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Entry: Endstation Moscow Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/endstation_moscow#13036 Post contents: * . . . the most WILLFULLY BLINKERED men, full of nationalist, superstitious hatred, are those like, well, like Patrick Foy who is (in my opinion) obsessed by his ancestral Irish hatred of Britain. . . . You see, Mr “the owl”, as a grandson of Britain, I have no grievances against any other nations (except perhaps against Germany in circa 1940), and the only “mote” in my eye comes from the BOMBS which the F---ing GERMANS DROPPED UPON MY ANCESTRAL LAND in 1940, when Hitler was a close friend of, and collaborator with, bloody Stalin. That’s not a “mote” in my eye. That’s a shared ancestral memory (including memories of my father who fought in that war), of how Germany under f---ing Hitler STARTED THE WAR!* This is rather funny. Irish sense of grievence based on, let us say, an extensive record (both temporally and substantively) is obsessive. English sense of grievence, based on a short-lived and mostly ineffectual bombing campaign (albeit one as nasty as the Germans could manage) carried out in a war that, contrary to Mr. Ball's assertion, England had declared upon Germany, is a "shared ancestral memory". (And no, my parenthetical is not intended in any way to minimize Hitler's obvious role as aggressor in Eastern Europe and against Poland -- just to note the historical facts regarding who declared war on whom as between Germany and England.) Mr. Ball, I wouldn't wish to dengrate your ancestral memories or the grievences they generate. But it is infantile to go about bleating that your experiences, and those of your ethnic kin, are in any objective way inherently more meaningful than those of other people(s). I suppose many people harbor the private belief that their mother is "better" than other people's mothers, but few who have graudated from the middle-school playgroud would be so lacking in self-awareness as to even argue about it, much less expect others to take such arguments seriously. Sent at: 2008 10 06