There's a saying on American social media:
"Be the American that Japanese people think you are."
I'm Japanese. I've lived in Tokyo my whole life.
So let me tell you what we actually say about you, when you're not in the room.
"When someone falls down on the street, we pretend not to see. We're protecting their pride. Americans run straight at them. They don't care about the pride. They care about the knee." (Office worker, 38)
"An American will stop four lanes of traffic for a family of ducks. And then everyone in the cars claps for the ducks." (Taxi driver, 61)
"If you lend an American a pen, you will never see it again. If you need a kidney, they'll ask your blood type." (Nurse, 45)
"At kids' soccer games, they cheer when the other team's kid scores. The other team's parents look confused. Then they cheer too." (Youth soccer coach, 52, lived one year in Ohio)
"A man sneezed on a bus in Chicago. Eleven strangers said 'Bless you.' He said 'thank you' eleven times. Nobody on that bus thought this was strange." (University student, 21)
"At an airport in Texas, I watched a soldier try to pay for his lunch. The cashier said someone already had. He asked who. She said, 'Somebody who didn't want you to know.'" (Retired teacher, 70)
"American fathers cannot braid hair. But they will watch a video at midnight for an hour so their daughter's hair looks right on picture day." (Hair stylist, 33)
"I ran the Chicago Marathon once. Strangers stood in the cold for hours holding signs for people they will never meet. At mile 20, a man I'd never seen read the name off my bib and screamed it like he'd raised me." (Runner, 48)
"When Americans get lost, they ask a stranger. If the stranger is also lost, they become a team." (Tour guide, 39)
"They ask the waitress her name. And then they remember it." (Restaurant owner, 66)
And one more. From my father. He's 76. He doesn't say much about anything. This is the longest thing I have ever heard him say about another country.
"Every time something terrible happens in America, I watch the news, and I look for one thing.
The people running toward it.
There are always so many."
So, America.
You don't have to become the Americans we think you are.
We're not imagining you.
We're remembering you.
Catholics that view the faith as a cultural preference rather than the one true faith transmitted through 2000 years of Church History. Lord Have Mercy
@FeelsGuy2003 We’ve lost our way as Christians if we decide that coexistence (subjugation under Islam and secularism) is what the Blessed Apostles had in mind for the Great Commission instead of the conversion of all nations and souls. Do we have an overzealous problem or an under zealous one?
The Barruelian is obsessed with opposing a nebulous secret enemy, opposition to which will restore an immediately available and immediately integral traditional order stolen from him by conspiracy, as if an item of property. The key to this opposition is awareness of the enemy and the transmission of midwit esoteric knowledge of the conspiracy and its character in order to stave off external subversion.
For the Maistrean, the present baleful situation is a disintegration of the grace of civilization commanded by divine providence, arising from the destruction of God-granted authority by the modern world, understood not merely as some political faction or another, but rather in terms of a fallen and fundamentally sinful humanity rejecting God's own grace. Opposition requires rebuilding our vocation through repentance, sacrifice, suffering, and submission, from which God will send us renewed authority. It will not work merely to operate as one more revolutionary faction. That just reproduces the revolutionary error in more acceptable dress.