Dear people,

I feel the need to make some things clear.

1. I don't hate americans. I don't hate any one. I don't confuse US foreign policy with american culture and I wish you wouldn't either.

2. There are other nations and cultures worthy of debate. My own for instance. It just so happened that it was jointly discovered by Coco and myself that the majority of the people he was getting negative reactions from seemed to be american, and of course there had to be some comments as to why that might be :-).

3.I don't judge people based on race, sex, religion, clothes, celebrity status etc. What concerns me is behaviour. If you state you are morally superior but in reality behave in exactly the same way as the behaviour you condemn, then you are exhibiting double standards, and I don't think it's impolite to point this out in discussion, it's required. Therefore, for example, the people who posted here about how some posts were "stupid" or "puerile" etc received replies stating that they were in fact not doing much better :-).


4. There are some people who has obviously taken my posts personally. To you I would like to say: don't confuse the individual with the general, particulars with entitities. Nothing in the world is that black and white. When someone says "americans exhibit behaviour A", that doesn't include ALL americans, just enough to signify that as a group, behaviour A is sufficiently exhibited as to be recognized as something to take into consideration when dealing with this group of people. None of us could get by without these kinds of generalizations or rules of thumb. And interestingly, in discussions below, quite a few more americans have acted out their "moral superiority" with blatant threats and comments about my personal qualities, than ones who have joined in the discussion with open minds. Without making a count, just between thumb and index finger, I'd say the ratio is about 2 to 1.

5. Another interesting point could be made, that most of the people who've reacted defensively to my posts have something in common, namely being "history revisionists". For example, us Europeans should be happy that we are not speaking German right now, thanks to the US (Well, it is actually quite a blessing not to have to speak german :-) ! ). Well, WW2 was a complex situation, and I don't think simplified statements like that do any good in a discussion. How about this as a counter phrase: if the US hadn't finally been more or less forced to join in we might all have been speaking Russian right now :-)!

6.When it comes to being grateful for the US "saving the world": like I said elsewhere, 3-4 000 000 000 000 USD of us tax payers money spent on making Iraq a place none of us would ever dream of vacationing in...100's of thousands of Tutsi's dying because the US refused to acknowledge a genocide was happening...Vietnam...Nicaragua...palestinians dying at a rate of 1/35 despite their best efforts to even scores through suicide bombers because of US supported Israeli state terrorism...who should be grateful ? You simply have to come up with better arguments than that I'm an "ignorant snob"!

If you do, you're more than welcome to debate, otherwise I'm going to choose to ignore you.