cultural divides.

Submitted by Mohammed Waza Khiddif Id'ullah (Australia), Aug 7, 2015 at 06:21

"...You'r an Agnostic and I am, if you judge me by my associates, either Evangelical, Jewish or Roman Catholic...."

Agnostic? Put a space between the 'a' and 'g' and you'd be closer to the truth.

"..When we start to talk, of course, Barack and I are on one side, and you're on the other..."

True - and it's not just the language. Americans are much more extrovert in general and much more concerned about their personal rights. It seems to me you live in a more litigious society where people take and give offence more readily. Could be a thing that happened in the last 30 years maybe though. If you watch old black and white movies - there's been a profound change in the way people treated each other. Probably started to change in the mid-60's .

"...When I lived in Australia, people there seemed to identify as either "British" or "New Australian".

You mustn't have met any of the large number of Irish or Scots in your time here then.

"Aussies of all extractions used to call Englishmen "POMEs", which I heard was short for "People of Mother England".

'Pommie' or simply 'a pom' is slang for a Brit. It was taken from the 'Prisoner Of Mother England" on convict clothes apparently. These days though we're flooded with so many from non-Western cultures that being a 'pom' is a good thing.

"If you're a White Australian, chances are that we look more like each other than I do to Barack Obama"

Yes, white Australan , except in summer. I have very little English in my bloodline though - could be as little as 1/32 or 1/64. 100% Irish on 1 side, mostly German, Belgian , Irish on the other. Obviously the English input was necessary for me to be me - so I'm not complaining.

I think that racial identification is quite fundamental in our psyches. I've lived in northern Europe - and saw that I was seeing the locals as just like me - except having the misfortune of not having English as their first language ;- ). That just does not happen on visits to Asia - or India or the Middle East or Africa. Not that I've been to the last 3 - but racially and culturally they are indeed foreign. Exotic, interesting maybe , but definitely foreign. Now of course I have Chinese firend shere - and some that have been born here - and even a US born Chinese friend - who was a little hard to take at first but eventually I started to see her as an "American in a Chinese body'.

This brings up an interesting point - which is that islam is an arab supremacist ideology. Its big problem is that in the West , no one has ever really looked up at arabs. To be blunt - they've done nothing admirable. And now we are having a look at exactly what it is that they believe and how they act - and we're recoiling in horror at some of it. So their quest for world domination is doomed from the outset. The harder they push, the harder we push back.

It can't end well.

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