the real problems that America has, but 1 through 3 are not our problems. They are the shortcomings of our enemies.
It is completely inane of you to suggest that my writing style was intended to change your stereotypes, rather than simply to deconstruct your arguments and condemn your obvious hypocrisy. There's no way to change the perception of close-minded people like you, but you can be refuted for the benefit of others. Others who share your stereotypes don't validate your position any more than they can validate the fallacy that Yao proved Poincare.
You wrote about your Canadian nationality rather than your ethnic roots, and that is what I was responding to. But since you've implictly compared China and Russia favorably to the US now, I may as well deconstruct what you have to say about imperialism. You're using the Marxist definition of the term (unsurprising). But the standard definition of imperialism which involves in effect annexing a territory that is independent and wishes to remain independent applies to China and Russia in this century more than the US (compare China's policy towards Taiwan and Tibet or Russia's policy towards Chechnya, the Ukraine, and Georgia, involving assertion of direct political control at the expense of democracy with the US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan where a somewhat beleagured attempt to set up democracy is being made despite widespread authoritarian theocratic tendencies in the populations there).
I have plenty of criticism of the US leadership but refuse to allow the real issues to be confused by hypocritical criticism from others who are sympathetic to things that are even worse. I think you just have avoid letting various forms of excessive nationalism influence your thoughts, and then you could be more objective. Apparently you're not the only one with this problem. Maybe you and Yao can learn together. Perlman could be your teacher.
The generalizations you've posted are morally no better than other forms of bigotry which you doubtless hypocritically decry as a leftist. Your comparison of recent elections in the United States and Ukraine is grotesquely distorted, and you foolishly cite the six year tenancy of a moderate conservative in the White House as the basis for your contempt for an entire society. Your ironic choice of context to make this criticism in an article pitting a Chinese mathmatician against a Russian one makes your behavior doubly inappropriate. Yet you refer to Americans as overbearing and crude. Take a look in the mirror friend.
My refusal to respond in kind with dimwitted generalizations about Canadians by no means vindicates your offensive behavior. It merely means that my problem is with your behavior as an individual, and does not extend to your nationality.
The accusation of American wastefulness raises some more subtle questions. It is not the quantity of resources utilized by a human life, but the sustainability and environmental impact of that resource usage, that must be considered. While the American regulatory framework is clearly deficient in assessing the true environmental cost of certain activities at this time, and properly apportioning responsibility for environmental damage, the somewhat ascetic high tax and high regulation Canadian and European social models have not addressed this problem either. Merely restricting consumption through taxation and haphazard regulation is not a tenable long term solution because of the growth in population in the third world and the necessity of modern amenities for optimal human health and development. What is going to be needed is rapid engineering of new non-carbon energy sources and environmental resources management tools on a grand scale, and an accompanying culture of technology necessary to support this endeavor. It is by no means clear that developments in Canada have moved humanity closer to that goal than developments in the United States have over the past ten years, if one is truly objective about it. America's robust culture of computer technology, environmental academics, and energy entrepenuership and resourcefulness will likely have a significant role to play in what will ultimately become the solution if one is devised. Most of that solution is going to be the result of engineering, organization, and hard work, not political self-righteousness or the authentic original hippie ethos (although today, things have changed so much that much of the engineering WILL be done by those who consider themselves hippies, but that doesn't weaken the point). While I would not characterize Canadian society as embodying either political self-righteousness or hippie ethos, these are clearly things you value and thus worth downsizing by comparison. The lone voice of extraordinary leadership in this area in the past five years has been the much-maligned Tony Blair, whom you perhaps despise. But the United States has been more responsive to Blair's core tenets to date than Canada, from what I've seen in the press. I'm interested in working with sincere people in any country, including yours, to collaborate on a solution to the world's environmental problems.
I also might be interested in working with you someday, after you grow up.