Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 37

It is amazing how much you can learn about people, history and geography as well as collective mental health through a brief comment exchange on YouTube. I don't generally comment on YouTube, Gentle Reader. It is often a cesspit of hostility and verbal and emotional violence and incivility. It is just appalling that they do absolutely nothing to moderate and delete these comments, with some of the cruel, sadistic abuse that gets posted there. From time to time I still put something on there, but then I usually delete any replies that come, without reading them. I know, what a coward. I actually did take the trouble since yesterday, of following up with one Spanish idiot (most of the Spanish people I have met and dealt with are idiots). They are the comments on the film, The Golden Bowl, this one dubbed in Spanish. I saw it once in English, in 2001, the day before the twin towers fell in New York City. It is a charming period piece based on the novel, or short story, I think, by Henry James, and Uma Thurman plays the adulteress. The dubbing is in Peninsular, or, European Spanish, which is widely despised throughout Latin America, and for good reason. The pronunciation is dreadful and many of the Spanish are arrogant colonialist snobs who look down on their Latino brethren. I made this comment on YouTube the other day, in response to this fatuous Spanish idiot, who likely has never travelled outside of his country, who waxed on about how beautiful and superior is the Spanish of Spain that is used in the film. I replied that the pronunciation in Spain is generally quite poor. The Spanish guy, a twit named Sergio, insisted that Latin American Spanish is horrible. He has probably never had a conversation with a Latin American in his life. I tried to reason with him, a waste of time with trolls on YouTube, suggesting that language is never static and is going to evolve and develop differently in different regions. He got nitpicking and downright offensive, refused to consider another point of view, emphasizing that Latin Americans are inferior people, and I refuse to argue further with that imbecile. This little exchange has really highlighted for me the whole historical dilemma of Latin America. The colonialist mentality is still alive and well among the Spanish, particularly the older generation, people who were alive during the Franco dictatorship. They are not able to see past their own cultural arrogance and simply seem convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong, for the simple reason that they disagree. It is impossible to argue with such people, so it is better to walk away. I just find it a bit sad that this kind of arrogance is largely responsible for the huge destruction that has been wreaked on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and that there are still people who refuse to recognize this, nor acknowledge their culpability. This also goes for the British and French and what they have done to the peoples of North America, by the way. I really don't know what it's going to take to open these closed minds, and perhaps it shouldn't really matter except for one small problem: We have people in positions of great power and influence who also have closed little minds and until this changes I think that we, our humanity, other species and this planet are going to be held hostage and face great and lasting harm due largely to some of those same precious, close-minded bastards. No more YouTube comments, Gentle Reader. I promise.