What do you like and what do you hate most of the following ?

a. of the country, you were born and/or grew up in your childhood ?
b. of the country, you live in now ?
c. the country, you would like to live in ?

d. What do you love most about the United States' people ?
e. What do you hate most of the United states' peopöe ?

Me:
I love the musical talents and music most, from many different countries. but not so much from Germany.
I won't say what I hate most, because I don't feel free to speak my mind, even not on C99p as a guest of this blog and not being an American. I think it would not be fair to run my mouth like a drunken sailor.

What do you like most about the Russians?

oh, i am already tired to think about the answers.

Sigh.

Just some question to get my mind doing SOMETHING. Argh.

Why did many folks not like Angela Merkel ? She managed to avoid a war ... what was so bad about that?

have a good weekend, all.If I don't answer or comment, then because I am too tired.

Love each other, that is a command, the way only Nazis can give you.

Damn I am so tired.

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a. Born and raised in Texas, USA. I like our history of inventions, such as the telephone, electric lights, ability to land on the moon, and the rich natural resources that historically kept us fed.
What I dislike most is our wars against Native Americans, each other, and against the world. All to steal someone else's resources, as though we had some need or right to have them.
b. I am still here. I hate industrial ag, and trade agreements that keep our wages low, and that lower the quality of basic commodities.
c. Austria.
d. Can't think of a single thing.
e. Their being so damn susceptible to propaganda.
About Russians: They survived the royals, soviets, sanctions put on them by "their betters", siege warfare, and yet, they stand tall, proud, and never, ever give up. I am glad they are getting beyond their drunk Russian days. It was an honor to visit St. Petersburg, be at Red Square right at the time they were removing Stalin's coffin from public placement. It was an honor to see memorials to Tchaichovsky.
Go ahead, say what you dislike about us. It is important to hear from foreign points of view it so we can be more self-reflective.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

mimi's picture

@on the cusp
a. I dislike
1. you are so darn polite that forces all the others to react politely too. Which causes fakeness and suspicion.
2. you seem always to know most things better than the rest of the world.
3. that you love the internet strongly, but not critically enough, imo.

b.
1 I like your strength to farm on any soil and build something from scratch. I think I would call it your homesteading skills.
2.I like your music and musical talents and skills.

Actually I think I like all of you.

Now I remember the first time I was in the US and DC. We, my then husband and I strolled through the Mall in DC and the streets and open bars nearby. It was around New Years day. I was awestruck to see the people dancing on the streets. They had so much rhythm. Germans would never be able to dance like that. (at least not back then in the early eigthies)

I remember too that I saw security officers in front of a grocery store and couldn't understand why they were there. They made me feel uncomfortable.

I remember too one of the first trips through the vast countryside somewhere in the West. I talked later with American friends, we met in Rome. about my feelings, which were, that the vastness of the countrysides scared me. The American friends were amazed and couldn't understand that the vastness of the open spaces in the countryside scared me.

Today I am just scared about all the confusion in my head.

We can deal with it. Sure, always, right? Wink

Now it is your turn, what do you hate or love most about AUSTRIA? It is almost as bad as Germany. What is there to love about.

Thanks for chatting with me.

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@mimi And the forest.
Anyone living there at 65, I think that is the age, may attend university for free.
Their healthcare system was very fair, unlike our punitive and restricted US system.
The food is great. Low crime level.
Last, but not least, is the music.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

mimi's picture

@on the cusp

Music and dances like this?

Your mileage may vary. My mileage is varying. Smile

Have a good one, whatever the one may be. Smile

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mimi's picture

@mimi
it does things I don't want it does and plays fuzzy with me and my domments. Shame, shame, shame.

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@mimi

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

mimi's picture

@on the cusp
but so out of other times. My mother and uncle (who would be 104 and 110 today) would whistle to that music (my mother was an excellent whistler) ... bygone times... oh boy how times have changed and not much towards the happier tunes.

Now I can't figure if you are 103 years old or just a tiny bit younger. Wink

Our chats here make me smile. Thanks for that.

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@mimi I got a double dose of Strauss and other classical composers when I started piano lessons and ballet lessons at age 7. I played it, I danced to it. On my first trip to Vienna, I arrived by boat, on the Danube. The boat captain made an announcement on the PA system, and then, this song started playing. I was on the aftdeck of the boat, all alone, so I danced, many arabesques and pirouettes, all to say hello to Vienna.
Lots of my travel pals think Barcelona is the most beautiful city in the world, but I choose Vienna.
Glad you find something fun from using the damned internet!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

A. loved the farm while growing up in south central Michigan
--- hated to have to leave (family issues)
B. loved the freedom of roaming all over the country, sampling many regional cultures
--- hated getting hassled by the cops for being a vagrant, penniless hippie type
C. I kinda like the idea of Costa Rica and loved the coast of Portugal
--- Canada and Mexico were once cool, but the border issues have become bad
D. 50 years ago most people seemed creative and open minded - not so much now
E. Greed, ego centricity, hateful and wasteful attitudes (mostly conditioned)

Rest well Wink

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@QMS The intense religiosity of Portugal made me feel I would never be able to fit in with the locals. CR is good in cities, but rural, the food got extremely monotonous. Now, Trinidad/Tobago might be an option...And I wouldn't have to learn another language. They speak English.
I have pals who ex-patted to Columbia and Panama. I liked Columbia better that Panama, but cartel, ya know. Panama is very affordable, has a huge ex-pat community, as does Columbia.
I hope to get to Belize, see if that appeals.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

do anything militarily. What she did was go along with all things Davos.
In the long run, she did more harm than good.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

anyone can grow up to become President of the U.S.

b. The fact that anyone can grow up to become President of the U.S.

c. Denmark. Their courageous record from WW2 still counts for me, their civilized social and political attitudes, and the fact it is a tiny and geopolitically inconsequential country unlikely to be the target of invasion in the near future. Downside: it's almost on the other side of the world from me, and I hate long plane rides.

d. Their belief in the various freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.

e. Their conditional belief in those freedoms.

Russians: They were 90% responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany in WW2. Their patient but determined attitude of Slow to saddle, quick to ride. Their public buildings, esp in Red Square and St Petersburg. Their outstanding salad dressing. They are lively conversationalists and pay their rent on time (thanks Natasha, my tenant).

Merkel: A great disappointment. She was strong enough in attitude and personality to have forged more of an independent stance from the U.S., and was also positioned, given esp her fluency in Russian, to have built a stronger partnership with Putin which could have set a positive example for other Euro leaders. Instead, we get the EU bloc largely in lockstep against Russia and a new Cold War close to turning hot. She might think her great achievement was letting in the large influx of immigrants in 2015, but that was mostly overdone virtue signaling, and the outcome is still to be determined.

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lotlizard's picture

a. Hawai‘i — likes: the natural beauty; the (Kanaka Maoli or Native) Hawaiian culture; the (relative degree of) racial harmony; the older values like humility and ‘ohana; the high-trust society that prevailed when I was a child before “statehood”. Dislikes: the Americanization of everything and loss of “local-kine stuffs”; the newer, imported values of individualism / alienation / materialism / power of money (e.g. billionaire owning 98% of island of Lanai); the much greater crime and transition overall to a low trust society; abasement as “patient zero” of American imperialism

b. Germany — likes: the social safety net; the natural beauty; German cultural things like the language, art, calligraphy (Fraktur), music (classical / Bach), traditional customs; older values like safety, cleanliness, order, and mutual respect (all greater previously, now being lost, e.g. graffiti-spraying went from rare-and-political to ubiquitous) or industriousness and dedication to one’s craft. Dislikes: elitism / dirigism; fear of bottom-up grass-roots anything; intolerance of free speech; Americanization of everything (e.g. language, customs, advertising, entertainment, pop culture, the arts), loss of “German-kine stuffs”; normalization of crime and scams as part of shift to a fractured, lower-trust, “just try and catch me / so sue me” society like the U.S.; self-hatred (obsession with 1933-45); abasement as “patient zero” of post-WW2 US-Allied-NATO imperialism (having internalized “keeping the U.S. in, the Russians out, and the Germans [yes, ourselves, masochistically, we’re bad, we deserve it] down”)

c. When younger, I used to try to imagine living in an independent and sovereign Hawai‘i where money and military interests from far away were not the controlling factors, and many more of the basics of life would be grown, made, or supplied locally in a more ecologically friendly way, as they once were and could be again. Small but self-reliant — like Iceland? Neutral, nobody’s stooge, master in her own house, open to trading with every side equally, multilingual — like Switzerland?

d. In theory, the American ideal of liberty or freedom: anything goes (that does not do real harm to others); anything is possible; anything should be possible and not pre-emptively stifled or orchestrated from above. This lets new things of every kind imaginable develop and frees everyone to realize their full potential

e. In practice, the ignorance and arrogance. The American attitude of, “I may not know much about you or about history; I don’t need to and I don’t want to know. Here’s the thing: I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing, and what are you going to do about it? Try and stop me, loser!” The belief that “when we act, we create our own reality” (attributed to Karl Rove). “Move fast and break things” (Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook motto)

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard
awesome response and comment. I can follow your dislikes you describe im the 'Hawaii Section' of your comment.

I have a bit of difficulites to understand some expressions you used.

What is meant by abasement as “patient zero” of American imperialism?
When you add ...-kine to a word, what is the the meaning of 'kine*?.

I have a lot of difficulties to understand the role of the Japanese people living in Hawaii. I remember when we bought our first car in Hawaii. It was a dealership run (and owned) by a Japanese.

My son (racially not identifiable to Hawaians, basically he could be seen as Philipino, Hative Hawwian or anything else slightly brownish, so peoplae always ask him, WHAT he is-

My son talked to the Japanese sales person first alone. It didn't seem to go anywhere bad or good, just nowhere.. When I joined the conversation between my son and the Japanese sales person and the sales person realized that I am a German, he seemed to change his attitude immediately and seemed kind of exited. It then dawned on me that the Japanese guy felt a certain connectedness to me, because I was German. And that fact made him think about Japanese-German relations in WWII. It made me feel quite uncomfortable. Did I misunderstand him?

Otherwise, we both, my son and me, like the same things about Hawaii as you do.

About your likes and dislikes in the 'German Section' of your comment. What you like is overdone, what you dislike is underdone.

I must say bye. I am too tired already. I thank you very much for this conversation. May be I continue tomorrow.

Good NIght.

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lotlizard's picture

@mimi  
when, under William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, America made a 180-degree turn and decided to get into the empire business like European powers. War to jump-start the empire — by wresting a string of colonies away from Spain — soon followed.

The U.S. proceeded to reduce the Hawaiian people to a sidelined minority in their own country by, among other things, banning the teaching of the Hawaiian language from schools and importing mass immigrant plantation labor from Japan and the Philippines.

Patient zero = first to be afflicted with a figurative condition or, when used literally, a communicable disease

Abasement = submitting to dominance, even feeling gratitude for it, and constantly apologizing both inwardly and outwardly for who and what one is, as in an abusive relationship

Web search for info on “-kine stuffs”:

https://www.qwant.com/?q=pidgin+kine+stuffs&t=web

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lotlizard's picture

@mimi  
Well-situated people of higher social class in pre-war, still semi-feudal Japan obviously wouldn’t have felt the need to emigrate only to become lowly cane-cutters on sugar plantations (or “picture brides” of same).

Their descendants, the post-war generations of Island Japanese, have strongly tended to identify with the 442nd Regiment of Nisei who served valiantly in the U.S. Army — affirming unswerving loyalty to America even as many of their families were languishing in U.S. concentration camps.

So my guess would be that any Japanese-German kinship the car dealer person may have felt would not reflect anything like geopolitical sympathies with the Axis. Perhaps, at a maximum stretch, a remote sense of shared historical background where one’s forebears’ naïve, culturally-conditioned idealism and belief in leaders ended in delusion, destruction, defeat, and occupation.

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mimi's picture

that the Japanese living today on the islands were once themselves only lowly paid cane-cutters on sugar plantations laboreres. So complicated.

Pfft, I have so much history to learn and read my books. Thanks. I come back to learn more and ask more questions.

Thank you again. And sorry to come back so late. Too much going on to concentrate and 'be on time' with my reactions.

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lotlizard's picture

@mimi  
to pull themselves and their families up “by their bootstraps” in the immediate post-war years — attaining middle-class status en masse. They used the G.I. Bill’s education subsidy to go to college. Many became dentists, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, etc.

The long-serving U.S. senator from Hawai‘i, Dan Inouye, is practically the “Ur-Example” for this uplifting sociological story arc:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye

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