To All Non-American Readers Of This Blog. . .

i realize that there are many readers of this blog aren't Americans. some aren't even 'real' Americans.

in hopes that you might understand us a little bit better, i offer the following, which i recently posted concerning a political news story:

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A Canadian says:
April 6, 2010 at 7:31 am

What is wrong with you Americans?

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okami says:
April 8, 2010 at 7:36 pm

sorry.

we’re a manic-depressive nation, with tendencies towards collective psychosis every now and then. there’s often more than a touch of good old paranoia involved, along with the need to let somebody else do our thinking for us.

There's also a sublimated undercurrent of racism, which tends to explode into the open at times of crisis.

we’re particularly susceptible to propaganda (political or religious), depending on the amount of education we’ve failed to receive.

this is not to mention the fact that we're forgetful and very inattentive.  in order to bring a problem to our attention, it's necessary to whack us in the face with a 2-by-4; and then we usually respond by doing the wrong thing.

our strength is in our diversity. if any set of groups–say, religious–banded together, we’d be a full theocracy in two seconds flat.  or a fully fascistic society, if political groups banded. . .which may yet happen with the Teabaggers and the Republicans.

our diversity in race, religion, opinion and such keeps that from happening.

our weakness is also in our diversity. we’re schizophrenic. there’s one hell of a lot of voices that we’re hearing.  for instance, Mary appears in a taco, Jesus on a windshield, and suddenly we’ve got to take action against the infidels and heretics.

usually the conflicting confusion of the voices in our national 'head' keeps us from taking action at once, while we let the voices argue themselves out.

But if you’re already crazy (like me), you can survive these periods of instability, and alternate between laughing at it all, or crying about the waste of it all.