C-SPAN WJ: Earl Blumenauer

[KharmaTrain]

Gotta love Earl...talking about yesteryday's sham vote about attacking Iran and the disclosure that boooshie has decided to kick the Iraq funding can down the road to next year.

Discuss...

[Lindsay]

1. Thanks for the heads-up.

I loves me some Earl.

[Skidmore]

2. He is so on target and the ignorant willful hawkish stance of

those who voted for Kyl-Lieberman is a testimony to the incompetence of the Senate as well as the administration.

[KharmaTrain]

4. The Ignorance In This Country Is Appauling

This country has developed an Americo-centrist view of things...everything is put into the prism of what "conventional wisdom" says we should think. It's stereotypes and simplistic broad strokes to complicated issues. It's looking at a foreign culture and castigating it for not being "American" enough (as though our standards are so superior)...and that all events in the world are presented in "what's in it for America".

Fear, ignorance and intollerance...the symbol of the ugly American in the 21st century.

[NavyDavy]

5. its not just the US alot of other countries do that exact same thing

so to suggest only the US does these things is wrong and you should read up on some history

[KharmaTrain]

6. And Your Point Is?

I've read plenty of history and it's loaded with similar centrist views. Japan and China are great examples as would be the British view of the "sun never setting on the British Empire". I've also traveled abroad and seen how American culture is viewed from the outside as opposed to the inside...the image that a majority of people in this country have been presented with for all their lives. It was a culture that not that long ago accepted separate but equal and was build on the demonizing of the native Americans.

In no way do I suggest this is strictly an American problem. The media in the Middle East is as stilted and jaded as our own. Intolerance is an international pasttime...and no way am I dismissing others who live in xenophobic glass houses. The point I bring up is how many in this country have bought the narrative of foreign or "alien" as being either inferior or savage and how all international events are always viewed in strictly pro or anti-American with little context to the culture or the history of the people involved.

[malaise]

3. Watching

Refreshing.