Saturday, May 20, 2006  Seeing ourselves as others see us  The
blogger Soj who writes at Flogging the Simian has recently
returned to the States from several years living at a modest
level of comfort in Romania. Her blog is an interesting window
on the world, steeped in her U.S. origins, but also consciously
explaining how this country looks to the rest of the world.  In
a new post she describes the culture shock she encountered in
the freezing aisles of U.S. supermarkets on her return. But then
she gets down to the hard stuff, to popular U.S. consciousness
of the Iraq war.  ...this has perhaps become the first war in
the history of civilization which has not had any major impact
on the country fighting it. I'd say right off hand that the
incident of 9/11 has had FAR MORE impact on the life and culture
of Americans than the 3 year war in Iraq. It's simply incredibly
mindboggling to think that America really is so tremendously
wealthy that it can fight a war and barely feel it. What other
country could do that