Rick Steves and Politics

He's unbiased, observant, well-learned, and makes great travel guides. It's Rick Steves. He came to our school today to discuss his new book about traveling, politics, and global consciousness.
It's too bad he comes across as a left-wing extremist who preaches to us about the unfortunate discrepancies between the rich and poor, yet he himself is a CEO and is talking to a group of private-school students. Hello hypocrisy.

He claims that the United States is an empire! Terrorism is overrated! So a few hundred or thousand people die here and there; it's unfortunate but who cares! We all need to move on with our lives, help out the economy, don't let those terrorists get us down! Well, I'm sorry to say Mr. Steves, but that's just not how the world works. Terrorism is overrated, probably too much propaganda...Until you're the one being held hostage, or worse - you're already dead. He claims we are an all-too-militaristic community! Yes, but that's because many people/countries in the world would love to bomb us.

He says we dehumanize our enemies! Yes, but don't all people do that? Dehumanize makes me think of aliens...for some strange reason. Anyways, the bottom line is that yes, we may sometimes dehumanize those we don't know, which leads to stereotypes (e.g. all Pakistani/Iranians/etc. are terrorists!). We know that these stereotypes are superficial and most likely incorrect, but we are all human. It is in our nature to immediately group similar people together and judge them; I'm not saying it's right, but it's how things are. He gets angry when the United States goes in and massacres a group of people, including women and children, because we mistook the groom to be Osama Bin Laden. He says we should feel sorry for that family, but we don't, because we're too busy sympathizing with a young child who's family was all killed and she is the only one left. Well, how do you know, Mr. Steves, that we don't feel bad for that innocent family who was murdered? How can someone who says that we shouldn't over-generalize people, over-generalize us?

He also went on to talk about how his own daughter has braces, and many of her classmates (a majority of them, in fact) have braces, too. He says that two sets of braces (approximately $5000) could dig a well in Africa. We should cut our own expenses to help others. However, is it so wrong to put to use the money our parents/we have worked hard for? Once Mr. Steves takes the braces off his own daughter and stops not-so-subtly incorporating sales pitches for his tour guides in his speeches, I will consider persuading the masses to give up things like braces. But until then, I'm stuck with having metal in my teeth.

My rant is over now. Have a wonderful weekend! =]