@sweden’s Sonja Abrahamsson on the American election

Sonja Abrahamsson is a blogger formerly known as @sweden and now @hejsonja. You can find her online at http://hejsonja.se.

I don’t follow the American voting thing—at all! If I’m gonna be honest to you, I frankly don’t give a damn who gets chosen in your country, because it doesn’t seem to matter. And I don’t know anything about what’s going on with Obama, it’s just about Mitt Romney’s outbursts on abortion and the poor people of your country. And this information I don’t even get from the news: I get it from 9gag.

Or wait a minute. One thing I actually know about Obama—people call him a communist. And that is an interesting thing. When I was new on Twitter, I used to search for tweets with the words “socialistic Sweden” in them. By doing so, I could easily find the most worried people of America. If I answered anything these people wrote with something like “It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” they often answered: “Damn commie!”

From where I see it, it’s not surprising that Obama is called a communist. I just wish they would call him Socialistic Sweden instead. Swedes love when other countries mention us, even if it’s not in the most positive spirit.

The election looks like a circus. It’s like a competition on which one who has the most loving smile while talking dreamily about whatever suits the occasional crowd they’re facing.

I looked at some old speeches today that John F. Kennedy made. I saw the Inauguration and Address speech of his for the first time. I love how the people in high hats looked tense and nervous in the background while he was speaking. While the public like… loved what he had to say. Like he was frikkin’ John Lennon or something. He was speaking about understanding each other, not forcing themselves upon everyone.

Obama’s Inauguration and Address speech was about the opposite. He started out with a little history lesson by telling everyone how America started out with blood, sweat and tears of war. Then he mentioned all the free men and women in this country today. Free how? You can’t even say fuck on TV without a beep. And he was talking about the present challenges: all the things USA will learn from other countries, whether they like it or not. “We will learn you OUR ways… it doesn’t matter if you’re Muslim Christian or non-believers… we will learn you our fantastic ways, if you only take down your fists and give yourselves up.”

That’s kind of what I heard.

In Sweden we got all sorts of trends coming from the US. It has been that way a long time now. And we see Americans’ ways as a warning sign. We are like, “Oh, oh… They only got two parties… and shit, we are starting to look this way too! EVERYTHING IS GOING TO HELL.”

I learned something about your country while I was @sweden, and that was that censorship seems to come very naturally in USA. People almost take it for granted. People talk about censorship in the same breath as they talk about their freedom. It must be because you are brainwashed with the word freedom from cradle to the grave. Do you even know what freedom means? Does anyone know what freedom means?

Photos by Beverly & Pack, nyheter24

Video via CSPAN/YouTube