UN: Clearly Megalomaniacal Tyrants.
Wales Part 2 is in the works, but it's going to be undercut real quick by a post on a slightly more important matter.
I was listening just now to an NPR report on the international politics surrounding solutions to climate change, and heard the same old predictable things about how there needs to be an international solution, and how the US (emitter of 20% of all greenhouse gases) would absolutely need to be involved for any meaningful results to occur. The Danish and English spoke of how we aren't doing our part, and how there needs to be an internationally agreed upon protocol (maybe if it were discussed and agreed upon in, say, Kyoto...), because self-policing just plain doesn't work in this matter. The American response to this was so typical and yet so stupid, it was almost unbelieveable. The American talking head (I didn't catch who exactly it was) declared, "There is no world government [or] dictator" who can give orders regarding this. In so many words, what he said was "You can't tell us what to do!"
This is really the overarching problem with the American mindset. We will do what we want because you can't tell us not to! This is why we have such rampant environmental problems ("I will drive this ridiculous gas guzzling SUV because you hippies can't tell me not to!") and such terrible suburban sprawl ("I will live where I want! I can afford a bigger house out in the boonies and I can commute with my ridiculous gas guzzling SUV!"). It might even be why we entered Iraq this last time ("You can't tell us NOT to invade this other sovereign nation! Screw you UN, you aren't our real dad!").
David Cross once said of the rhetoric of the war on terror ("The terrorists hate our freedom," etc.), "Are we a nation of eight-year-olds?" I'm starting to think that we are in fact 16 year olds. Which might be a lot worse.
I was listening just now to an NPR report on the international politics surrounding solutions to climate change, and heard the same old predictable things about how there needs to be an international solution, and how the US (emitter of 20% of all greenhouse gases) would absolutely need to be involved for any meaningful results to occur. The Danish and English spoke of how we aren't doing our part, and how there needs to be an internationally agreed upon protocol (maybe if it were discussed and agreed upon in, say, Kyoto...), because self-policing just plain doesn't work in this matter. The American response to this was so typical and yet so stupid, it was almost unbelieveable. The American talking head (I didn't catch who exactly it was) declared, "There is no world government [or] dictator" who can give orders regarding this. In so many words, what he said was "You can't tell us what to do!"
This is really the overarching problem with the American mindset. We will do what we want because you can't tell us not to! This is why we have such rampant environmental problems ("I will drive this ridiculous gas guzzling SUV because you hippies can't tell me not to!") and such terrible suburban sprawl ("I will live where I want! I can afford a bigger house out in the boonies and I can commute with my ridiculous gas guzzling SUV!"). It might even be why we entered Iraq this last time ("You can't tell us NOT to invade this other sovereign nation! Screw you UN, you aren't our real dad!").
David Cross once said of the rhetoric of the war on terror ("The terrorists hate our freedom," etc.), "Are we a nation of eight-year-olds?" I'm starting to think that we are in fact 16 year olds. Which might be a lot worse.
posted by Mephisto at 7:32 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home