Dumb Americans

[Secret Alias]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/u ... r-AA12FrT2

[billd89]

Words have meaning. Your statement is ridiculous: this was a mentally-ill individual (his normal intelligence otherwise is unknown). Someone had an episode, that's all.

I don't think we can conclude "Dumb Americans" anymore than we might say "Thieving Brits." Sure, one individual was idiotic, entitled, behaved badly -- and in the American's case, psychotically. That doesn't categorize a nationality, obviously.

I'd be curious to know if the Mad Tourist of Rome was aware of this other recent incident. (And "Looks Mexican" if we're playing this game.)

Are Americans "dummies"? I could argue they are, but I wouldn't use that poor soul as an example. Your mileage varies: km in Canuckistan.

[John T]

I'm not so sure bild89 would argue the same point if it was an American that destroyed property of an abortion clinic.

[Secret Alias]

Americans as a rule are pretty stupid, vulgar, uncultured, unsophisticated. The old ones aren't bad but the young ones. My Lord.

[billd89]

Stupid, trashy, uneducated and increasingly psychopathic YES. US society is unraveling and there are a dozen or so metrics to prove it. Worse still, I foresee nothing to reverse the decades-long trend.

My point is one mentally-ill tourist trashing a museum piece is just that, NOT an exemplar of 'national stupidity'.

Demanding to see the Pope is grandiose & prob narcissistic, so that person sounds psychopathic (i.e. Cluster B), if it was definitely premeditated.

[John T]

Stupid, trashy, uneducated and increasingly psychopathic YES. US society is unraveling and there are a dozen or so metrics to prove it. Worse still, I foresee nothing to reverse the decades-long trend.

My point is one mentally-ill tourist trashing a museum piece is just that, NOT an exemplar of 'national stupidity'.

Demanding to see the Pope is grandiose & prob narcissistic, so that person sounds psychopathic (i.e. Cluster B), if it was definitely premeditated.

Yes, I agree, and we don't have to look very hard for examples: Antifa, BLM, and the domestic terrorist group, Jane's Revenge.

Terrorist group is as terrorist group does.
Mentally-ill or otherwise.

[Secret Alias]

Yeah yeah yeah.

[billd89]

Reuters added this historical bit:

The most notorious assault on artwork in the Vatican was in 1972 when a Hungarian man jumped over a side altar in St. Peter's Basilica and attacked Michelangelo's Pieta with a sledgehammer. He knocked off the Madonna's left arm and chipped her nose and veil.

That Renaissance masterpiece is now behind bulletproof glass.

Laszlo Toth was mentally ill, clearly. I don't think his geology degree was a factor, tho. Wiki tells us:

On 21 May 1972, at 33 years of age (Jesus's traditional age at death), on the Feast of Pentecost, Toth, wielding a geologist's hammer and shouting, "I am Jesus Christ—risen from the dead", attacked Michelangelo's Pietà statue in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.

Toth died in 2012; interesting summary here.



I hate to endorse surveillance state technology, but I imagine that in the near future there will be AI screenings at security checkpoints to identify the unhinged (iris scans? muscle twitches? voice modulation?) before they can get so close to cultural treasures.

A Climate Change crazy (French national?) recently attacked the Mona Lisa, btw.

[StephenGoranson]

Seems unfair to jump from one man to"Hungarians."
I am reminded of a reported history of leading atomic scientists, who took advantage when E. Fermi left the room, so they could all talk in Hungarian.

[billd89]

Why did Toth attack the Virgin but not Christ?