Are we really all that dumb

[Don Corleone]

I appreciate your honesty Louis. And I swear, I'm not being defensive or setting you up.... how much time have you spent over here? How exactly did you reach that conclusion?

By the way, there's a certain amount of provinicalism here in the United States that mimics this phenomenon. If you asked people from Massachussets about people from Alabama, you'd get similar results, even though the vast majority of people in Massachussets haven't met somebody from Alabama, let alone visited there (or perish the thought, spent enough time there to learn the culture first hand).

[Gawain of Orkeny]

By the way, there's a certain amount of provinicalism here in the United States that mimics this phenomenon. If you asked people from Massachussets about people from Alabama, you'd get similar results, even though the vast majority of people in Massachussets haven't met somebody from Alabama, let alone visited there (or perish the thought, spent enough time there to learn the culture first hand).

Yup and the term damn yankee is still popular in the south and many notherners still look upon the south as hicks. Californians think they are the most proggrsesive and us New Yorkers think we are the shite.

[PanzerJaeger]

Some of the absolute stupidity some of my German friends hit me with about the US amazes me. 2 of them think Bush and Israel planned 9/11 to fulfill some sort of holy zionist crusade against arabs.. and these people got better grades than I did in school..


The way I see it, European media leads Europeans to feel they are the most informed people on the planet when in reality a lot of them are being taken for a ride.

The difference between America and Europe is that Cledus over here doesnt pretend to know anything about anything outside of lower alabama but Hans in europe is lead to believe he's informed about other parts of the world.


Most Americans dont know much about the rest of the world and most Europeans dont know much about places outside of Europe.

[Don Corleone]

By the way, I want to congratulate everyone, on all sides of this issue, especially Kaiser. I was really hesitant to light this powder keg off, but thus far, you've all been doing a fantastic job at having a frank discussion about a sensitive topic.

I think there is hope for the Backroom, and we can move beyond the Crypts & the Bloods attitude we've had in here lately, we just need to move out of our traditional topic base and find things to discuss that move us out of our pre-defined knowledge base of assumptions.

PJ, I think the term 'stupidity' is a bit harsh, especially since you're talking about a matter of faith, not knowledge, but the rest of your post actually put it into context.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Some people have a weird definition of uninformed.

"lack of knowledge of other countries"?

I don't need to know who the prime minister of canada is any more than I need to know the atomic weight of Einsteinium. Knowing what you need to know makes you informed.

Almost amusing