I do admit that sometimes I feel uneducated, even about my own country. I don’t know where things are a lot of the time, and am learning a sizely amount of information everyday, from the cities that I visit. I have not even learned my own history, how can I learn the history of others? To be fair, I know a lot about the east coast, which is sort of like a country in itself. We were taught about Europe and how we have struggled to break away from it, we are taught about the World Wars, so we are taught about the world, but in a limited way.
He says that we are uneducated about the world as a whole, and we are, but it is unfair the judgement that is placed on our country. About 7% of Americans APPLIED and RECEIVED a passport, last year, that’s not including all those who already have them. I have been looking and it is about 20-34% compared with Canada’s 40%. So really, if people were checking, which they do not, because they just assume that American’s are stupid, they would realize that more Americans do own passports. As for those who travel, I do not know. ( and the passport requests have DRAMATICALLY increased in the past 15 years).
And it is not fair to compare us to Europe because in Europe traveling to and from countries is simple. You can’t compare us to England when half the population has passports and going to France takes under 2 hours. For us, our country is so large that leaving a state can take more than 10 hours, which I know now after driving through Florida and almost Texas. And trying to compare us to South Africa, which Mervis and I agreed is not fair, but we did it anyway, is not realistic. We clearly have more money than South Africa, but if you look at the people who travel there, it is probably the same “type” of person who travels here… meaning someone with extra money, nothing else. And probably, if you take a handful of those South Africans and those Americans, it would be more South Africans who do travel. But why? I don’t know, I want to know, I’d love to know more statistics and that is what this road trip is provoking me to do.
You are all so lucky that you get to go on this statistical journey with me.
So, another problem is that we don’t know about the rest of the world. To be fair, the educated people in America probably do, and the uneducated do not. The uneducated are not as wealthy, just as in other countries, maybe more rich than the “poor” in China, or Australia. And this is the problem, our values of learning about the world. Why do we watch FOX and news channels that do not give us information about ASIA or AFRICA…. and by the way they do, it’s just less than it should be. This is what I think, it is inherent in our culture and has become a cycle. First, a long time ago, we decided to be isolationists and capitalists. Both making us want to work and not go anywhere. How can a parent take their kid anywhere when they have like 10 work days off a year, compared with other countries going up to 30? Capitalism is an issue, ( which is why we should endorse more socialism into our culture, I know you hate taxes but they are good! – not for the war though). The combination of these 2, the American dream – which people still try to pursue -,and isolationism – which is close mindedness- makes us SUCK at leaving the country. We don’t care enough.
AHHH BUT WE DO CARE to contradict myself. we care so much about the world causes, if you ask Americans to join in for a cause we do it. We are so emotionally driven. We are a teenager compared to the rest of the world, we are fickle and do what we think is right at the time. Sometimes we are irrational and make mistakes – 2 times – BUSH-, but we try to make up for them. People forget how young of a country we are… we are not Europe, we are not China and Japan. Comparatively we are Australia and South Africa, but forget about South Africa because their priorities are dealing with their own society right now, so we are Australia, we are Canada, but we have a butload more money than both these countries, so we are more hasty with it. With the money comes power and responsibility, but it’s hard to always know what to do when you haven’t learned the hard way. We have all been teens, and man that time was rough, not only are we trying to sort out how we can fit into the world, we want to be different, we are unsure, we want to help with our awesome NGO’s. Has everyone forgotten this? And it is a reason to dislike America, because we are bratty! I get it, we are a little bitchy 15 year old, snobby, do whatever we want and have no effects afterworlds America. That is the point that Mervis has made, and is why people have come to dislike us…. There needs to be the other side of it though… nurture us, don’t support us by going to war in Iraq with us… our conservative “parents” around the world are being highly hypocritical.
Shall we continue?…. haha YES.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat_coalition.htm Please look at this. It says who is in Iraq… including the countries we are compared to when being told we are so ignorant about the world. Sure, we’ve headed up the forces in Iraq, and have more forces than any other country there, but are these other countries not to blame as well? When being told that my country is hated because my president ( which believe me I do not endorse), has taken us into the Middle East for oil, I agree that it is wrong, stupid, an uneducated greedy move , add whatever choice words you want here. But what about these other countries? Didn’t they do the same thing? The countries that have pulled out are not the countries most have compared the US to, and they spent at least a few years in the country Cowboying around to find “WMD” as well. The American population was stupid enough to be tricked into believing it, and most of the people did. I remember resenting people who voted for this monkey, and being angry watching bombs destroy Baghdad.
Ok, so the world is pissed off at us. And this is just a rant. People hate “America”. But for (insert your own word here) sake, we have done so much for the world and still are. I get that our president is a moron and represents a lot of people in America, but to hate us for this reason, when we are trying to do the right thing. It is so frustrating meeting people from around the world, who like me as a person, but hate American’s and America for what it represents. It seems that those people have not completely educated themselves about what is inside America, and listen to their own news the way we listen to ours.
I have never met so many friendly people in my life when traveling. America sucks, but it’s pretty- prett-y ( as Larry David would say) awesome. Stop moving here if you hate my country!
Thank you all for reading! There are many questions here that are unresolved, and many points that could go either way. I know why the world has an icky distaste in it’s mouth for us, but I just wanted to, and will keep doing, research to find out how the rest of the world , has or is, doing the same thing. Maybe it is our turn right now to be the bad guy… I guess I have to just suck it up, learn more about my country, so I can argue more with people to show them how awesome most people are….. Overall, we need to be better as a whole.
Love to you all…
Shaina
