European Tribune

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It's easy to forget that not everyone is in the same place. I don't find it odd that a black man should be president, but I'm not from the US and I don't have the visceral understanding of the issue. I'm sure in the US it's a Very Big Deal Indeed, at least among older voters.

Similarly the US remains an almost impossibly conservative country, with a culture apparently dominated by selfishness, neurotic and paranoid independence, and a tendency to see others as prey rather than individuals who can be shared with equally and fruitfully.

Individuals may not relate to others like this, but this mindset seems to be the basis of both business and political culture.

Nothing much will change until those bedrock attitudes change. And right now they don't even have a name - but 'racism' didn't have a name fifty years ago.

A left-driven campaign to make this adversarial and exploitative mindset as intolerable as racism is today is probably the only thing that can save the US from eating itself, and the rest of the world.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Nov 5th, 2008 at 05:21:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It begins at home imo. We are all guilty of the 'adversarial and exploitative mindset'. I am all for changing the narrative, but I hope 'Mercy' will be a word used to colour communications.

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Nov 5th, 2008 at 05:25:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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