From: (No Email available)

Date: 2003-06-05 07:37:54

Comment:

There has been some quite heated discussion on this site regarding the intelligence or lack thereof of the people of the USA.

Anne Robinson, is entitled to her opinion, and to her right to voice it. As previously commented she has made similar remarks about other groups. I would not choose to agree with her assertion, but I respect her right to assert it, if only because it starts a debate.

It is true that that many in the USA have little or no personal experience of the outside world, many have not left their own state. So they only way most learn anything of the wider world is through the mass media. Of course the mass media simply reflects the interests and concerns of the population, so it reports little of the outside world.

On the 11th of September many people in the USA asked "why us?" or simply "why?". Unfortunately there was neither the capacity or desire to answer. The public mood in the USA turned from one of disbelief to one of anger and a desire for retribution, the desire to understand was lost. The USA has now set about crushing those she chooses to see as enemies. How surprised were they (the USA) when terrorist attacks continued even after invading Iraq.  

The USA can no longer hide behind the excuse of being a new nation ? over 300 years after formation some maturity is to be expected. It may be though, that the long term effects of the destruction of the world trade centre and Pentagon lead to a deeper understanding by the populace of the USA of the rest of the world.  This is rather an optimistic view I admit, but the rest of the world should do their bit in helping to educate the USA and engaging their citizens in the rest of the world rather than rejecting them as ignorant. This will of course take time, but it is in all our interests to do this.

Humanity knows no borders in the long term. The USA as a nation state has a fixed beginning and it will just as surely have an end. If the twentieth century can be said to have belonged to the USA then the twenty first will belong to China. So that today at its very zenith the USA can look forward to a period of steady decline followed by dissolution into smaller groupings of states.  

It is wrong to condemn the whole population of a country as stupid, just as it is wrong to state that the USA is the finest nation in the world. The truth is far more complex than such simplistic statements can convey. This then is the trouble with the mass media as it stands, enlarging the significance of one line statements and simplifying issues to bipolar arguments.