From: alpet@ocf.berkeley.edu (Alex Petrushko)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: If you don't like it here.....
Date: 6 Oct 1992 18:46:07 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: tornado.berkeley.edu

In article <92100570@tbucks.com> root@tbucks.com (Timothy E. Buchanan) writes:
>In the last few weeks, thanks to kind persons in this newsgroups, I have
>learned that-
>
>1- Soviet educational system is far superior to that of US.
>2- Soviet space program ditto.
>3- American movies are not Art, but just technology, and even that is
>spoiled by the uncultured audience.
>
>To these I comment-
>
>1- About one-quarter of PhD's are awarded to non-americans, who evidently
>come here to make use of our deficient system. This educational system is
>good enough to turn out people capable of inventing the microchip, the
>transistor, of setting the world standards for computer operating systems,
>and so on.
 
 What does that signify? Obviously, a quarter of all American Ph.D. candidates
 are dumb, so that 25% is awarded to the people who are better. This educational system was good enough to turn out Dan Quayle, who can't even spell! This edu-
 cational system was good enough to turn out Ronald Reagan, who couldn't remem-
 ber the names of his own Cabinet people without his 3x5 cards.  This educatio-
 nal system was good enough to turn out Lee Iacocca, who instead of helping
 U.S. automobile industry by _doing_ something simply opened a verbal war with
 Japanese, who in fact have much better quality of _any_ products.

 
>2- American communication satellites brought the world closer together. An
>American craft is the first vessel to leave our solar system. Americans
>stood on the moon.

I am not sure what are you talking about... If you mean the omnipresent
MTV and Turner Broadcasting Network, then your definition of bringing the world
closer together is different from mine. I don't even want to argue about
the superiority of Soviet space program, because every political economist
knows that Politburo dumped a _lot_ of resources into that enterprise, and
maybe American craft was the first to leave the solar system but who was the
first to have a satellite anyway? Yes, xSU is the right answer. Who was the
first to have a first manned spacecraft? xSU again. The list goes on and on.
Americans stood on the moon but if I remember right, Soviet satellite was
the first to map the darkside of the moon (I am not sure).


>3- I am never quite sure how to reply to snobbery of this sort. American
>movies are loved around the world. Doubtless some have more artistic merit
>than others.

I am not sure how to reply to your statement that American movies are loved
around the world. Of course, they are loved, because you don't need any taste
or brains to understand T2 or Commandos but you need a great deal of artistic
talent to make a movie like The Player or Andrei Rublev.  I don't think
that anybody who likes _true_ art would think that most American movies fall
into that category, although very few of them do indeed.


>
Many of the threads are titled "Is America that bad?" as if it is a given
>that America is 'bad' and now we'll decide how bad it is. Complain all you
>want; it's a free country. But millions of people have and will vote with
>their feet, including some I think in this group. Can someone name ten
>people who have emigrated from the US to the XSU, to find a better life?
>

Millions of people in this country don't vote at all, simply because they 
don't want to get their ass of the couch! They don't care about the wars some-
where in Kuwait or Panama but they start to understand it when it comes and 
knocks on their door.  Furthermore, I know people who have emigrated to USA
and then moved back to xSU, because they couldn't stand the blatant materialism
and snobbery of the American society. They simply didn't want to live under
the hegemony of the dollar. These were few but they did exist, and I even know
one of them.  Moreover, I would like to live and work in Europe, and the
circumstances that determine my fate are not favorable at the present time, sin-ce I am still here. 


>--
>Timothy.
>
>
>      ------- Time is our only resource, humor our only defense. -------



		      Always un-American, Shura.