Just to get this thread away from US taxes for a bit :
In another thread, Baron Munchausen posted a link to Orson Scott Card's website
(www.ornery.org). Compulsive reader that I am, I started going through most of his essays, until I hit the following passage :
"I was a Mormon missionary once. In Brazil, in the great city of Sao Paulo and some of the smaller cities in the surrounding countryside. I got a lot of hate Messages, too -- shouted from passing cars and buses, or muttered as I was shoved by passersby.
Funny thing was, they didn't hate me because I was a Mormon missionary.
They hated me because I was an American.
They called me "CIA." (Apparently they thought America would send its spies two by two through suburban neighborhoods wearing white shirts and ties.)
Isn't it ironic that in foreign countries, Mormon missionaries often have to bear personally the hatred that American foreign policy has provoked, while in the United States, the same Mormon missionaries get the identical hatred from Americans whose religious sensibilities are offended."
I live in the exact region OSC mentions, and American Mormon missionaries are a common sight around here. There is a time difference, though - he was probably here in the 70s. At the time, Brazil was under military rule and there were many who believed that regime had been 'set up' with American help. The feelings he describes still exist, although perhaps not as intense; I don't think the missionaries today are harassed as much as he was back then.
So what am I trying to say ? I'm not sure myself. Maybe I'm just trying to explain why everyone down here (and probably throughout Latin America) is against the war in Iraq.
[ September 18, 2003, 15:43: Message edited by: Erax ]