same place, same time, same people. another argument. last week it was, in honour of the crass rampage shootings, it was guns that we talked about and almost shot each other over (and that's why, by the way, we should not have guns)
this week, in honour of, well..it all started with "baton rouge".
imagine the american enunciation of baton rouge (i can't remember what it sounded like exactly, because you have to be accurate here in your deformation of a foreign word so that people know what you're talking about; it's not enough to deform) and yes i'm being a snob and yes i'm a snob when it comes to spelling grammar and phonetics or is it phoenetics well don't shoot me (again, yet another reason why we should not have guns) and i was trying to articulate in between mouthfuls of salad the american "baton rouge", like eliza doolittle in 'my fair lady' and the rayne in spayne but the other way around, when we moved on to the missouri region of "creve coeur" which means heart-digger in english but which is pronounced "crayve core" here and that itself is a no-meaner, no heart and certainly no diggin'. so anyway, i digress. i heard "crayve core" and being the snob and french-loving, french-jesuit nun-reared girl that i am, i mentioned something abt how the french would shoot themselves (uhuh, guns again) if they heard that american defamation. my fellow fellows then started abt the french and how much america has done for france and how the french are snotty and snobby if not both and how they hate america and they should be grateful to it.
i'm not in my usual envt here and i, as usual, reacted to this jab with a reaction of my own. "no the french are nice and they're not rude, unless you don't speak their language"
we went on with the "playing tennis with the wall" routine for a while and then we moved onto the global anti-americanism issue. and they both took me by surprise. i seriously did not think they would, with such unsurmountable conviction, make the statement "why does the rest of the world hate america, why can't they see that we're trying to help the world"
i frankly could not react to that. they had so much conviction in their voice. it's not that they do not have the facts, the history, the events right (god knows i butcher these into morsels)
it's that they are in a parallel universe of thought....i've never really had a debate with soemone who has never had a debate with someone like me (are u following?). it's like, and i'm trying to put it into words, debating about whether 2+2 equals 4 with someone who does not understand the concept of addition. again, i'm coming off as snob-know-it-all but that's not what i mean. what i mean to express is, that, the mere fact that i questioned the cause of such rising anti-americanism and terrorism seemed to make me, in their eyes, an alien. which of course i am, legally, in this country.
i tried to be gentle...i gave them the spill about my being a foreigner and an alien and all that, i saw it from the other side, and that it's not all the "america loves the world" deal. i told them this country put its fingers into too many pies, and naturally it was bitten. they looked at me with that look, yes that look that makes me want to defend and argue even more because they have the look of "what planet did she land from" and yes P if you're reading this you may say pluto but getting back to earth now, for the first time in a looong time i reasoned with myself first before spewing my usual passionate sometimes offensive diatribe; reasoned about how to talk to them. literally i put a brake on it. and they kept saying it started with 9-11 and that they should defend themselves first before defending the world hence iraq and i puzzled over iraq and asked for links with 9-11 from them and they said well there's evidence but we don't have it, so this is the kind of debate we were having, sort of like a 'does god exist' debate over very earthly matters. i told them with some acidity (gentle) that if rumsfield apologized for iraq and could not produce evidence, hmmmm, welll, aren't they sort of biting off more than they can chew???
BUT THEN IT WAS A MIRACLE
we started abt the middle east, and why such mounting anti-american fervor.
and they listened, parched. i said israel israel israel. and they grabbed a hungry foreign fellow and asked him about the middle east.
he said (more oh much more diplomatically) israel israel israel (and looked over his shoulder once twice thrice)
and that diddly widdly piece of information churned and twirled in their brains a little, but sunk in!
i never see that happening with seasoned brains, NEVER!