[magic-city-news.com]
The Pompous and Arrogant R.P.BenDedek

For starters, I have never heard a college student talk about the Chinese in the way he claims the Chinese speak of us.

After reading it once, I felt the odd urge to read it again fifteen minutes later.
And it still did not interest me.

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I am not Ryan Seacrest, and I do not approve this message.

I pretty much agree with what the author says, in so much as a person has the right to speak freely - as long as it is spoken correctly. (yeah, I know I fail at that last part at times, so what)

Whether the situation is the right one at the moment is another matter.

I have heard folks from all over the world speak of Americans in the manner of those mentioned in the article. But I hear Americans speak that way about others even more so.

Most of the time it's some POS who hasn't even set foot out of their own state much less the USA.

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Strength without compassion is brutality. Compassion without strength is weakness.

We must train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

About 7 years ago some Machine Tool installers from the UK came into our shop to
install a $500K machine tool. They had been in China for about a month the year
before. I was asking them about the Chinese people. They said that the people
that assisted them told them about the time "America declared War on China" and
that China flared its mighty chest and the US backed down. They said they looked at
each other, smiled and told the translator that the US had never declared war on
China. They never were able to convince them of that. I guess the propganda mill
runs even hotter there than it does here.

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Grateful11

Well thought out piece, very eloquent. The conversational side of the English is a bit lacking. The writer posits the expat point of view in China, albeit the view of one working with College students. From talking to other expats, the expat culture is a bit unusual- they are not fully integrated with the host culture, and tend to be treated with more deference than the typical native. Call it politeness or friendliness, but it is there.

The "cheating" on pricing that he talks about is typical opportunism that exists around the world. Many people coming to the US are shocked and amazed at our 'fixed price' mentality, and don't understand why bored store clerks refuse to negotiate with them. A similar experience in the US can be obtained by speeding past a local sherrif while driving a car with out-of-sate plates.

Now, I may be wrong, but in a nation of that population, I would expect that the percentage of students who get to college is exceptionally small. Hence these students are selected via some theoretically rational method. It may be political, fiscal, or intellectual- I have no way of knowing. In any case, I've always found that the prototypical college student is always willing to yell out whatever 'truth' he or she is excited about on that particular day. So this young fellow, full of hormones and self-importance, mouthed off to his teacher.

So what ! I don't see a big trend here. Most people really do just want to 'all get along'.

Cassie, for what class are you not studying while you read an article by an Australian (with a bug up his ass about proving that the books of Kings and Chronicles "[are] a true, accurate and legitimate history") published in the newsletter of the East Millinocket chapter of the Minutemen?

"Which way to East Millinocket?", by the way, was my favorite of Marshall Dodge's Bert and I routines.

Bert and I]You used to be able to buy Bert and I records from the L.L Bean catalog. L.L Bean is in Freeport, Maine.

Maine Stephen King lives in Maine. He gave the commencement address at the University of Maine at Orono last year.

Surprisingly Mr. King's address does not not include a section regarding the seemingly contradictory ideas about the United States expressed by college students (or other "young people") in the Peoples Republic of China. I guess nobody called him "pompous" before he sat down to write it.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2006 08:43AM by x-uri.

damn html tags

Would seem cassies association with scholarship begins with Hannity and ends with O'Rilley.

BTW: Anyone else catch his glitch on war crimes? Seems in his haste to defend any apparent crimes in Iraq, he cited an infamous incident during WWII. As O'Rilley put it, American troops shot and killed a hundred or so German troops who had already surrendered.

Turns out he reversed the facts, the slaughtered troops were American GIs and the killers were German.

He never even apologized for the mistake. He's an unprincipled paid @#$%& of the right.

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"Who's more foolish - the fool or the fool that follows him?" - Obi Wan Kenobi

Oh come on. The folks to whom cassie links make Hannity and O'Reilly look like Hillaire Beloc and Thomas de Qunicey.

The pseudonymous Mr. BendeDek is a nut job.

[www.kingscalendar.com]

Look at the front page of the site on which cassie found this stream-of-consciousness rant.

[magic-city-news.com]

Look at the sites to which he links in a little bit down forum, in the "Google Spits on Vets" silliness

[www.newmediajournal.us]

[www.sweenytod.com]

[prayeralliance.blogspot.com]

I don't think cassie is a run-of-the-mill wingnut. I think cassie has fallen prey to the Dominionist folie à plusieurs (go ahead cassie, look it up).

Seriously, who the fsck would be looking at the East Millinocket Patriotic Eagle Gazette for things to worry about?

This is the kind of stuff that gets talked about in Premillenial Dispensationalist chat rooms -- where a diploma from a bible "college" (run out of the back of chiropractor's office) is what passes for an academic credential.

The internet has been no friend to the folks suffering from this kind of psychosis. For the susceptible, the ranting of a like-minded lunatic sounds like rational discourse. The mind weaves delusional arguments from the material gleaned from websites put up by paranoid psychotics, and then uses those same websites as evidence that the products of the delusion are real.

It is impossible to argue with such people. Information that does not comport with the delusion is rejected as propaganda, deceit, or the ignorance of the unenlightened. They are proof against logic and the evidence of their own senses.

The most tragic feature of this disorder is that the afflicted can be quite high functioning for extended periods, and often go undiagnosed (Kirk Cameron) until a neighbor notices that the sufferer seems to be storing an unusual amount of fertilizer and diesel fuel, or until the ATF storms the compound where he has barricaded himself with his codelusionals.