Letter of the Day: Are Americans boring?

Europeans vs. Americans

EDITOR: My brother is a rather well known artist who gives workshops throughout the United States and Europe. He told me recently that when he speaks in the U.S., people generally sit politely and listen, even when they've paid rather substantially to attend his workshops.?

In Europe, it is very different.? People ask many questions, they even challenge the information he teaches.? He tells me that often he finds his audiences in the US boring, willing to take anything they hear as gospel.? In Europe, his audiances?are stimulated, far more interested and seemingly,?learn more.? Americans love sound bites, the promise of quick fixes.

We don't want to be bored with too much information, we don't want to have to think too much.?Let someone else do the thinking for us, just give?us the bottom line, even if it's a lie.?We don't hold lies against anyone because we forget very easily that they lied to us.?We would rather think about the next sale, vacation, party,

anything?but the hard stuff, like 4100 Americans dead for a lie, or a country that may be too prejudiced against a half black man to vote for something different from the last eight disastrous years.?

We don't want anyone to tell us we don't have the best medical coverage in the world, or that our education system has fallen behind most other industrialized countries.?

We love the fantasies, the lies that keep us thinking "we're the best!".?

Well, at one time we were, but now we just fool ourselves into complacency and open another beer!

Susan Hirshfield

Forestville