Psst...we can hear you...

Do Americans not realize that the rest of the world can hear it when they talk to each other?

Things that go over well when one American talks to another, can make the rest of the world think the U.S. is full of crap-crazy fart eaters. When V.P. Cheney said that maybe America should launch a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear Iran, no-one in the U. S. - politician, media, or voter - batted an eye. It was just one of the options on the table to be discussed in a reasonable and dispassionate cost/benefit analysis. When a candidate says God told him/her to run (you and every other candidate - I guess God hedges his bets), or that President Obama is secretly a Kenyan Muslim Stalinist nazi (do they actually know what those words mean: A communist and a fascist? An atheist and a Muslim?), the rest of the world gets creeped out.

It's like suspecting the big dude with shotgun may not be right in the head.

Thing is, America has nuclear weapons. If it goes off the deep end it could get us all f-ing killed. And what do we have as a safe-guard against an ignorant, easily manipulated, sadistic, religious nut-bar coming to power in the most militarily dominant country in the world? Democracy? Are you serious? Do you see the people who get elected?

As the British joke goes, an Ambassador in 1776 rushes into the court of King George the Third with news from the colonies. "Your Majesty! The Americans are revolting!"
"You're telling me," the King says, "they're disgusting."

The U.S. is not disgusting. It's just so-o-o weird. It wasn't long ago world polls called the U.S. the greatest threat to world peace. Maybe that's because the guy with the assault rifle is swinging it around pointing at things no-one else can see, hates women, hears voices in his head, has already killed 12 people in the crowd and keeps mumbling something about the Rapture being true and Climate Change a lie.

No doubt every country has its less-than-normal-intelligence population, and maybe it is just because I'm Canadian that I know so much about Michele Bachman and Ted Cruz and Sean Hannity and very little about any equivalents they may have in the Czech Republic or Australia. But most countries aren't death-dealing militaristic superpowers constituting a law unto themselves and bent on self-aggrandizement at any cost, only exceptional ones are.

If a country wants to be taken seriously and respected as a nation of adults with contributions to make to the good of the world, a positive first step would be to stop talking to each other like brain cells were as rare as fossils, and just as hardened.
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