Besides people of our own nationality who have no better stuff to do than to swear at each other,
Unfortunately people swearing at each other in Romania is an every-day occurance, as far as I can remember since I moved here. Most of that stems from the frustration that everyone feels every day.
Unfortunately the thing that nobody wants to admit about Romania is that it is a third world country. Even Romanians themselves say that: "Oh, Romania's pretty good, look at some countries in Africa ... heck, how can you say it's a third world country?" But the truth is that the standards of life are quite poor: wages are at a minimum, prices at a maximum; corruption runs at large and possibilities are very few. Most people spend all day at work ... and I mean ALL day 9 AM to 8 PM working some dead-end job while their university degrees and bachelors are weathering away for little pay that may or
may not be enough to sustain themselves and their families. Ever since communism came and tore people apart through their tactics of separating people and making them suspicious of each other, people have been distant from one another. Everyone pulls for their own piece of the pie, no matter how many people lay dieing in their wake. Backstabbing is just a way to survive. This leads to nobody trusting anyone else and caring only for what's important for themselves.
This, coupled with a few other factors that I've mentioned lead to a lot of frustration and very little compassion from everyone. And the only way to vent that frustration so that you can feel better is to pour it all on someone else: swear at them, beat them, make them feel like shit and cheat them out of something ... and maybe, just maybe, it makes the aggressors feel a bit better about themselves.
Now, there are 2 kinds of people that I've been aware of in terms of expressing this frustration: The ones that just go all-out face to face with other people and put all their negative thoughts towards hurting others; and then there's the ones who hold it in, remember that they should be polite and well-mannered in their communication whatever the other party will say because they've been raised well, and they vent their frustration by talking about it with their families and
privately picking apart other people and making them look like shit, thus making themselves feel better. The internet is the one and only way that people can communicate with each other anonymously and knowing that whatever they say it will never backfire on them. Thus, everyone just lets it rip when it comes to the internet, doesn't matter if they're the straight-forward bullies or the conservative conspirer-gossipers. Manners are being thrown out the window because they only serve the people that want to have a good public image in everyday life.
there are also people of other nationalities who use the comments just to abuse our nation and the Romanian people in general, especially certain "characters" from Hungary (angry and fanatical revisionists) and Italy (xenofobes who generalize Romanian = Gypsy).
There will always be other nationalities, especially quite a few Hungarians who have something against Romania. Transylvania was given back to us and they can't deal with that. It's been inhabited for the major part of the population by Romanians for most of its history and yet ... somehow ... they feel that it belongs to them and nobody else. We're not the only ones with this problem, take a look at Kashmir for instance. Countries have been fighting over borders for a long time, and most of the time it's pointless fighting being led by a few complete idiots.
As for the xenophobes ... the people who generalize about people in other countries are ignorant. There's no use in arguing with them. Ignorants don't change their point of view and believe everything that's being said to them even without the smallest shred of evidence. They will always see what they want to see despite everyone proving to them how wrong their views are. They take their information and knowledge from the media or word of mouth and they believe it VERBATIM. They never think to check things for themselves because they don't want to think for themselves. I mean, look at the events from 9/11 ever since then there's this scare in the US and western countries about people coming from middle eastern countries or of Islamic religion. And none of that generalization is founded on anything ... yet word of mouth goes around and people take it to heart as the truth without even for a second trying to think for themselves.
You can't change these people's views either. Their views are set by something other than personal experience.
Honestly, it's stupid. Everyone should be proud of their place of birth, but all the time, we're being pounded from the outside by massively bad reports which smear egg (figuratively) all over our face and all over our image across the borders. It's almost at the stage at which you become ashamed to say that you were born in that place. Drastic measures have to be taken around here, so that we can walk around the world feeling proud that we are Romanian. But, judging by the attitudes that are being taken in the Parliament and in politics, it ain't gonna happen for a very very long time. The old geezers are still in charge, and until they retire and/or die, there can be no change. And all this is scaring a lot of people from my generation away from the country, and they come to adopt the countries where they "fled" as their home.
Well, the Government can't do anything about it really ... not that the Romanian government will do anything about any problem whatsoever ...
It's the people that are supposed to change in order to relieve this animosity between Romanians. And that's not going to happen because not everyone will change and the ones that do make the change for the better will only be easy targets for the ones who stay with the old stab-your-neighbor-in-the-back habits.
And I will admit, this among other things is a big reason why me and my family decided to emigrate to Canada. Our views and values did not align with those of most of the population and we couldn't survive in there. But I haven't "fled" to another country, I just merely chose to go live with more like-minded people because I, even more than my family members, did not fit in at all in the community that I was born in.
However, I definitely don't feel ashamed of saying I'm Romanian. In fact, I'm quite proud of my heritage, I've kept my Romanian citizenship and will never give it up. Toronto is a very large and multicultural city ... there's so much diversity here that the conversation when people make acquaintance with each other resumes to: What's your name? What's your background? What do you do for a living? And it's always in that order. Where people come from is more important than what they do with their life. And what do I answer when being asked the question? "I'm Romanian." And guess what? Almost nobody around here meets that phrase with hostility. Some even want to find out more about it since they don't know much on the subject. (I say almost nobody acts out because I've met a few characters around here that would put you down, but they're the ones that put
everyone down for that matter.)
There's beautiful things about Romania that people don't look at anymore or have forgotten. And in everyday life over in Romania it's easy to forget about all the good things and look only at what's happening to you and say: "Oh, it's all shit." If I can be honest, I've become more patriotic of Romania after I've left than when I was living there. Here, in another country you get to miss things about your homeland and realize just what the good things about Romania are.
If anything, the Romanians that I've met here and the ones that I socialize with are all very much Romanian and proud to admit that they are Romanian. On the other hand, I've also met people that would rather not admit that they are Romanian. They just say that they're "from Eastern Europe" for people and refuse to speak their mother tongue. But then again, these people are the fakes, the back-stabbers and the charlatans that I wouldn't want promoting the international image of our country, so I'm ok with ignoring them and keeping them aside while they never admit to where they come from. They chose not to be Romanian and I'm quite fine with expelling them from citizenship.
That being said, even though I'm patriotic towards Romania as my mother country, I also owe my allegiance to Canada. Both my countries have given me a lot and they've given me equally. I identify with both and it will always be that way. I'm neither Romanian before I'm Canadian, nor am I Canadian before I'm Romanian. I just say I'm a Romanian-Canadian.
Romania's media coverage on the international stage is not always positive .. but then again, it's always the western European countries that ridicule it in front of the world ... and they do that because Romania's a third world country and
somehow it came into their little piece of heaven (EU) and it's not serving to move the euro up in value by 40 cents. Romania is making progress in the International stage, it's doing it slowly, but getting there. If anything, it's one of the few third world countries that are making an effort to do so ... and I'm not surprised in the very least that the most-developed countries will try to smear its image as much as possible. They don't want another powerful economy to compete with on their hands. They want someone they can exploit for low labor costs. The more third world countries there are on the world and the fewer industrial powers there are, the better the lifestyle of people in the developed countries. It's this minority of nations that Romania belongs to that will always be ridiculed by the big powers because they want to discourage any self-development in the third world, therefore they will always be on our case like bullies who will always fight anyone who decides to stand up for themselves.
The last thing we need is more nationalism in this world, thank you very much.
Patriotism =/= Nationalism
So if people are saying bad things about Belgium and you're defending your country's image you're a nationalist? Or are you simply being patriotic?
The difference between the two is that patriots believe that their country is fit for them and they admit to the country's shortcomings, while nationalism is blindly thinking that your country's superior to other countries and that it's the best, without any faults.
How pathetic is it if the highlight of one's Thanksgiving long weekend is 3 hours of awesome TV viewing?
Hey man ... not commenting on that one ... even I went out with my family this weekend.