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14.02.10, 18:16
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US a declining empire?
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Yair Lapid highly impressed after seeing America in action during
Washington snowstorm
WASHINGTON – Everyone is talking about the American empire’s
declining, but nobody talks about it like the Americans themselves.
It’s an emotional and painful discussion that is being managed
openly and explicitly.
The Chinese are beating us, they say, the Iraqis, Afghanis, and
Russians are defeating us, and most of all, we are defeating
ourselves.
Yet then you see them handling the giant snowstorm that recently hit
the US.
If a snowstorm like the one that hit Washington would have hit
Moscow or Beijing, we would see hundreds of fatalities lying in the
streets; traffic would be paralyzed for weeks, and police officers
would keep on finding abandoned bodies of frozen elderly for many
days.
Only a few things are more impressive than seeing America’s
organizational capabilities in action. A total of 200,000 people had
their electricity cut off, yet within a few hours we saw large
shelters ready for them, and hotels opened their doors free of
charge.
Americans don’t whine
According to the Washington Post, dozens of residents refused to be
evacuated from their homes because they insisted on staying around
and helping out their elderly neighbors.
Meanwhile, 12 hours after the blizzard, traffic lights were already
in working order, the Federal Government was back on the job, the
snow was shoveled from the main streets, and all across the Eastern
Coast people got up in the morning and went to work.
Nobody would have been angry at them had they failed to show up, yet
this is what Americans do: They wake up in the morning and go to
work. They work seriously and diligently, they do not whine about
how hard things are, and they do not expect a reward from anyone.
Perhaps we would do well to wait with the eulogies for the time
being.
