From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Wed Jun 04 2003 - 04:46:36 MDT
On Tue, 3 Jun 2003 Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> So what you have really given us is the work of Barnard Weiner, a
>social psychologist in California that according to the Google search I did is a
>writer of so called political analysis attacking the US.
Ron,
what I find interesting is that you label this writer as "attacking the
US". (I'm assuming that this Bernard is American, as it seems).
Now, how can an US citizen "attack the US" with his writings? He is not
less US than the people he is attacking. If what you write is true, this
is a piece of the US criticizing another piece of the US. But then this is
not attacking, it's just an aspect of politics.
So, instead of saying "attacking the US", it would be more correct to
say "attacking the current US internal (and/or) foreign policy". It may
seems nitpicking, but I think it reflects a deeper issue of
identification. When one begins to think about political opponents as
"attacking my country", he puts them at the same level as actual enemies
and it becomes easier to just ignore everything they say.
When some opponent criticize, even harshily, the current Italian
government no one thinks that he is "attacking Italy". He's just against
the current administration/policy. I am for example totally against it :-)
and rejoiced when in recent (minor) elections their party lost more than
20% of their votes. Am I against my country?
Of course you can answer that 80%+ americans support Bush-style foreign
politics. But then, you are still labelling 20% of americans as against
themselves.
Ciao,
Alfio
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