Y'know, I'm quite aware that my country does some things that can be quite stupid and doesn't make much sense. I also know it does some great things and is not a country that the world lives in fear of (those who do, have their own problems to deal with and try to make it the USA's fault). Like someone said a couple of years ago, if you're in trouble somewhere in the world and your rescuers are coming over the ridge, you feel like you might make it if they're flying the US flag.
I was reading this morning's edition of the Western Australian newspaper, and it had an article about a local satirist who has written a book called "American Hoax". Basically, he set up a series of blogs under various ID's and duped a number of Americans into staged venues where he made them look foolish and ignorant of American politics. He said that American politics were easy to understand and he probably knew more about it than most Americans. After reading the confusing review on his book (coming out next year), I concluded he didn't know as much as he thought he did.
The guy is much like a literal "Borat" (the movie where this character pretending to want to learn about America ends up duping all his victims and makes fools of many of them). Now I understand satire and humor, and there are times when fooling someone justifies the joke. But I do not approve of making people who don't deserve it look like idiots. That's thoughtless and careless, and I always hope the joker pulling the trick has the karma reversed on him some day.
The thing about what this guy and Borat pulled are that they are dictating and controlling the results they want to get. They WANT Americans to look foolish to prove their point that they are, and will do what is needed to insure that result. It's similar to how certain opinion polls are worded to get the desired results to reflect a certain viewpoint. I have no doubt that the Borat people have plenty of film on the cutting room floor of scenes where the people they tried to fool didn't fall for it. Of course, those scenes aren't going to make it into the movie. They don't help in the conclusion that the film makers want and they won't verify those scenes even exist.
Same goes for this satirist...he spins a good yarn about how it took months to set up all the fake websites and opinion pieces, but I think it took that long because he also had a lot of failures where people caught on to him very early. Those incidences won't make it into his book, I'm sure. You can also note his political leanings when he comments that all you have to do to learn the truth on FoxNews is to put the word "not" in front of every verb they use. Interesting that Fox was the only news source he mentions in the article, and Australians have their own opinions about Robert Murdoch anyway...some justified, some puzzling.
Americans are like anyone in any other country...some know a lot about their politics, some know virtually nothing, and the thing is that people here are free to decide what they want to know about the world. There are people in the world who don't care about the USA but, by God, they demand that the USA better care about them.
I'm waiting for Borat and others like him to do their tricks in Asian countries. But they won't because they know they can get away with it in Western countries and make plenty of money off the people they trick to prove a point that they themselves created. They would be dead men if they tried that in the Middle East and those are countries that are definitely charicatures and contradictions of themselves.
Well, I'm off the soapbox now. I have better things to do with the rest of my time.
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