There is this brouhaha about what retired Marine General John Sheehan said in congressional testimony on March 19: He accused the Dutch Army of having allowed the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War, because of too much acceptance of homosexuality.
The Dutch are mad. Some swear to never visit this country again, assuming that General Sheehan speaks for all of us, stateside.
But here is the problem: True, General Sheehan’s accusation was laughable. The Dutch allowed the Srebrenica massacre of nearly 10,000 Bosnian civilians not out of excessive homosexuality, but out of cowardice. (I didn’t say it. A famous Dutch author and good friend of mine did).
However, what makes me climb the wall, is the knee-jerk European tendency to pick and select absurd statements or behavior by a few Americans, and to generalize them to all of us. Forgetting already that we elected the first black head of state of any Western nation, that today twice as many people support the President as oppose him, that the Health Care debacle victimizes nobody more than the American people, that the Tea Party folks only represent a minority of Americans, many Europeans are already returning to what feels instinctively most comfortable to them: ridiculing America.
So, seeing that Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders wants to get rid of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands, that former gay political leader Pim Fortuyn was assassinated, as was Van Gogh’s great- grandson Theo, should I decide to never set foot again in that horribly intolerant country?
To criticize an entire group on the basis of the features of one or some of its members is called: stereotyping. All Jews are misers, right? It is called bigotry and prejudice. It is wrong. Look it up in the dictionary.
So here is my question: are ALL Americans idiots, or only some of them? According to many Europeans, it’s the former. According to me, the latter.
And another thing: Not all Europeans are idiots, either. leave comment here
5 comments:
I don't think we'll ever see an idiot-free country. Perhaps idiots are a vital natural resource.
Frank Zappa once said, "The two most common elements inthe universe are hydrogen and stupidity".
That's a great quote.
I wonder whether the distribution of stupidity is random, whether it follows a normal curve, a J curve, or some other pattern, and whether it is similar across societies and cultures...
Stupidity is closely linked to ignorance, a lack of factual knowledge or education. Ignorance is also caused by a lack of travel and mixing peacefully with other cultures. But the most stupid of all are those who know the facts yet still cannot reason. I'm sure you would love to produce some scientific data on this Tom but be careful, stupidity is a taboo subject like obesity, greed and so many other damaging evils.
Thanks for your comments, folks.
Right now, I just want to add some facts to this conversation about who bears responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre:
I have heard about this quite a bit since arriving in Holland. Apparently, the finger pointing can go in several different directions:
Leaving aside the American general's preposterous remark, it seems that the main reason the Dutch didn't act, so as to protect the 8000 Bosnians who were massacred by the Serbs, was that they didn't get the air and artillery support which would have made action possible. They only had rifles - practically unarmed against the Serbs and their tanks. And the failure to provide the Dutch army with the necessary support, is, in turn, attributed to some other NATO generals. Anyway, that's what I heard. All in all, a collective mess, not necessarily (altogether) the fault of the Dutch...
Bingo! Your last paragraph describes exactly what is happening in
America right now, and it is deeply troubling. We are moving towards
fascism.
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