Eh, you should drop the smug defense; divining the flow of ideation in your sentences involves a fair amount of guesswork.

Oddly, one of the key players in the right-wing media game of linguistic manipulation wasn’t even born in this country.  The life of Rupert Murdoch makes interesting reading.

I tend to think media isolation is the worst of America’s ills. I feel it drives a deep-rooted ethnocentrism. Remove those factors and I’m sure we would see considerable progress on “stupidity”.

This certainly doesn’t limit it to the US, however. Our broadcast TV is separate from government in the same way that the church and state are separated in the US . During the last election, the Green Party wasn’t allowed on the televised debate by the CBC, despite having a legal and official running for the office.

The question I muse the most is “How does one inspire learning in those who have not sought it before?“. We live in an era with vast amounts of free information; it rather bothers me that so few of us make use of it.

Mr. Wordsworth, now that is one cool movie I watched a WB Looney Tunes cartoon similar to this one some time ago.

decrepitoldfool, not to repeat my previous post, but I agree on the second part of yours, and disagree on the first one. Not guesswork but observation…

As for FOX and Rupert Murdoch I cannot comment on the latter, but my opinion on the first is that FOX in both EU and US sucks.

The question I muse the most is “How does one inspire learning in those who have not sought it before?”. We live in an era with vast amounts of free information; it rather bothers me that so few of us make use of it.

That is a very good question and calls to mind the old cliche, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.“  There are endless, sad examples of people who just don’t seem to want to learn anything or know anything.  I have relatives, college graduates, who have no books - I mean literally zero - in their houses and don’t take newspapers or watch informational tv. 

But I also work at a university around people who strive to learn all they can and I know people with little formal schooling who read nonfiction constantly.  There’s always hope.

During the last election, the Green Party wasn’t allowed on the televised debate

Yeah, same here.  In our last election (Illinois) for governor, the Chicago Tribune openly hated both candidates, brought them for a debate and endorsed “the lesser of two evils”.  But they excluded the Green candidate because of one position he held that wasn’t even on his platform.

Einhander, I think the point to be made is that if your statements require independent observation to weave them into coherency, they’re already too cryptic. The solution is not to remind readers who see this to make a deeper study of your work; it’s to state yourself as clearly and succinctly as possible.

Patness, you said that much better than I did.

decrepitoldfool, not to repeat my previous post,...

And then we get the repeat:

but I agree on the second part of yours, and disagree on the first one.

One is left to wonder about the process of typing and the brain.  Specifically, is it reflexive or must the brain really engage?

Consigliere, either say something useful on the topic or don’t say anything at all.
Patness and decrepitoldfool, please consider that English is not my native language and I cannot exress myself as good as I want.

One-hander (which I hand I wonder? And what pray tell are you doing with the other?),

Consigliere, either say something useful on the topic or don’t say anything at all.

As you can see, I think that I have and that is a fact (hopefully, not a wrong one).

please consider that English is not my native language and I cannot exress myself as good as I want.

No problem with that at all, Eh. If someone misunderstands you, clarify instead of pretending you’re some kind of oracle and telling people to “go read my comment again”. 

Even Consi says things that are unclear from time to time.  Really!

please consider that English is not my native language

See, this I did not realize. Suddenly I miss the flags.

Patness, I do not see the clearness of your last post, please explain what’s this ‘flags’ stuff.
I believe you kindly advised me not to post cryptic comments…

Yes, and so it would be fair if I explained. Before this website managed to down itself, there were national flags beside a poster’s name, indicating where they were posting from. That would have made it much more clear that perhaps your mastery of the English language wasn’t on par with that of other posters here. That said, it would not have changed my criticism, but it might have changed the rigor I made the criticism with.

It is true that on average Americans drive far more than they need to or should. But is that a symptom of general laziness or the result of sprawl and poor urban planning that characterizes much of the country’s cities (particularly in the Midwest, it seems)? Perhaps both.

And Einhander, you are correct that many Americans drive like complete idiots, but then so do many Europeans. True story: several years ago my boyfriend and I embarked on a road trip through Europe, and one day we were cruising along the German autobahn at at a steady speed (around 85 mph). We had heard horror stories about these roadways but were as yet pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed a remarkably uneventful trip. All that changed when I caught sight of a red sports car gaining speed behind us. He didn’t appear to be slowing down and I was almost certain that he was going to rear-end us. After what felt like the last possible nanosecond he changed lanes, never once slowing down, and then he rolled down his window and began screaming what I could only guess were German obscenities in our direction. Not only that, but he was also weaving dangerously in and out of his lane, coming perilously close to clipping us several times. It was almost like the famous chariot scene out of “Ben Hur.“ The idiot finally sped out of our sight, exiting our lives for good. Never in all my years of living in California have I dealt quite as crazy a driver as that psychotic Teuton. Although we didn’t encounter so haphazard a driver throughout the rest of our tour of Europe, our conceptions of the German autobahn continue to be less than positive to this day.

Flags are back along with the icon linking to a member’s profile, but it looks like crap at the moment. Bear with it until I can modify the CSS accordingly.

Some of our poor urban planning us due to the General Motors company undermining public transportation.  Some see this as a conspiracy, but I don’t know if they did anything illegal.  It certainly did hurt the country though, illegal or not.

Perhaps, but there’s probably a fair case for the decades-long boost to the economy and resultant capital that it brought being pretty GOOD for the country. For a long time the auto industry was a prime indicator of our economy, and it’s still nothing to sneeze at as crippled and dying as it is.

I’m not going to enter into an argument either way, because I’d rather have a lot of numbers and historical data before I made a stronger claim, but it’s like the people bitching about the defense industry being a poor investment. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I think dismissing the economics of successful companies simply because of philosophical differences, or even arguments of the short-versus-long term welfare of the economy are probably a little weak when you do the actual math. You can second guess success all you like, but when you’re arguing something that demonstrably has already worked you’ve got a steep hill to climb.

I mean, you might as well blame the French and Spanish, for selling and delivering us all this free land. If we had to fight for every square inch of the country as much as Europe has had to, maybe we’d have settled slower and more densely, and lent ourselves more strongly to an argument for public transportation no matter how much the auto industry eventually pushed the other way.

Hey, Einhander!
Before I started playing in this playpen about a year ago I thought all US citizens were fuckwits ... now I don’t think they are.
I’d guess both assumptions are incorrect. 

MM, the suburban isolation (and dependence on cars with all its adverse ecological effects) that Einhander referred to is a real problem.  The automobile and suburban sprawl are connected, with resulting decay of the inner city and dependence on foreign oil.

Cars are great, but success isn’t everything.

Indeed, DoF.  And economic success looks very different at different timescales.  Our grandkids might have rather different opinions on how great cars are.

By the way, we’re having the warmest winter ever on record here in Vienna.  If present trends continue, there will be palm trees here in twenty years.  This is not so tough for the Austrians, except for the ski resort operators, but pretty grim for, say, the Africans and the Pacific islanders.  And cars are a rather large part of the problem, like it or not.

American people are irritating the hell out of us (widespread opinion), simply because they don’t have respect for other countries and cultures. Or they are to stupid to understand the difference between for example Spain and the Netherlands. We;ve got a lot of American people here studying (Amsterdam), 60% don;t even know that they are in the Netherlands. They say that they are doing Europe..horrible..i got goosebumps when i think about it now..and none of them are a making an effort to learn or speak our language. Another thing is that in your country the media is completely stupid and they are poisoning the rest of world. I;ve read similar comments in previous messages..so i won;t repeat it again. But the thing is, your country is so powerful that no-one is going to say no against your country..also before bush.(and now without evidence joing your country in the war)I;d rather see bush killed than osama. Also your dominant consumption-culture is wasting our people…
This is what most people think in the Netherlands about the States in general…so there’s a lot of work to do..and you can;t say the Netherlands suck to, because a recent research showed that more than 40% of the people in the States never heard of Holland..while we founded and named New York and his ‘hoods’.

I feel your pain, Ivan, and I’m American!

It is a terrible shame. What has become of this country?
I’m sure the “founding fathers” are spinning in their graves!

At least there are some here that are trying to improve the situation.
Wish us luck. We need it!

I too feel your pain. While it is far from the case that all Americans are mouth-breathing idiots, I tend to be of the opinion that much of this country deserves at least some of the rest of the world’s derision. If what you are saying about 40% of Americans being ignorant of Holland’s existence is even partly true, I truly weep for this country’s future.

Only 40% don’t know where Holland is? 

from http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/index.html

88 percent of those questioned could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia despite widespread coverage of the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban in 2001

Geographic knowledge tends to have a huge disparity.  Discussing the topic with a college professor a while back, he pointed out that he observed that the minority who had geographic skills tended to know a lot about it, while those who had trouble finding US states didn’t know jack about geography.

Sadie: If what you are saying about 40% of Americans being ignorant of Holland’s existence is even partly true, I truly weep for this country’s future.

Better get a box of kleenex if you follow that link!