I took a trip this past weekend, from Friday to Monday, to Maryland, to visit my father for Passover. Chag sameach!
irony of naming the national airport after the president who fired all the air traffic controllers
:-) It will always be "National Airport" to me, no matter what they put on the signs. I wonder, are there any conservative Republican New Yorkers who still refer to "Idlewild"?
The Washington Monument is not something George Washington would have liked or appreciated.
By and large I tend to agree with you, though GW was not entirely the self-abnegating Cincinattus his publicists would have one believe. But by the time the monument was begun in the 1830s, the Cult of Washington was in full swing.
What is that secret? I think, deep down, this country has a major inferiority complex.
Well, don't forget that the inferiority complex was well founded. When we started out, we were a tiny, rather weak nation, about on the scale of modern-day Korea, maybe, or the Netherlands. Even after we bought/stole/occupied our current acreage, we didn't really think of ourselves as or act like a world power until after World War 2, when the role was pretty much thrust on us.
We have to have the largest army, the largest economy, the largest vehicles, the largest consumption, size is everything in this country.
American is maddeningly hard to justify generalizations about. Many American *are* obsessed with size and wealth. Others are not. The country that gives you Liberace and the H2 also produced the Quakers. And it's not like we're alone. We didn't invent the obelisk, and we're not the first to go errecting them to heroes in the post-classical world. And Taiwan, Malaysia, and (soon) Dubai have the world's biggest phal... buildings.
And, BTW, China and India have armies larger than ours. Much larger. :-)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2005-04-27 07:59 am (UTC)Chag sameach!
irony of naming the national airport after the president who fired all the air traffic controllers
:-) It will always be "National Airport" to me, no matter what they put on the signs. I wonder, are there any conservative Republican New Yorkers who still refer to "Idlewild"?
The Washington Monument is not something George Washington would have liked or appreciated.
By and large I tend to agree with you, though GW was not entirely the self-abnegating Cincinattus his publicists would have one believe. But by the time the monument was begun in the 1830s, the Cult of Washington was in full swing.
What is that secret? I think, deep down, this country has a major inferiority complex.
Well, don't forget that the inferiority complex was well founded. When we started out, we were a tiny, rather weak nation, about on the scale of modern-day Korea, maybe, or the Netherlands. Even after we bought/stole/occupied our current acreage, we didn't really think of ourselves as or act like a world power until after World War 2, when the role was pretty much thrust on us.
We have to have the largest army, the largest economy, the largest vehicles, the largest consumption, size is everything in this country.
American is maddeningly hard to justify generalizations about. Many American *are* obsessed with size and wealth. Others are not. The country that gives you Liberace and the H2 also produced the Quakers. And it's not like we're alone. We didn't invent the obelisk, and we're not the first to go errecting them to heroes in the post-classical world. And Taiwan, Malaysia, and (soon) Dubai have the world's biggest phal... buildings.
And, BTW, China and India have armies larger than ours. Much larger. :-)