American hedonism closes its eyes to death, and has been
incapable of exorcising the destructive power of the moment
with a wisdom like that of the Epicureans of antiquity.
- Octavio Paz
Death is un-American, and an affront to every citizen's inalienable
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- Arnold Toynbee
the_band_huge
the_band_huge
"As long as such self-serving hypocrisy
motivates America's response, Ukraine will
only sink further into needless bloodshed,
and that blood will be on America's head."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
the_band_huge
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors,
since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors,
for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal
applies only upwards, not downwards.
― Bertrand Russell
Global Coke
Global Coke
"What those 'racists' are reflexively and rightly reacting
to is the soulless chill as the fire goes out beneath the
melting pot. Those who think America can thrive as a
'cultural mosaic' are worse than fools; they're Canadians."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Global Coke
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe.
It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster,
in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe
have grown to appalling dimensions.
― Frantz Fanon
What the United States does best is understand itself.
What it does worst is understand others.
- Carlos Fuentes
Poor Mexico, so far from God
and so close to the United States.
- Porfirio Diaz
the_band_huge
the_band_huge
"Indeed, everything about the American southland was magical
and exotic to the young Canadian musicians, from the sights
and smells to the drawling manner of speech to, especially, the
central role that music played in people’s everyday lives."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
the_band_huge
America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
- Sigmund Freud
America is an adorable woman chewing tobacco.
- Auguste Bartholdi
chimerica
chimerica
"This is the tone of the China Century, a subtle
mix of Nazi/Soviet bravado and 'oriental'
cunning -- easily misunderstood, and never
heard before, in a real enemy, by the West."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
chimerica
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
"And for the others who argued for English-only
patriotism, I note that there are more than
57 million Americans (about 20% of the nation)
whose first-language is not English...."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
predator-firing-missile4
predator-firing-missile4
"This is the behavior, and the fate, of paranoid
old-world tyrants like Hitler or Saddam, not liberal new-world democracies like America pretends to be."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
predator-firing-missile4
America is the only nation in history which
miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to
degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
- Georges Clemenceau
I found there a country with thirty-two religions and only one sauce.
- Charles–Maurice Talleyrand
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle,
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
- Edmund Burke
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
- Marshall McLuhan
"The removal of racist sports nicknames (and mascots) seems outrageously belated
-- why, exactly, has this civil rights cause
taken so long to gain momentum?"
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the
United States reactionaries use to scare people.
It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.
- Mao Tse-tung
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but
they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did.
- Red Cloud
In America sex is an obsession,
in other parts of the world it is a fact.
- Marlene Dietrich
I would rather have a nod from an American,
than a snuff-box from an emperor.
- Lord Byron
One day the United States discovered it was an empire.
But it didn’t know what an empire was.
It thought that an empire was merely the biggest of all corporations.
- Roberto Calasso
Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather
be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
newtown
newtown
"No one, I thought, could watch those scenes, of young children slaughtered en masse, and so many parents grieving, without thinking that this, finally, would tip some kind of balance in the country."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
newtown
If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams
then you must still regard America today with the same naive
enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World.
- Jean Baudrillard
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
- Samuel Johnson
America, thou half brother of the world;
With something good and bad of every land.
- Philip Bailey
"What can be more powerful than disinformation in the Information Age?"
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
- Sir Walter Besant
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by
posterity because he was the last to discover America.
- James Joyce
Now, from America, empty indifferent things
are pouring across, sham things, dummy life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
If the United States is to recover fortitude and lucidity,
it must recover itself, and to recover itself it must
recover the "others"- the outcasts of the Western world.
- Octavio Paz
The youth of America is their oldest tradition.
It has been going on now for three hundred years.
- Oscar Wilde
"America really is, for most Americans, all things considered, a good place to be, and all they really want is for everyone to enjoy the same privilege and pleasure."
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
When good Americans die they go to Paris;
when bad Americans die they go to America.
- Oscar Wilde
jobs drug dealer
jobs drug dealer
They're nothing more than traffickers; and as the smart traffickers'll tell you, you don't use the merchandise. They are just inoculating their kids with a tech-drug serum, to immunize them against the very merchandise that put the **** bowling alley in their basement.
jobs drug dealer
America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that
lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself.
- Georg Friedrich Hegel
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room.
Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
- Arnold Toynbee
Americans always try to do the right thing after they've tried everything else.
- Winston Churchill
The thing that impresses me most about Americans
is the way parents obey their children.
- Edward, Duke of Windsor
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering
what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
- John Maynard Keynes
Europe was created by history.
America was created by philosophy.
- Margaret Thatcher
America is God's crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of
Europe are melting and reforming!... The real American has not yet arrived.
He is only in the crucible, I tell you - he will be the fusion of all races.
- Israel Zangwill
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those
who have seen America only in their dreams.
- Pico Iyer
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.
- Ringo Starr
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.
It has never yet melted.
― D.H. Lawrence
I have two conflicting visions of America.
One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.
― Bono
The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror
of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis,
the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.
― Roberto Bolaño

September 13, 2023

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Author Topic: General discussion about the Founders list...


Geoff-
Hamilton
Administrator
Posts: 172
General discussion about the Founders list...
on: September 17, 2013, 02:53

Reply below with general suggestions about the Asia Founders list.
To discuss a particular figure, begin a new discussion thread.


and100
New Member
Posts: 2
Chinese Leaders
on: October 18, 2013, 05:02

Considering the size of Asia and the broad definition of ‘founders’, I’ll limit myself to China and some of its (political) leaders.

Prince Gong (19th century): opened Beijing to the first American representatives;
Kuomindang leader Chiang Kaishek (and his US-educated wife, Soong May-ling): not the biggest fan of the US but he depended heavily on US support;
Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Li Xiannian, Jiang Zemin and many other PRC political figures: contributed significantly to the perception of the US in China (and Asia) in the 20th century

Some current Chinese politicians should also be added to the list. Their messages to (and about) the US are frequently very direct. An example of a recent article that illustrates such attitudes: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-10/07/content_17012495.htm


Jeehyun-
Lim
New Member
Posts: 2
Re: Founders?
on: October 19, 2013, 09:48

Maybe a bit of clarification on profound and influential might be helpful? For example, the first president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Syngman Rhee (sometimes romanized as Seung-man Rhee), avidly pro-American and more avidly anti-communist, initiated a long line of South Korean government's reliance on the U.S. In that sense, he was undeniably an influential figure. His reception, as you probably guessed, is very divided. Some people, to this day, view him as the father of liberal democracy in Korea. I think in most academic literature, though, it's now well known that Rhee was an authoritarian dictator.

I guess the term founder just gives me a bit of pause due to its implied heroism.

And, of course, for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Kim Il-Sung (or I guess, Il-Sung Kim if you put his name in the same order as Rhee's) was the person whom the U.S. was most wary of.



Geoff-
Hamilton
Administrator
Posts: 172
Re: Founders?
on: October 19, 2013, 15:53

Thanks, Andrej, for the suggestions, and Jeehyun, for the queries!
'Founders' is meant to imply influence -- the voices that have been most crucial in shaping how a region understands America -- rather than approval. I liked the pun on America's Founding Fathers (whose 'heroism' is now routinely challenged, of course), and reckoned there was some built-in irony (and 'complication' of any suggestion of heroism) in our use of the term here, since Their America (like its logo) is committed to reversed perspectives. In any case, I'll try to make this clearer in a post to each of the regional theaters later this weekend.



Jeehyun-
Lim
New Member
Posts: 2
Re: General discussion about the Founders list...
on: October 24, 2013, 08:39

Yes, that make sense. Rhee and Kim are both in then. For sure.



Geoff-
Hamilton
Administrator
Posts: 172
Re: General discussion about the Founders list...
on: October 24, 2013, 13:42

Thanks so much, and100 and Jeehyun, for the additions!
Anyone else have suggestions? I'm quite sure we're missing some important figures...


Geoff-
Hamilton
Administrator
Posts: 172
Re: General discussion about the Founders list...
on: December 17, 2013, 23:02

Many thanks to Gao Xue for suggesting Ai Weiwei (who was somehow overlooked) for the Founders list!
I'll be adding some of his work to the archives soon, so stay tuned!
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