Re: ASCII Art Fart for Thu, 2004 Nov 25

On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:21:35 +1100, ABCGi wrote:
>
> Sharky wrote:
>> 
>> As off'd in a previous post, you really have to delve a bit deeper to
>> understand the problems attributed to "guns".  The right to arm oneself
>> against unjust aggression has been one of the cornerstones of
>> Democratic Governments from the time of first world prominence of its
>> politic. Blaming the deaths of people on the (otherwise inanimate
>> object) "gun" is kinda silly, IMHO.
> 
> Indeed it is the culture behind the proliferation of guns that has led
> to the situation. M.Moore offers up two possible cultural causes in
> Bowling for Columbine that are sufficiently different in the US to other
> countries that have lots of guns (eg Canada): the culture of fear, the
> violent example set by the government where the justification remains in
> the hands of the one delivering the violence.

As enjoyable as "Bowling for Columbine" was (especially putting asswipe
blowhard Charlton Heston on the spot), I thought Moore's scene just over
the border from Detroit, when he kept stopping people on the street and
asking about how safe they felt, backfired on him and his pet theories
about violence in North America.  What was amusing was that the black
folks he stopped all lived in over the border in the U.S.  IIRC, Canada is
something like 88% White.  It certainly looks that way when you travel
there, very white.  (One might say, um, bland.)  One thing I never
appreciated about the United States until I started traveling elsewhere is
just how extraordinarily diverse the U.S. is in comparison to just about
anywhere else -- at least, anywhere else I've been.

Whether or not one values diversity (personally, I do), it goes
hand-in-hand with conflict, and often with violence.  Homogeneous
societies don't have to deal with the pressures diversity brings, nor do
they get the benefits.  I keep seeing peoples who can't get along with
their neighbors when there are only two conflicting groups (in Rwanda, in
Bosnia, in northern Ireland, in Palestine, in the Sudan, etc., etc.),
resulting in wanton slaughter and destruction.  The U.S., which AFAIK is
unique in its cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, seems to me to be
doing rather well by comparison -- "rather well" both in terms of
continuing to encourage and support diversity more vigorously than any
nation on Earth (and recognizing that the strength and resiliency of the
U.S. experiment derives from its diversity) and in terms of managing the
inevitable conflict that arises.

There are lots of grand sentiments the U.S. has, at various times in its
history, failed to live up to, and some it still does.  But one it has
by-and-large done well by is "Give us your tired, your poor, / Your
huddled masses...".  Those words, btw, were penned by Emma Lazarus, a
descendant of some of the first Jewish immigrants to New York.  They came
here because the Portuguese expelled them from Brazil -- apparently, even
Brazil was not far enough away from the mother country for the Portuguese
to abide the Jews.  But then, most Europeans have a long history of not
abiding anyone they can't enslave or exploit or plunder.  By comparison,
the U.S. has been generally more enlightened and still is. (Look, for
example, at how Germany treats its Turkish immigrants.)

There's really very little comparison to a relatively monolithic society
like Canada's, as Michael Moore (perhaps inadvertently) demonstrated in
his film.

-- 
Michael M.  ~~  hfr...@msbx.net  ~~  New York, NY USA
 "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely
  under conditions of absolute reality;..." --S. Jackson

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