I’m apparently an idiot.  Yeah, really.

No, this isn’t going to be one of those self-depricating posts where I relate something stupid that I did.  (Me?  Do something stupid?  I think you’re reading the wrong blog.)  It’s going to be a post where I complain about something that happened quite a while back and that has been festering in the back of my mind.  My advice: skip this post.

The story begins at work.  I sat in the teacher’s room talking to an otherwise nice colleague from Austrailia.  (Yeah, we count what they speak there as English.)  And, in the course of the conversation, I made reference to what we did in the Army and she looked at me in surprise.  “You were in the Army?”  She asked.

In circumstances like these, I’m always quick to clarify that I wasn’t in the real Army.  I was in the National Guard, which is like the reserves.  I clarify it because, well, I don’t want to take credit for the amazing stuff that the ‘real’ Army guys do because I mostly drank coffee and read books while in uniform, and I have a lot of respect for people who did. . . well, more when they were in the service.

“No offense,” she said (I’m paraphrasing now, I’ve forgotten the exact words.)  “You seem plenty intelligent.  But, well, you might know this.  I don’t think that it’s well known inside America, but the American military is where America sends all of it’s. . . not smart people.”

The thing is this: she said it with a tone that suggested she was telling me something as patently obvious as that things that go up must come down.

And this is what gets me: I can see being an America skeptic.  In fact, I’m ready to admit that there are probably as many reasons to hate the U.S. as to love it.  But, to believe we sort people into the military because they’re stupid?

I politely told my colleage that my experience with the Army–though I hated it–was nowhere near as bad as my experience with private industry.  (Ever worked in a foundry?  That’s where America sends it’s rejects.)  Because I value a positive and open atmosphere in my workplace, I didn’t ask the only question that came to mind:  How stupid do you have to be to believe that there could be some kind of systematic sortation of Americans without people noticing?

I don’t think I know anyone–in the U.S.–who doesn’t know a half-dozen people in uniform.  Wouldn’t we pick up on the fact that they all seemed to be. . . well, sub-par?

Don’t get me wrong, I knew plenty of idiots in the Army, and I’m not just talking about drill sergeants.  But the idiots I knew in the Army were A) not the majority of the Army and B) only a tiny fraction of all the idiots I know.  Wouldn’t you think that people would start to say “keep your grades up, or you’ll be in the Army?”  Oh, wait, someone did.

It was when I started thinking about writing this post that I remembered the image above. . . It’s from when John Kerry told students to work hard and get good grades or they’d get stuck in Iraq.  I don’t know if that’s where the myth started–probably not, I mean, I don’t think he thought it up–but my guess is that that’s how it got overseas.

There’s a tendency among Germans–and I’d guess most of the liberal ‘western’ world–to believe anything a democrat tells them.  (Really, they–and the word ‘they’ clues you into the fact that this is a generalization–believe that the republicans are a bunch of lying Nazis and that only the democrats have anything like a grip on reality.)  And democrats don’t say many nice things about the U.S. . . or they didn’t when Bush was in power and I was listening.  (I’ve stopped reading the news because it wasn’t good for my nerves.)

And the problem is this: democrats like to sell America as a failure in order to make the case for more government (my simplification) and the world likes to believe them. And it drives me crazy.  One day, when the kids are grown and off to college, I’ll start writing about the things that frustrate me with the U.S.: we certainly aren’t perfect.  But, on the other hand, I think I had as good an upbringing there as is available anywhere else in the world.  And further, there are a lot of things about the U.S. that I think Germany would do well to import.  But I’ve met Germans who really believe that I was either rich, or from a ghetto somewhere.  Comfortably middle-class–and maybe I grew up in the lower middle-class–doesn’t seem to exist in their perception of the U.S.

When we talk about health insurance, they couldn’t believe that I was ‘covered’ when I didn’t have health insurance.  They really think that if you don’t have insurance in the U.S., you die.  When I describe my experience with the hospitals after my accident, they agree that it seems like a pretty fair system. . . and are surprised that it even exists.  (That’s Pennsylvania.  I’m sure there are other states.)

So, what makes me crazy?  I don’t know.  My co-worker, for one.  Constantly hearing–especially from Americans–just how terrible things are in the U.S. is another.  And people who were never in the Army putting it down is a third.  But mostly, it’s wondering how dumb you have to be to not think twice about how something you heard should really work out in real life.

If I were still doing political blogging (and I’ve already said that I don’t have the nerves–or, I guess, the alcohol–for it) I’d re-write this into something more coherent. . . but I’m not.  I’m just venting.

I wanted to turn this experience into something for my English learning blog. . . and wanted to blow off the steam and frustration surrounding it before I tried to make a recording about what happened.