Ugly American, Day Five: Perceived Insults

Use yer nose instead.

So there is a really popular poster running around social media sites right now that starts its long numerical rant about what's wrong with Merrica (Bacon Guns GOD!) with the line “We have to press one for English” or something along those lines. The list goes on and on after that, but every time I see that first line, I am struck with the notion of just how impossibly sensitive people in the country have become to perceived slights or insults about them and their beliefs. It has become almost some sort of mania. “OH MY GAWD, THEM THERE FOLKS ARE ATTACKING THE MERRICAN WAY!”

I reminded of something I heard someone talking about last year. She ranted on and on because a website she visited had the US of A all the way down at the bottom of the list where you pick the country you live in. She ranted about how the US should be at the top of the list. She completely ignored the fact that it was an international website AND the list was in alphabetical order. She was to busy being insulted than to actually think about the subject.

Along the same lines is this moronic thing going around that makes the assumption that people saying “Happy Holidays” is somehow an attack against Christmas. The rants go on and on about how this is some new attack on the Sanctity of Christmas by them there other people who hate Santa and Trees. Never mind that saying Happy Holidays is nothing even remotely new and never mind that there are quite a few holidays right around that same time. (Hanukkah, Kwanza, Yule...any I left out?) This idea that this time of the year is devoted to Christmas is silly especially considering most scholars believe that if Christ lived he was more than likely born in the Spring not Winter?

People have become so insanely sensitive to any perceived threat to what they believe that they instantly go up in arms the moment they think that anyone might be working against them. They take their extremely narrow minded views and make them gospel. They take recent ideas and events and devoutly believe that what they feel is the way the things have always been.

People need to grow up and maybe just maybe get a little bit of maturity. They need to stop automatically feeling offended just because people express beliefs that don't agree with theirs. Despite what so many people seem to believe, America is not and never has been a nation of one single belief, culture or religion. From the very earliest days, America has been made up of dozens of cultures and many races with their own beliefs. “Americans” don't all speak English as their primary language. “Americans” aren't all Christians. Christians don't get to pick and chose the practices and traditions that everyone has to abide by.

America is a rich cultural garden with a wide variety of faiths, beliefs and cultures. It is high time we stopped being offended and started enjoying all of it. If nothing else, be danged happy that English is #1 when you press buttons. Could be 5^th behind French and Swahili.

End of Rant