[at-l] gotta say it...

[daveh at psknet.com (David Hicks)]

Whenever I am overseas I get the same sort of questions.  The subjects change
(depending on the more recent news coverage)  but the assumption that a single
US citizen can understand and speak for all the folk in this great and diverse
country was constant and IMHO irrational.

Generally, a polite, "I can't speak for the whole US" is good enough.

However, some persist to the point of being annoying.  In the past, trying to
explain our degree of diversity seemed futile.

However, the EU has come to our rescue.  Now I respond with something like,
"Well how folk in the US feel about 'x' is not unlike the way France and
Germany disagree on details and understanding of priorities in response to
Brussels' latest Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development proposals,
which are complicated, of course, by Committee on Economic and Monetary
Affairs proposals and of course Britain's, Netherlands', Denmark's, and
Ireland's points-of-view are all somewhat different form those and
each other -- or in other words I doubt if any one can speak for the whole US
any more than one person can speak for the all the citizens of the EU.

I doubt that anyone on this list can speak for the list members, much less the
country.

Chainsaw

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Robert

 >>
SNIP
Everyone wanted to ask me about the US and "why this" and "how that" and just
about any question you could think of.
SNIP
<<