Don't give me a "supposedly" in a thread where my non-drinking doesn't conform with your single-line portrait of a Russian. Did you really consider it wise to jab a Russian with "wow, you don't drink, that's a new one"? And then you get surprised when I have something to say about your people (Americans. I'm talking about Americans). Then you see me spell out, in no uncertain terms, how sick and tired I am from that comparison because of how ill-conceived and thoughtlessly consumed it is — and you give me "no u". I've said it before, and I'll say it again, because it's important to reaffirm: I think you're a good person, and from what little I know about you, I have respect for you and your life achievements. Kung fu? Man. I respect a man who takes care of their body. I have nothing against you. I have everything against you shoving that intellectual garbage of a comparison into my face, hoping for me to chuckle back. That image that you've decided to measure me against? Even in a jokular fashion, it isn't simply low-class: it's mental rot that I'm too tired to witness, not simply because it's omnipresent in the Englishsphere, but also because of how lazy it is to consume and reproduce. You strike me as a person who also takes care of their mind. I expect better of you than to humor a Russian with a Russian stereotype. Imagine how fucking stupid it would look for me to go "Yoo kaen koong-foo? Yoo sey yoor not faet? Wot? Yoo know lo, too? Yoo sey yoor not stoopeed?!" (aside, of course, from the best rendition of the Russian accent I've ever seen).
I understand that people are sensitive to different things at different levels. So that this is a sore spot for you I get, and fair enough. I thought you knew me well enough to know that I don't take that kind of stereotyping seriously, and that I'm about as far from nationalistic as one can get. But again, I get that we all have stuff that gets under our skin, and I'm not saying you're wrong for not being amused even if my intentions weren't malevolent. Where you lose any semblance of moral high ground, though, is how you've handled it. You're assuming my motivations while also overgeneralizing about a country, at the same time that you're complaining about overgeneralizations. If you'd just said "hey, this is a sore spot for me, don't joke about it," I would've respected that. That's the grown-up way to deal with a difference in interpretations and/or sensitivities. But I don't respect a temper tantrum or a baseless assumption of bad faith.
Fair enough. I get that I've taken the issue too far, and I see now that I could have handled it differently, including giving you the benefit of the doubt. I apologize for taking the conversation into the territory of pure pathos. You may have noticed: I do that sometimes. Still learning to control all the repressed anger. I'm sorry that you had to experience an undeserved outburst. Thank you for being patient with me.
No worries, and as I said, we all have the stuff that bothers us. And part of any learning process involves missteps :) One of the things that I like about hubski as opposed to a larger community is that we get a chance to have conversations like this. It's precious rare these days.