From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   I once knew a former hippie woman whose son was into Jim Morrison, had long   
   hair, and was having all sorts of adventures. I heard her call him a poser.   
      
   My response is that if someone is doing something when it is not a part of a   
   trend, then he must really want it; which means that he is more the genuine   
   article than someone who does it when it is part of a trend.   
      
   There are some in America who do not want to have immigrants coming over from   
   France. These people are not thinking straight. In France, the media culture   
   is very anti-American, and people are relatively well-off. This means that a   
   regular French person    
   would never think of coming to America. A French person who does come to   
   America must really want it. Such a person is more likely to be patriotic than   
   would a person from a place such as Nigeria, where sentiment is highly   
   pro-American and many regular    
   people want to come to the United States.   
      
   I had a girlfriend from Portland, Oregon, who found the “European   
   pretentions” of Portland yuppies to be annoying. She was not looking at why   
   they had these “pretentions.” These people wanted to have in their lives   
   some kind of style; and if they    
   were going for that to Europe or to Japan, it was simply because these places   
   were better at doing style than was Portland.   
      
   Were they “pretentious” or “posers” or “snobs”? No. In fact these   
   people improve their country by bringing into it something from another place   
   that has value. The Europeans are better at culture and style than Americans,   
   and that has a    
   legitimate appeal to people in America. By bringing something good into one's   
   country from another place, one improves one's country.   
      
   The person from India or China or Russia who looks up to American political or   
   economic systems is likewise not a “poser” or a “snob.” He is someone   
   who sees something that Americans do better than do the folks at home. And he   
   improves his    
   country by bringing that influence into it.   
      
   Similarly people improve other countries by bringing into them worthwhile   
   things from abroad. A Russian immigrant to America brings education and   
   culture that exerts a positive effect on America. And a man from American   
   feminist culture immigrating to    
   Australia brings better ideas of how to treat women, likewise improving the   
   country to which he comes.   
      
   Countries grow that way; cultures grow that way. In all cases, there are   
   people loyal to bad habits and wrong ideas who object to this – such as   
   people in Portland seeing yuppies as “pretentious” or “snobs,” or   
   folks in Australia posting    
   slander against me. That is because they want to maintain their inferior   
   habits and are threatened through introduction of better ways. These people   
   think that they are loyal citizens, but actually they exert a destructive   
   influence on their home society.   
    They oppose introduction of better ways into their country and keep their   
   country from benefiting through introduction of these ways.   
      
   America benefits through introduction of style from Europe or Japan; and   
   Australia benefits through introduction of more gentlemanly attitudes.   
   Similarly Russia benefits through introduction of American or Australian ideas   
   of how to do politics and    
   economics. The people who oppose any of the above in the name of patriotism or   
   “their way of life” are either deluded or lying. Countries grow through   
   introduction of good ideas from abroad. And that is the case with every   
   country.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)