Re: OT Caution!! IRA funding (was: English word order and bumper stickers)

Joe wrote:
> Tom wrote:
> > In my personal experience, I cannot agree with this second claim.
> > I mentioned recently my experience in Germany of being blamed for
> > the firebombings during WWII. I was walking through central Frankfurt
> > with some people from the conference, and one German mentioned that
> > he thought downtown Frankfurt was rather ugly. I responded that
> > that's because of the bombing (which is true, since extremely little
> > survived it). And he retorted (quoting): "Yes, *you* did that".
>
> Blamed? Judging from your story, I wouldn't think so. I'd use 'you' to
> refer a  country of which the person I was talking to belonged.
That's precisely the point:  the country is being treated as a
monolithic whole, not as having at least two distinct constituents
of the government and the people. That is, "country" is not specific
enough. Roger's claim was that people are not only capable of distinguishing
between people and government, but are eager to do so.  The implication is
that people will try to make the distinction if at all possible, and I
was counterclaiming that in fact there are plenty of people who don't make
that distinction because they don't care, because they aren't eager to
do so.

FWIW, this same person trotted out all the old stereotypes of
Americans too (such as that they don't have any culture).  He so
irritated some people at the conference (not speaking of myself
here) that they refused to be in the same room with him.

> Taking personal offence at it is nonsense.
Okay, I suppose here there is a cultural difference between us.
From where I come from, his behavior would have been deemed so
gratuitously rude that he would have been instantly ostracized.
His behavior was unacceptable -- period.

> And even if he was blaming
> you, that can scarcely generalise non-Americans.
Since when was I generalizing about only non-Americans? I was making a
larger claim about the human condition, namely the cynical view that there
are going to be people driven not by ideals but by the perpetuation
of their own narrow world view, whatever it takes to do so.  I mean,
look at the world today. It's full of blood-feuds based on whose
ancestor did what to someone else's ancestor tens or hundreds of years
ago: Japanese vs. Chinese, Japanese vs. Koreans, US-Northerns vs.
US-Southerners, Hutus vs. Tutsis, etc. etc. etc.  The fact that this
German would blame me is not surprising, but that doesn't justify his
doing so.

I realize this discussion is off-topic, so let's take further discussion
off-list, please.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637