I was reading a book recently about how many people from Europe are going over to the USA quite early in the life. What some regarded as a brain drain from Europe was being viewed as missionary work. These wealth generators would galvanize the economy locally and nationally to help the increasingly alarming level of poverty for many citizens of the USA.
I wasn't too sure I believed in this trickle down mentality. Europeans are just as likely to send money home as any other migrant.
What did surprise me was the number of ivy League places taken up by Europeans. It got my head thinking how academia really was international and felt global but also extremely detached.
I had heard before about Ivory towers and certainly these people will be in a great position to influence policy especially now that Trump has left the White House but I do wonder whether the vast impoverished masses in third world USA have a voice.
In 21st century we have seen passive reactions to events like Louisiana, a rise in police brutality, or a cementing of their racism which was already endemic. White America continues to think it has god on its side, and from this distance just looks like a powder keg. Trump's election came about from the impoverished white communities feeling what about me. Testosterone fueled men suddenly felt they had a voice and a return to when men were men and violence upon whoever was not just acceptable, it was taught.
Women were to be home, man was bred to look after the little woman, to be strong and feel superior through racism.
I sat in a primary school during P5-6 and it was a quirky thing. I was really condemned hard for not standing up to pledge my allegiance to the flag every morning. I know little about Stockholm syndrome but if you pledge your allegiance on a daily basis then I guess you feel something. Catholics say "I am not worthy...." Regularly! I know, as I did do that one for a few years.
In Sweden education starts with social interaction while in Britain we used to be all about the three R's. In grades 5 & 6 it was all about the flag. I remember memorizing all the presidents all the states all the state capitals and other such trivia.
My classmates would tell me I knew more about America than they did. I would say yes I know about the whole of North America, Mexico & Canada too. Your section is called the United States of America which you often abbreviate to America which is incorrect.
The education, as it was, seemed to be less cultural and more the imperial version I associate with Britain and empire. Being in charge and obliterating, dominating or enslaving other races to get your own way. If you had the money, you had the power to own the town. It was all very monopoly board diplomacy which I found funny as my Dad was a diplomat in Washington DC.
I'm not sure in the 50 years since I was there how the country has progressed but it's not pretty. The rise of the black lives matter movement distressed me as much as it impressed me. It distressed me because I felt during the seventies when I was there we were slowly moving away from a stereotypes and realising the folly of our ways.
If you know better you do better.
Lessons from history suggest world war I was followed by world war II and for the USA Korea Vietnam Afghanistan Iraq to random acts of state sponsored terrorism like institutional racism. British policing can be bad but when you look across the water from Rodney King to George Floyd in such a few years, police in many states have become more violent and racist. They see a person of colour as an opportunity to let them know who's in charge.
I'm curious about the impact vietnam veterans, who were the subject of many films had on the shaping of the USA in the last 50 years since I was at school there. I can't help thinking like the velvet underground, I was just a few years too young to appreciate it. I was going to white house Christmas parties with the nixon's and running around the green room because I supported Hibs and I missed my beloved Cabbage and Ribs. I feel the generational chasm such a polarising war created just got wider as years went by.
Civil rights and the anti war 60's almost vanished in the 70's and then the iron fist of the state arrived in the 80's and that closed the door to the USA becoming a country of it's people. It became a modern dictator where cash was literally King and this King was not a constitutional leader.
Conscience could be salvaged by the generous donations to charity to help the poor needy folk.
This is where we take pictures of poor little kids with no shoes and say give us a buck to help.
When I was growing up in Edinburgh, I was asked to take thruppence every Friday for the black babies. It's quite appalling looking back at how easily young minds are manipulated, but then it was a Catholic school and as previously mentioned, manipulation is part of the game. Interestingly, this worked on my parents too who would give their 5 children a thruppence. No wonder Catholics and birth control didn't work!
I've drifted off piste again but suffice to say changing minds is so much easier if you haven't filled these heads full of shit in the first play.
More in the stream of consciousness series which will never see the light of day
Give me the kid at 5 and......good habits, bad habits,, brush your teeth, wash your hands, bite your friends ear, spit and kick them when they're down, survival of the fittest, help your neighbour, take flowers to the care home, steal their fags,
Give me the kid in puberty........ industrialist, terrorist, football player, mathematician, miner, diner or even a 49'er, find out what habits were installed at 5 and make hay...
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