"Ugly" Americans abroad.... [View All]

[marmar]

As I was waiting in line to check-in for my flight home from London on Sunday, a guy from Oklahoma who was on my flight to Detroit started a conversation with me. He was quite friendly, but then he started talking politics. :scared:

His first point was about the stringent security at Gatwick Airport, saying we in America "are spoiled" because we're accustomed to tolerating each other's differences, implying that tight security at Gatwick indicated intolerance (Even though everyone was put through the same rigors at Gatwick, unlike the blatant profiling I've seen at a lot of U.S. airports). I gave him a puzzled look and responded, "Actually, I think London is one of the most tolerant, accepting, multicultural cities on the planet." He then moved on to.....

"I would hate to live in this country. There's no space for your house, the taxes are too high, they pretty much force you to use the trains and subway and you don't have any choice in your health care."
I responded that I loved the vitality of European center cities, and the practicality of having populations concentrated rather than sprawled out in land-wasting suburbs. I also said I love that people use public transit, and decried the American obsession with the automobile and the attendant waste of energy, and I told him Universal single-payer health care made lots of sense to me, and pointed out that our health statistics were the worst in the Western world. Then he moved on to the coup de grace:

"People here are very critical of our president and they undermine (Blair) for doing the right thing in Iraq, and he got tired of hearing it.":crazy: As you can imagine, my eyes rolled, and I said I admire the British citizens' and press' ability to take on bad leaders for bad decisions in a bad war. At that point, he got the point, and ended the conversation.

Why do these people leave the country?:shrug: