"One of the great hatchet jobs of modern American letters, Sontag’s 16-page Letter from Sweden, published in the July 1969 issue of Ramparts magazine, spared few sections of Swedish society. Swedes were obsessively obedient of petty rules: “Old ladies glare at you when you cross an empty street against the light”. But when things go wrong “hardly anyone gets fired”: Sontag saw Swedes as so pathologically frightened of conflict that they turn a blind eye to incompetence and failure. Southern European immigrants told Sontag they found Swedes “unbearably cold, stiff and priggish”, and Sontag agreed.
Superficially, Sontag considered Sweden to be much like the US or West Germany – “six-lane highways, suburban shopping centres… refined and partly detoxified by the condition of advanced ‘welfare state enlightenment’”. But on closer examination she found Sweden full of meanness and pedantry. Swedes split restaurant and taxi bills to the last cent, were notoriously shifty about planning social engagements, and – worst of all – continually smoked Sontag’s cigarettes without returning the favour."
If anything, these habitws seem to have gotten worse, not better, since this country's open embrace of high-level low-skill immigration, feminism and "socialism". It's been 55 years, but I still see those pathologies every day, here, lol...
It's painfully accurate. No wonder people here get so prickly about that letter she wrote, lol.
I think part of that can be blamed on the schooling system and the zero tolerance policies where self-defense is punished more often than the attackers. Standing up for what is right is punished by society while evil rarely faces consequences, so you might as well keep your head down.
My favourite bit, I think:
"One of the great hatchet jobs of modern American letters, Sontag’s 16-page Letter from Sweden, published in the July 1969 issue of Ramparts magazine, spared few sections of Swedish society. Swedes were obsessively obedient of petty rules: “Old ladies glare at you when you cross an empty street against the light”. But when things go wrong “hardly anyone gets fired”: Sontag saw Swedes as so pathologically frightened of conflict that they turn a blind eye to incompetence and failure. Southern European immigrants told Sontag they found Swedes “unbearably cold, stiff and priggish”, and Sontag agreed.
Superficially, Sontag considered Sweden to be much like the US or West Germany – “six-lane highways, suburban shopping centres… refined and partly detoxified by the condition of advanced ‘welfare state enlightenment’”. But on closer examination she found Sweden full of meanness and pedantry. Swedes split restaurant and taxi bills to the last cent, were notoriously shifty about planning social engagements, and – worst of all – continually smoked Sontag’s cigarettes without returning the favour."
If anything, these habitws seem to have gotten worse, not better, since this country's open embrace of high-level low-skill immigration, feminism and "socialism". It's been 55 years, but I still see those pathologies every day, here, lol...
It's painfully accurate. No wonder people here get so prickly about that letter she wrote, lol.
I see the same behavior in a lot of America. Lots of passive aggressive behavior amongst western whites.
I think part of that can be blamed on the schooling system and the zero tolerance policies where self-defense is punished more often than the attackers. Standing up for what is right is punished by society while evil rarely faces consequences, so you might as well keep your head down.