Monday, July 29, 2013

Pain of America

Pain of America is world's pain.
That is what Americans think.

And gives it away? How did yours truly conclude it?

Yours truly stumbled upon this photo feature on JF Kennedy's killer Lee Harvey Oswald. It has the words:

At the center of one of the 20th century's most shocking and traumatic events - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - was a 24-year-old...
Traumatic for whom?
For Americans? That is understandable.

For Indians? Are you sure that people of India missed a heartbeat at JFK's assassination? Yours truly does not think so.

For Europeans? Most probably not.


And so on.

So why do Americans universalize their feelings by generalizing them for the whole world.

That they have misappropriated the adjective American is enough of a rub in itself. Things should not be stretched further. To some extent the world might still be US-centric but the things are changing. Europe did not devise European Union to counter Chinese influence - it did that to counter US influence and to face US in a united fashion.

And then there are Muslims - at the receiving end of US highhandedness. Some silly Muslims might be shedding conspicuous tears at an American trouble but by and large it is not a reasonable conclusion to think that American pain is their pain.