Last month, I read an interesting article called “Are All Americans Bad?” It was written by a woman in Cuba, whose daughter had posed that question. Let me pass along some of the article. Obviously the child’s perspective is similar to that of all children: a distortion of what they have been told, an attempt to reason through the adult world in terms of their own. I share it as a reminder that there is another perspective on the world besides our own:

“Mommy, why are the Americans so bad?” With that question and an anxious look on her face, I found my little girl when I went to pick her up at her elementary school several days ago.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“It’s that Posada Carriles is a murderer and they don’t put him in prison, yet the Cuban Five didn’t do anything but they won’t let them go free. Plus they’re killing people in Libya. Are they killing children there too?”

“Ah! – now I understand. Well, it’s true that Posada Carriles is in fact a murderer, as has been shown not only from proof but because he himself has confessed to it. But Americans don’t have anything to do with that. Posada himself is Cuban,” I answered.

“The teachers says the US people aren’t to blame for what their government does? Is that true?” she asked me.

“Exactly. The US government has done horrible things throughout history. It has dropped atomic bombs; attacked however many countries it has wanted, including ours; provoked military coup d’états, murdered its enemies – those things and much more have been done by that government, but you have to remember that it’s the government.”

“The US population doesn’t always agree with what their government does. On more than one occasion they have been tricked into supporting wars against some nations,” I added.

“I’ve already spoken to you about the government, so in terms of the question, the answer is no. The Americans aren’t bad. In the first place because no one is totally bad or totally good; in second place because most of them are regular and average people, the same as us. The difference is in their language, culture, customs, their standard of living and especially the level of economic development. That’s what makes them think differently.”

The simple reaction to this, of course, is to feel sorry for these people who have been duped by their country’s propaganda, leaving them unable to see obvious truths. Which is what much of the world says about us Americans. It’s worth thinking about.