Jingoism is dictionarily defined as: "Extreme chauvinism or patriotism, esp. the advocacy of an aggressive foreign policy." I would add that jingoists are usually people filled with fear, hate and ignorance.Such as the man who complains that whenever there is a disaster in the world, our government runs off to help people, and "fix it for them."
"We have disasters here," he says, "and nobody comes her to help us.
"I never saw any Chinese, Germans, Arabs, Indians, etc. coming over to fix New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. We police the world, pay for the world, feed the world and the world hates us."
Oh, jeez. Ignorance "R" us! In fact, we don't "police" the world, although we are currently trying to extend our empire by preemptive wars to obtain oil. We don't "pay for the world," and couldn't if we wanted to because our currency has dropped so far in value. We don't come close to feeding the world. In fact, although we do try to help those less fortunate than us on occasion (which I thought was a good thing), numerous countries provide more aid around the world than we do!
He's also wrong about the world hating us. With the exception of radical Muslims and other terrorist groups, people around the world are actually quite fond of America and Americans. What they don't like is our government. Many do, in fact, "hate" President Bush and his administration. In fact, recent polls indicate that most of the major dictators and other "bad" guys around the world are held in greater esteem that our own president, for which he has no one to blame but himself!
The other thing this clown is really wrong about is his claim that nobody helps us. In fact, when disaster strikes, we are often offered assistance by other countries. In the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, a number of countries offered money and goods. The Bush administration, in its great wisdom, turned them down!
Jingoism rears its ugly head all over the heartland. It's not a nice sight. But it's tempting as it allows the jingoist to ignore reality, hate them damn "foreigners," and blame everyone else for our problems.
God bless America!
1 comment:
It would have been nice if our own government could have helped more during Katrina. It still hasn’t cleaned up that mess. Now it has the areas suffering from floods. What did all those people do to deserve such acts of God, as the insurance industry calls them? I guess they did not pray loud enough or direct their prayers to the right ears. Maybe some other language than English should have been tried. Jesus spoke Aramaic. Have any of our readers tried praying in Aramaic. He also spoke Hebrew and probably some Latin. I know he didn’t speak English and maybe that is why we are having so much trouble.
Bob Poris
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