Education

Always the Dutch

Criticizing the Dutch, it’s our international sport… When Dutchmen meet, they talk about the weather… When expat foreigners meet, we complain about Holland..

. We’re always whining…the Dutch are too conservative-liberal-open-closed-big-small… niets goed!… Even buitenlanders from (in the words of a nasty-but-popular US talk-show host) “turd world countries” enjoy complaining about Dutch life…We foreigners get sentimentally homesick… Home, home on the range, where we wipe… ourselves… with our hands…for crappy countries we gladly fled!… It’s because things are just too sorted in Holland… money enough… 24 paid vacation days… affordable health-care… Complaining’s a leisure-time activity… In America, the uninsured masses got no time to complain, they’re too busy working like slaves and chewing with rotten teeth… rent’s due!, sonny boy needs a new pair of $250 Sneakers!… Here, rustig aan… But the Dutchmen’s built-in sense of moderation confounds some of us foreigners… No perpetual toothaches, no extremism!… We miss it!… Because extremism feels so good! … An orgiastic feeling, branding someone “Evil!”… Lekker self-righteous!… religious xtc… hot, hard, damning!… Unsurprisingly, Christian-led America loves extremism… from gutter to pulpit, all or nothing!… with us or against us!… Today the Holy American Giant’s got a 9-11 license to kill, eye-for-eye, to act extreme, promising an angst-ridden 21st century… And whose fault is it?… exactimento! … The Dutch!… It’s always the Dutch!

Now you’re probably wondering, how’s he going to prove this one? Well… fellow foreigners, we need only go back in time, to 1608, when a boatload of Taliban-like religious fundamentalists, no longer welcome in England, were floating around the North Sea… These rabidly religious dogs, farting fire&brimstone, were unwelcome everywhere in Europe… would’ve eaten their Bibles and drowned eventually!… But guess what?… The Dutch, into freedom even then, let these Protestant extremists in!, let the Puritans settle in Leiden… for a while. Of course these Puritans were too damn extreme for the Dutch. The Dutch weren’t about to turn Holland into a religious police state run by fundamentalist Bin Laden-types… the Dutch had just got free from Spanish repression!… so the Dutch sold the Puritans cheese & guns, said ‘Goede reis! Write!’, and the Puritans set sail to invade America, where they immediately established a theocratic dictatorship and began slaughtering Native American Indians, Savages!… Americans call our Founding Fundamentalists, Pilgrims, and my encyclopedia says the first boatload to arrive in America, “… included the forefather of US President George Bush.”… Fast-forward 383 years and Christian Pilgrim George W’s planning a new invasion to establish a Puritan America in the Persian Gulf! Now how’s that for historical synchronicity!… and for proving that expat foreigners can always, always find a way to blame the Dutch!

Criticizing the Dutch, it’s our international sport… When Dutchmen meet, they talk about the weather… When expat foreigners meet, we complain about Holland… We’re always whining…the Dutch are too conservative-liberal-open-closed-big-small… niets goed!… Even buitenlanders from (in the words of a nasty-but-popular US talk-show host) “turd world countries” enjoy complaining about Dutch life…We foreigners get sentimentally homesick… Home, home on the range, where we wipe… ourselves… with our hands…for crappy countries we gladly fled!… It’s because things are just too sorted in Holland… money enough… 24 paid vacation days… affordable health-care… Complaining’s a leisure-time activity… In America, the uninsured masses got no time to complain, they’re too busy working like slaves and chewing with rotten teeth… rent’s due!, sonny boy needs a new pair of $250 Sneakers!… Here, rustig aan… But the Dutchmen’s built-in sense of moderation confounds some of us foreigners… No perpetual toothaches, no extremism!… We miss it!… Because extremism feels so good! … An orgiastic feeling, branding someone “Evil!”… Lekker self-righteous!… religious xtc… hot, hard, damning!… Unsurprisingly, Christian-led America loves extremism… from gutter to pulpit, all or nothing!… with us or against us!… Today the Holy American Giant’s got a 9-11 license to kill, eye-for-eye, to act extreme, promising an angst-ridden 21st century… And whose fault is it?… exactimento! … The Dutch!… It’s always the Dutch!

Now you’re probably wondering, how’s he going to prove this one? Well… fellow foreigners, we need only go back in time, to 1608, when a boatload of Taliban-like religious fundamentalists, no longer welcome in England, were floating around the North Sea… These rabidly religious dogs, farting fire&brimstone, were unwelcome everywhere in Europe… would’ve eaten their Bibles and drowned eventually!… But guess what?… The Dutch, into freedom even then, let these Protestant extremists in!, let the Puritans settle in Leiden… for a while. Of course these Puritans were too damn extreme for the Dutch. The Dutch weren’t about to turn Holland into a religious police state run by fundamentalist Bin Laden-types… the Dutch had just got free from Spanish repression!… so the Dutch sold the Puritans cheese & guns, said ‘Goede reis! Write!’, and the Puritans set sail to invade America, where they immediately established a theocratic dictatorship and began slaughtering Native American Indians, Savages!… Americans call our Founding Fundamentalists, Pilgrims, and my encyclopedia says the first boatload to arrive in America, “… included the forefather of US President George Bush.”… Fast-forward 383 years and Christian Pilgrim George W’s planning a new invasion to establish a Puritan America in the Persian Gulf! Now how’s that for historical synchronicity!… and for proving that expat foreigners can always, always find a way to blame the Dutch!

Editor Redactie

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