Juxtaposition

One random Friday I was proud to be an American. Bianca, her newbie, and I were going to lunch at my favorite "happy lunch" place and it is walking distance from my building downtown. The little trainers from India were here (please see outsourcing... otherwise know as... PLEASE PLEASE TAKE MY JOB!!). They were a nice enough group. There was one girl among 5 guys. Her name was Priya and she was the least paid (that looks funny). They were walking down the same street and I made my friends wait to say hello.

As they walked up jerk-wad was smoking a cigarette and put it down to flick. On the way down he burned Priya's hand... and continued talking like nothing had happened. They get to us and Bianca asks "Did you just burn her hand?" and jerk-wad says "No, she burned it herself. She should have moved." He was dead serious.

We had to move.

1. Bianca was two beats away from kicking him in his head... 2. So was I.

Fast forward to Priya and I are cool. She comes to see me, and she brings ME chocolate on HER birthday. (Read it again, it didn't make sense to me either). She is terribly darling, but I want her not to lay down to people that treat her like that.

Bianca says it is the American part of me that has a sense of entitlement to being treated fairly. Yay us.

On to the following Monday and the 1st part of such a titled position. Lemon sends me the Punjabi MC song- Mundial ke Bachan for those of you that know it, and says that this is the music I listen to. Of course it must be... Jay-Z sampled it and it must exemplify Indian music. I am not Punjabi. I have nothing against Punjabi's... it is a very rich culture and the Punjabi beats are the base of most very fun Indian music. But he didn't know, and didn't ask. and assumed he knew... Which brought me to thinking... I am glad I am not solely American with the arrogance of ignorance that seems to be a byproduct.

On to making it more relevant.

I read some one's blog where the blogger decried the "murder" of Saddam. Yes he was hung, but that was an execution for war crimes. Not to argue semantics... I'm just saying. She says he did good and bad things and the west only focused on the bad and made up a lot of stuff. Given our media is not fair but it is a bit more in that direction than say the media she is quoting. But she also occupies an interesting position. I did not fully appreciate this until I was flipping through a book "Naked in Bhagdad" something written by an NPR correspondent on the war in Iraq- I think it's mom's I don't know how I got it..

But there is a newer generation of displaced Iraqis who have only known their home land in war. there was Desert Storm, and a huge recession. Then like day after night... stuff started to look a little better. It was attributed to Saddam. Then the nasty Americans swooped in and took it away, and tried to make the county look like ours, which was based on an entire religion that is not theirs. So we are essentially saying, you did it wrong, you should not base your laws on YOUR religion, but on ours. You will not have anything we do not want you to have, but we will give you bits and pieces and tell you it is better.

Please remember I am just explaining a position and not saying it is mine. But I can understand the seeds of hate that we are not uprooting. and our next generation will have the entitlement of wanting to be treated fairly, and have everyone else have the same freedom. and try to bully other countries into having it without taking time and sensitive approach to understand them (arrogance and ignorance).

and I say all that to say this... We should stick to being evil capitalists and not try to go beyond to pretend to be otherwise. We are only shooting ourselves in both feet.