Xenophobia is awful, but we're kidding ourselves if we think it is only relegated to Japan. I told my dad that I was considering heading abroad for college, and he immediately started talking about unsafe the rest of the world was. I was relatively shocked by some of his comments...it was as if he felt any nation in the world besides the U.S. was some third world country. He talked about all the problems the rest of the world had, and he kept on mentioning how unsafe they were. You'd think that the U.S. wouldn't be as "safe" as my dad seems to think it was, considering we're the #1 enemy of, like, every terrorist ever, but my dad kept on talking about how the rest of the world was so threatening. I told him that the rest of the world isn't as unsafe as he seems to think it is, and then he pulled rank as my dad and tells me I'm naive.
I'm not naive - I know that there's problems, wherever you go in the world, but honestly, I'm thinking of England or Canada - not Columbia or Iraq or anything. If anything, my dad strikes me as naive, thinking that the US has this magical homeland security bubble around it that would protect me from all the threats of the unwashed outside world.
How anyone can still think that after 9/11 is beyond me...
/tangent
and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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