Good Parts

Sometimes it is hard to even know how to respond to conversations in Skypeland. A man from Turkey entered our room and said he had lived in the US for 4 years and Canada for 9 years. A woman from Ohio apologized for the United States, and the man from Turkey asked why she did this. I said she was apologizing for the bad parts of the US, since the US has both good parts and bad parts. The man from Turkey asked what the bad parts and good parts were.

I volunteered to talk about some good parts, and mentioned a spirit of entrepreneurship and a powerful assimilation mechanism, which is both good and bad in different ways. When I mentioned the word assimilation, immediately several people in the room from Germany and other places started to speak negatively about the US. I said that the Melting Pot in the US works better than Melting Pots in Canada and Europe and other places, and there is more acceptance in the US of people than there is in Japan or other places. However, I noted that large homogenous groups are assimilated more slowly. Others in the room claimed that assimilation in the US is like being a member of the Borg from Star Trek. Then it was claimed that the American Melting Pot was the same as the "evil spread of Democracy" outside the US, which was the same as Communism. Then it was claimed that the American Melting Pot was the cause of a large wall that is being built around the US (What on earth are they talking about?? How does having a strong ability to assimilate immigrants cause efforts to slow illegal immigration? How does assimilation have anything to do with the spread of Democracy? Why is Democracy the same as Communism? When I hear this kind of reasoning, sometimes I try to disagree. Other times, I just let them say whatever form of nonsense they want. It is as if they just want to fill up the silence with meaningless words, strung together and asserted with an air of confidence. It is interesting that people will just absorb this sort of statement without question, or even quite happily.). I tried to talk about problems with the US instead, but my suggestion that the power of lobbyists in the US was a problem was branded as patently ridiculous, since several in the room claimed there are no lobbyists in the US (This is an astounding statement. No lobbyists? No problems with people with power and money wielding undue influence in US politics? What is interesting is that these people had claimed the same things on other occasions, but then summarily rejected them this time. As I noted above, it is all in the service of creating a mindless, brain dead sequence of words with no content whatsoever, and silencing everyone else.) I gave up talking, and just listened, while the Turk tried to talk about nude beaches and naked people in Youth Hostels. Then the people in the room started talking about drugs and the conversation descended further and further into nonsense... (I think for people really interested in drugs, everything else fades in importance; information, politics, religion, sex. ALL they want to do is talk about drugs and what fun it is to get high and stoned. And they work hard on maneuvering the conversation around to talking about how wonderful intoxicants are, and how great it is to be inebriated.)