Thread: "Russophobia" and "Russophilia" :)

Originally Posted by rockzmom

I know, I have been away from MR for awhile......

Welcome back.
I saw the promo on Youtube and I left a short but (imo) brilliant comment... I basically told them where they could put their new serial after I hit the dislike button.
I'm an American (born here) and I like my country (just not a lot of the politicians) but it's definitely no God. But yeah, isn't it interesting that I've never seen a Western movie or serial with a Russian hero...

Originally Posted by Eric C.

The U.S. culture and set of lifestyles are way more diverse than this, but I guess those anti-American people have hard times realizing that, if any at all. Ironically, people in the South, who are the biggest gun owners in numbers, are also the biggest followers of the traditional family values. The absolute most of people in the U.S. use their guns to prevent violence, not to start it. Corrupted minds start violence, not the gun your hands hold.

My two points I think I should make here are: First, gun possession and movies featuring violence don't really cause violence to be carried out in real life, and neither do porn movies or night clubs people go to for casual sex destruct family values. Some people just have to relax at times, others just have other values, and you just cannot enforce yours on them, so even if those options were unavailable, they would still find something else. And it's all about freedom of choice. People have to have as many options as possible, and they'll make their choice based on their hearts and minds, anyway. Second, every country has problems. If you can find issues like school shooters in some states, fine, but why get so fanatical about those? Making it a feature of the whole country's culture and way of life is totally irrational. For that matter, one could say one of the biggest features of the Russian culture are alcoholism and amazingly bad roads, and they would be immediately labeled the biggest russophobes history has ever known. Then why go that way about other countries? Maybe every one of us should just fight all those nasty little phobias inside us, and not let them take over our common sense?

You're right about your first comment. I live in the south where Christian values are very important and most people have guns... I love my Marlin .308 lever-action, MXLR centerfire rifle. And there aren't any porn theaters here and nobody I know plays the bloody online video games. I also agree that it's people and not guns that kill. Also, I think the media focuses on the shcool shootings and despite the fact that they aren't that common, the media can make it seem like they are. But tbh, there shouldn't be any school shootings period.

But I do know that too much freedom of choice is the reason that America doesn't even have a culture. I mean, what is an American? It's Islamists, survivalists, satanists, Baptist hate groups, non-denominational religions, Catholics, Jewish communities, rival gangs... etc etc. It has 50 states and probably almost 500 subcultures and 4 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world. It's just a collection of any culture anybody chooses or creates.
Btw, our country also has the highest percentage of it's population in prisons. A lot of those prisons are private prisons and I think they could easily qualify as labor camps.
Anyway, I could easily adjust to alcoholics and bad roads if I never had to deal with gay parades and gay harassment. And hey, I know a lot of Christians at the Christian forum could too. There's a lot of pro-Russian talk at that forum.
So what does it mean to be an American? More money and tons of freedom to be anything so maybe that's what Americans are... rich anythings.

Originally Posted by rockzmom

I realize that the below is way oversimplified however...
Once we as a world decide to accept one another: black, white, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Straight or LGBT, male or female and so on and that your idea of "normal" and my idea of "normal" may not be the same but we still have the same rights to be on this Earth and live in peace and be safe, obtain a quality education, have a relative happy and prosperous life, and be able to be with whomever we choose to be with... all without the fear of prosecution or persecution... then the humans in this world will actually FLOURISH. We will stop killing one another over stupid things like girls trying to attend school when it is forbidden, because in that area of the world, that is considered, ya know... strange and the destruction of family values.

What? One world = one culture = one government? Ain't gonna happen. Part of being human is a mix of good and bad traits. The bad ones can be controlled by laws but it's never perfect. For example, discrimination is illegal in America but there's still tons of discrimination and racial groups. Also, gay discrimination is illegal in America but the LGBT is alarmed by the dramatic increases in anti-gay violence in the US. And don't forget, despite American opposition to military oppression, our country is actively supporting it in Ukraine.
Technology and governments have evolved but people are still about the same as they were 3,000 years ago. We're still that same species.

Originally Posted by lodka

As I said - I knew it would sound strange to Americans.

It never sounds strange to Americans born in the southern states.