House of Eratosthenes

Bill O’Reilly has been to eighty countries. I know this, because I was listening to his radio program last night and he cited this as one of his qualifications for agreeing with a caller who laid on him the usual pissing and moaning about how America is disliked around the world, we’re arrogant and other countries don’t think highly of us for it, we’ve alienated our allies, blah blah blah.

Well it’s my understanding that when you demand to know how many countries an American has ventured into so you can attack him for his global ignorance, you’re supposed to discount Mexico and Canada to make him seem even more ignorant. According to that criteria, I haven’t been to any countries at all, so even though I think O’Reilly conceded this point prematurely, I defer to his expertise. Nevertheless, I have outstanding questions about the low esteem in which America is held on the global stage, which, I think, I ought not have. After all, we’ve been bombarded with this for how many years? We’re supposed to be how concerned about it? And yet, the people who think the USA should be more concerned about its low showing in the opinion-polls, never seem to do a clean, clear-cut job of cataloguing our problems for us.

What else can I do, but try to get it done for them?

We’re arrogant
The average American doesn’t know how to find other countries on a map
When people from other countries tell our President what to do, he doesn’t obey them
We have a lot of money and generally, have life pretty good
We’re fat
We have bad stuff in our history, like raping the Indians and junk
We don’t take vacations

Does that just about cover it? I haven’t heard anything ventured outside of those.

I find it interesting that while he was conceding the point that other countries don’t like us and that this somehow means something, he also conceded the point to the other side that a lot of this has to do with jealousy. Now, I have not heard this thing about rooted-in-jealousy contested by anybody, save for those who have a vested interest in making as much out of this as can possibly be made — specifically, the extreme anti-war, anti-Bush crowd. So I take it as a given that folks sympathetic with O’Reilly’s viewpoint, which includes most of us, assert the following: 1) Resentment toward the USA is partly or wholly rooted in jealousy, and 2) Americans would be well served to take this endless complaining more seriously than we do.

I submit that these two tenets are mutually exclusive. Complaints, even entirely truthful and entirely valid complaints, are invalidated automatically when they are based on jealousy. They become just-plain-petty by default. Even suspicion that jealousy is a factor, has an effect on the credibility of the complaining somewhat akin to steaming-hot urine on a snow castle.

To demonstrate this, let us construct an everyday analogy that has something to do with jealousy. You have two neighbors on your block. The guy who lives across the street is a bachelor, six foot three, with chestnut-colored wavy hair, huge pecs, washboard abs, a Corvette, and huge feet. He makes you, as a man, question your heterosexuality. The guy who lives next door is in his late forties, kind of thick around the middle, has a lot of credit cards, drives a ’93 Honda, and a spreading bald spot. He also has an absurdly hot wife from Venezuela in her early twenties.

One day the predictable happens. Not only does the hot wife from Venezuela start boppin’ with the equally hot bachelor from across the street, but she moves in with him. The happy couple keep living there. The jilted husband keeps living where he’s living. Life goes on.

My point is, that as your next-door neighbor, the doughy, thin-haired jilted husband, confides in you his various petty resentments toward the bachelor and his ex-wife, logically you’re going to have to discount this. The David Hasselhoff look-alike, the thunder-stud, doesn’t vacation as much as he should. The stud is arrogant. The stud has too much money and doesn’t have enough challenges in life. The stud’s house is painted the wrong color. The stud’s new puppy dog doesn’t get curbed when he’s out for walks. On and on it goes.

Even before it gets tedious (which it does, at breakneck speed) you can’t take it that seriously because you know the doughy, thin-haired next-door-neighbor has deep, simmering personal resentments toward the stud. You don’t even know for sure that the new puppy dog crapped where the jilted husband said it did, if you didn’t see it yourself.

Now I don’t mean to imply that as Americans, we should automatically dismiss anything unflattering said about us, nor do I mean to imply that our foreign policies should be so dismissive of such things. There are diplomatic reasons to placate things like this, which don’t apply to my analogy. I’m just saying this: Jealousy, logically, diminishes the gravity that can be accorded to such things. People are people, and a lot of the time they’ll say bad things about you that are disconnected from, or only weakly connected to, the truth — when they know you have done something better than they have.

That’s just the way they are.

So no, I don’t think it means much. It means something. But it doesn’t mean much. Until the case against us is stated better, we’ve already paid as much attention to these petty complaints, and perhaps a great deal more, than would be productive for anyone.

Now, that’s what I have to say about this emotional stuff, like the USA having an arrogant attitude. Some of the complaints aren’t emotional, but logical. We have luxuries not available in other countries, and we don’t vacation as much as people in other countries. Waitaminnit. Are the people complaining about our vacation schedules the same ones complaining about our standard of living? Why yes, I happen to know for a fact that some of them are. That’s retarded. I have just two words for the foreigners who complain about both our work schedules and our lifestyles. Eat shit.

Did that just start an international incident? See if I care. You just do a lot of screwing around when someone else is working, and he ends up with shit you don’t have, you don’t get mad, you get even. Work harder. It’s a no-brainer. What in the hell is wrong with those people? And what in tarnation is wrong with people who would listen to that? Even for a second?

No, I don’t think Europe is filled with people who take twenty weeks of vacation a year and then get mad at other countries that have more toys than they have. I’m sure Europe is filled with people who aren’t like that — but, it should be noted, that’s an article of blind faith on my part. In other words, to go on and on about other countries that don’t like us, makes Europe look bad to the United States. That’s inherently unfair, since everyone who gets off on complaining about Europe being mad at the USA, is not from Europe; many of them are Americans. Maybe — just maybe — now that they’ve changed about as many minds as they’re ever going to, the folks who like to go on & on about other countries resenting the United States, should give it a rest. It’s like your Mom said, when you point a finger at someone, three fingers curl around & point back at you, and the endless bitching has been producing an ugly byproduct of which these nattering nabobs may not be entirely aware. Stifle for a little while, for the sake of your own cause.

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Just Plain PettyFriday, September 16th, 2005

Just Plain Petty
Friday, September 16th, 2005