The message .com
from "slugbug" contains these words:

So yes, a lot of this is due to the fact that Americans happen to be a
stubborn lot. We get ****ed off when we go to the supermarket and find
a new computer system there telling us to choose between English and
Spanish before proceeding at the checkout.

Well, maybe you could become bilingual and give yourselves free choice?
In my supermarket, everything is in English and Gaelic. So are all
the roadsigns. shrug.

I guess there is a history
to this stubbornness. It all started back when some Brits told us we
would have to pay too much for tea, and we dumped it all in the harbor
instead. About the same time, those same Brits said that only writings
on the officially stamped, high priced imported paper were valid.
Later, they told us at gunpoint that we were going to lick their boots
and like it. And thus, the whole glorification of civil disobedience
began in our culture.

Only, the mental inflexibility which leaves you collectively stuck in
a rut from the past, is about sheep-like conformity. The very opposite
of revolutionary thinking or civil disobedience.

Janet