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Posted on 06/15/2002 7:36:33 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
I am on holiday in California. It is my first trip to the USA since I moved to China nine months ago. It is all a little odd.
I have been struck by the paranoia. It seems each person is suspicious of the next one.
One afternoon at a children's pool, while minding the clothes and towels of my friends as they swam with their young son, I was eyed with suspicion by the other parents.
Last night, my friend would not allow his wife and a female friend to go down to their outside garage on their own. My friend, who is a reasonable man, calls the police on what seems a regular basis to complain of fighting in the streets. People are afraid of each other.
Fear of litigation means that signs prevail. Streets are blocked off with "do not enter" or warnings that unusual activities will be reported to the police. Signs on private property warning people not to rattle the gate when closing or that soliciting is unwelcome give off a scent of hostility. Everyone has burglar alarms.
In the workplace, people do not joke for fear of giving offence. America has lost its sense of humour.
Race relations, or the lack thereof, do not help. Black and white pass each other in the street as if they were not there at all. Although official segregation was outlawed in the last century, in many respects it still exists in an unwritten, unspoken form.
It is unsettling to drive past a weapons store and realize that it is the right of every American citizen to own a gun. My friends tell me that in their area, there is a shooting nearly every week. They share tales of neighbours burgled at gunpoint. Turn on the television and you are assailed with tales of abducted children and murder.
Since September 11, this paranoia has increased. Before boarding a flight to America, hand luggage is x-rayed and searched. The president is setting up a department to oversee all intelligence and security bureaux. A new form of xenophobia has arisen.
Ask any person in the street how they are and the reply will be a cheery assurance that all is fine. The weather is sunny, and middle-class America has the ability and the money to live well. However, give me a country where I can cycle home at night without fear.
else_7@hotmail.com
In this case it is a perspective from someone prosecuting America, not through the eyes of G_d Ok!
The reprehensible treatment in US stateside airline security of those who CLEARLY our outside the profile of our enemy, Radical Islamists, is something I have never seen nor endured in Asia when traveling. The country has become too uptight about some things and is not zeroing in on the real targets to our safety and paranoia is fogging our thinking and Machiavellian strategy, IMHO. It is all bound up in bullshit liberal-infected US Political Correctness if you ask me.
Such is the mindset of asians, asian immigrants, and the children of asian immigrants. The more that we let into this country, the more that will be voting against gun ownership. If you want to know why Kalifornia has the restrictions on personal freedoms that it does, just look at how many asian and hispanic voter there are there now.
Then the author should get her ass back to China.
Yeah, they don't have a gun to stop those forcepts indeed! They might as well let snakes crawl up their bellies.
--Boris
I am not sure that Asians and Hispanics, after a few years (and particularly if in high crime areas) don't go out and buy themselves a little 'piece of the action' once they have settled in to the US for awhile. I don't think they will necessarily vote anti-gun rights.
I know the feelings shared by the author even though I haven't been back in 15 years.
China felt a LOT safer to me. Of course petty theivery and other things along with rampant corruption were and probably are enormous problems.
However, being lofty guest teachers in an out of the way city . . . everyone in town virtually--that saw foreigners at all--knew who I was or at least where I belonged. I tried to be in the guard-watched gate by 23:00 every night so I wouldn't bother the guard. Besides, I didn't care to incur his wrath nor worry the security bureau that I was up to something they wouldn't like.
But I felt very safe at any hour of the day or night. . . until Tienanmen. . . when friends said they were concerned that some foreigner might be killed as the gov was stirring up anti-American feelings and my friends didn't want some joker trying to get a promotion to do me in.
Even then, a number of incredibly loving and sacrificial people would have died to protect me. I have no doubt of that. Of course, I'd demonstrated over 2 years all the love I could in as many ways as I could. Still, I haven't found Americans THAT loving or sacrificial to someone they'd known such a relatively short time. Many of these people had been through the Cultural Revolution and knew the costs of being on the wrong side of political winds.
I'm glad the U.S. is culturally diverse. But there's a stiff price to pay when that also includes a wide diversity on what is BASICALLY RIGHT AND WRONG. And when BILLDO AND SHRILLERY'S farce for values is acted out by anyone with means and anger enough--there is and will be "hell to pay."
At some point evidently not too distant, all the Billdo's and Shrillery's will pay dearly. The rest of us will to if we haven't already cashed in our personalized chits offered at The Cross.
But if it weren't for the conviction that God has ordered the move and will bless it, I'd be most upset. (A) I love the people in Taipei dearly.
But (B), I feel rather apprehensive about the sanity, not to mention safety of life in the U.S. I realize God is a big God and well able to protect me during Tienanmen riots or whatever, wherever. But IF I were depending on the social fabric and cultural sanity to protect me in the U.S., I think I'd be very uptight about moving back.
The good old U.S. of A. ceased being the GOOD OLD a number of years ago . . . What it will become remains to be seen. The cultural wars have yet to get really nasty. They will.
We should treat each other with dignity, compassion and respect reflecting the decency we believe we maintain. We should turn our backs upon the influences and forces which would tempt us to turn away from one another. That in itself will go a long way in diminishing the fear of evil.
But contrary to her, perhaps, I credit the decay and problems precisely to her school of thought, liberalism.
It was interesting to leave the USA "bubble" for some time (a year or two does it), to return with a fresh perspective and you start to see things you did not understand or appreciate about America that were right under your nose.
I think one of my friends expressed it best: you become so much more appreciative of the GOOD things about America that you missed, and you become some much more virulent in disgust about the BAD things about America that you did not have to put up with during your stint overseas and which jump out at you in contrast upon your return. It kind of sharpens your emotions on both ends of the sword I 'spose. You CANNOT get this from a two week or one month trip culturally isolated in a Hilton (nor, never going off base into the local areas if on a military or diplomatic post overseas)!!
I would however have an unfathomable time ever sticking up for the Govt. of Red China on anything, but I can imagine sticking up for the Chinese who are an incredibly great people, whether they are in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China or San Francisco.
LOL Incisive! Welcome to Free Republic.
Without a trace of irony, I assume she feels safe if only the government has guns, even in light of the Tiananamen massacre.
What probably would have gone thru MY mind as I drove past (after a few months in China).....Interest how 'expats' can have a different perspective but shared experiences.
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