[UA] American attitudes and things

[Eric Bertish]

Fco. Javier Rubio wrote:

> Well, maybe someone can explain me why you all (some of you, some of 
> them) so proud americans , ALWAYS need to be related 
> to a EUROPEAN group

Not just European. We have African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, 
Korean-Americans, etc etc...

My thoughts? It's because our country is so damn big. We're bigger than 
Europe, and to my mind this is one reason why we are accused of not 
knowing what's going on in the world: information overload within our 
own country. But I digress.

Basically.... in Europe, most ethnic groups have their own country, 
which fits nicely into the Other-Think as someone mentioned earlier. But 
here, we have states which speak the same language, have the same 
government, and have mostly the same culture (accounting for regional 
flavorings here). So we need some other way to divide ourselves.

You'd think it would be by state, but it usually doesn't happen that 
way, though there is the ubiquitous North vs South antipathy which has 
been going strong for nearly 200 years now. So instead, we arrange 
ourselves around ethnic lines.

Americans like to argue, in general. We will ALWAYS find something to 
disagree about. We could be a culture of gray-skinned, 
Esperanto-speaking Zoroastrians and we'd find a way to draw lines. 
Probably involving sports.

Speaking of sports... I don't know how it is in the North, but we in the 
South  (by the way... don't EVER call a Southerner a Yank. Them's 
fightin' words. We'd MUCH rather be called a gringo than a damn Yankee) 
seem to have football-related rivalries which are almost miniature civil 
wars. I live in Florida, and come football season, you know damn well 
who are the Gator fans (University of Florida) and who are the Seminole 
fans (Florida State University). I think this is the one time of year 
that the rebel Stars n' Bars are replaced with UF or FSU flags.