[UA] Translation problems

[Greg Stolze]

>Car. We have a public transportation system worth the name, sidewalks
>pretty much everywhere, cities are eminently bikeable, you can get a
>drivers licence at 18, we don't have sex in our cars.

Barbarians.

> I'm 33, have a
>licence but no car, live 10 km from work (bus and bike both take 20
>minutes), live in a smallish town and have never had sex in a car.

I wonder what percentage of US citizens really HAVE had sex in a car?  My
gut instinct is that the transformative experience is not actuall
auto-intercourse, but getting busted parking by cops who THINK you're
having intercourse.

>Cars
>aren't holy here.

So wait, you think a place is holy because people have sex in it?

(Pictures Easter Sunday services in Sweden.)

Wow.  And all Swedish women are blonde, blue eyed, fair of feature and
stacked of physique, right, even when they're brown-eyed brunettes with
love handles and big noses?

Okay, I'm being puckish.  I'll stop now.

>Gun. Contrary to what you might expect, there are quite a lot of guns per
>capita here, but almost all of them are for hunting. Home protection means
>getting a better lock or possibly an alarm, not a pump-action shotgun.

The research is hoary (I read it way back in high school) but I remember a
sociologist named Dane Archer arguing that guns were symptomatic of
American violence, not causal.  According to him, America has a violent
culture because we have a violent culture hero (the cowboy) as opposed to
our well-armed but peaceful brother to the north, Canada, who grow up
hearing stories about the law-enforcing Mountie.  (And Canada's never had a
girlfriend, I'm just sayin'...)

Okay, I'll stop NOW.  Seriously.

His other argument that really resounded with me was that capital
punishment makes citizens MORE likely to kill, not less.  Instead of the
deterrent effect you'd get if they empathized with the executed criminal,
you get an encouraging effect -- essentially, by slaying its proclaimed
enemies, the government models that behavior for citizens and justifies it.
Sure enough, murder rates seem higher in capital punishment states (though
here you can get into a real vicious cycle if Archer is correct).

Also, he found that murder rates rise in nations that have just won a war
-- again because the people see violence as a legitimized way to solve
problems.

Now, in UA terms... does this mean that certain Archetypes have laid claim
to entire nations?  Is the US under the thrall of the Warrior and the
Masterless Man?

>Flag. In europe in general, patriotism is right up there with nazism and
>fascism, words mostly used to describe people with extreme-right leanings
>and very short hair. The flag as a symbol has little meaning, and not all
>of what it means is positive. IKEA is a stronger symbol for sweden than the
>flag.

Your national symbol sold me some bookshelves!

>Flags aren't holy here.

Meaning you don't have sex on the flag?  Man, you guys ARE missing out.

-G.

I will never stop.