First, let me tell you how I, personally, came to ponder the subject. I was born and raised in Hungary. I came to the United States straight out of high school to attend college. It’s been 14 years, and I am a permanent resident and will be a citizen soon. America has become my home: and despite its shortcomings as a nation, I have come to feel very deeply about it. The part of me that still belongs to Hungary and to Europe, I still cherish. There was a while when I felt that I somehow had to choose either one or the other after September 11. Then I realized that what I was doing, namely, being the son of a foreign land and having immigrated to America, has been done before. As a matter of fact, America is what it is today because of people like me. All of the sudden there was no conflict. I decided to use the best in being a Hungarian by birth and an American by choice to not only benefit me but both nations. Easier said than done.
Unfortunately, the conviction that there are only stupid Americans is very deeply rooted in pretty much all Europeans. Let’s face it people, the last several years of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy helped fuel it. (The strange thing is, though, that they cannot seem to stop being fascinated by America at the same time.) I personally could list a few things that upset me about the level of ignorance in our country. How about the fact that 20 percent of people couldn’t find America on the world map if their life depended on it. How about a third of high school students couldn’t tell you what century the Declaration Of Independence was signed in. What pisses me off the most these days is that about half of all Americans are still convinced that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 when it is a fact that Saddam Hussein had no connection with Al Quaida. Now that’s stupid.
The fact is, however, that people’s conviction in other parts of the world about American stupidity is not based on any facts whatsoever. What I listed in the previous paragraph, can be found on the Internet, and they are facts. No reasonable people would dispute them. They don’t seem to care, though. The vast majority I spoke to while on vacation in Hungary have never been in the United States, never spoke to anyone remotely American besides me and they don’t care about facts.
I was having dinner with a friend one night during my stay in Budapest; and he invited one of his colleges along. This guy’s brother spent a couple of weeks in Florida, and he came back with the message that, yes, Americans were indeed stupid. The examples he gave me were: (i) the food was tasteless; (ii) he got pulled over for speeding once and, while he was let off with a warning, the cop gave him a lecture on the dangers of driving tired; (iii) before a big storm hit town, the citizens of West Palm Beach, Florida were warned over the citywide intercom system. I couldn’t believe my ears! I mean I was expecting a list like what I gave you a little while ago only longer. Instead, he complained about people having a different taste on a totally different continent, he moaned about not getting a ticket and couldn’t believe that a town looked out for its residents. If that’s not stupid, I don’t know what is.
Stupid Americans? I don’t think so. It appears that stupidity knows no boundaries, my friends. To put it more accurately, it’s stupid people, not necessarily stupid Americans.
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