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Oh, how I wholeheartedly agree. I suppose, we must blame my own countrymen for having introduced the puritan elements into the United States, however, you would have thought that, after all these years, things just might have progressed.
However, looking from the outside, whether east towards Fundamentalist Muslims (whom even Muslims think give Islam a bad name) or west to Fundamentalist Christians in the Unites States, all I see is ignorance.
Ignorance of the other’s point of view and dangerous isolationism.
Libby, here puts it a little more strongly and in the easily comprehended vernacular with, “Our country is so fucking backwards lately”, commenting on a story, which excerpt begins, “Although many Americans were surprised when traditionally Catholic Spain opened marriage to gay and lesbian couples last year, the Spanish government was actually following a well-established legal trend in Western Europe.”
You know what surprises us here in Spain? Not that Americans do not know that this was part of a trend, but that they would be surprised at all. And this lack of understanding of the situation is proof of long-term isolationism.
Spain was a Catholic country back in the days of the so named “Catholic Kings” and of the Inquisition in the 16th Century. Just when it ceased to be a devout one, might even have been then, in defiance, whilst still going through the motions. Catholisism had the nail firmly driven into its coffin during the Franco era. In the last 30 years since democracy has been restored, Spain has certainly not been a Catholic country in the sense that most Americans (and, it has to be said, British too) imagine.
This should have been enough time for that information to have disseminated.
But that it has not, is as a result of what I saw in the UK - almost no teaching of other countries’ history and scant concern for international news - that I am sure is the case also in the US. If the authorities and the media aren’t going to give these things importance, it is down to each one of us to discover that information for ourselves. Obviously, the internet, especially since the evolution of blogs and “citizen journalism”, offers a means to do so. Let’s not go too deeply into issues like censorship, but those are very important. You can’t learn a thing if you aren’t allowed to access the information. Of course, it relies on people first, knowing there is something they don’t know and, secondly, wanting to know it.
There are more people, like Libby, who daily come to realize that all is not, as we were once led to believe, “bigger and better in America”, but are there enough who really WANT to improve the situation? That is the question.
Sponzurz
