Tough Guys Live in EuropeHere in the land of the fat and the home of the homeless, a new reason to hang my head. Europe is tougher than America. Geez. In Athens, Greece, the government does something they don't like, and they riot in the streets. In Spain, 100,000 people rocked the pavement this month. Portugal? Riot police had to clear protestors in Lisbon. The French are striking, marching, demanding, voting. America? We're watching the game. People sick of the rich telling the poor to get poorer have rioted in Germany. That's GERMANY, a country famous for taking orders. America? They break your union, you have another beer. The company cancels your pension, you watch "Dancing With the Stars." Health care stinks and you can't afford it anyway, but you don't leave the house. You're on Facebook, talking about Snooki. If there was one thing my 8-year-old self knew back in 1965, it was that one red-blooded, football-loving American could beat the living hell out of 10 or 15 Europeans. Hadn't we done it twice? Now, we don't even riot as good at football games as the English do at soccer games. Soccer? Geez. Time was, Americans marched into guns for the right to organize. We broke scabs' heads on picket lines. Women threw themselves under police horses for the right to vote. Black men walked, eyes steady, toward the lynching tree because they wanted to vote. Earlier than even that, we took the squirrel gun off the wall and went out to meet the Redcoats. In 1933, the parents of the Greatest Generation conducted over 1,500 work stoppages in this country, thumbing their nose at the boss, risking their jobs.
And now, you get an email from corporate saying there's no more 401k match, and you say nothing. Nothing. You go two years without a raise, and the CEO of your company gets a $1 million bonus, and you shuffle back to your cubicle and do your work and the work of the woman they laid off three months ago. What's it take to get us mad? Gay marriage? Yeah. We're mad as hell about Ray and Jay getting married in Vermont, but we are not angry at company president Stanley Stealmore, who polishes his Mercedes with our dreams. We hate illegal immigrants because they take American jobs, but we do not hate the native-born Americans who loot our pension funds, close our factories, break our unions, force overtime down our throats and conspire to jack up the cost of everything from gasoline to insulin. We'll grumble about "taking the country back," but we can't do it this Tuesday because the Celtics are in the playoffs and the game is televised. And meanwhile, the snail-eating, Speedo-wearing, wine-drinking, ballet-loving, existential-poetry-quoting, women-with-hairy-armpits Europeans are out in the streets, goading the cops, taunting authority, breaking windows. They rioted in Boston, pelting the soldiers with snowballs, being disrespectful, talking back. The soldiers fired into the crowd, killing five men, including a black man named Crispus Attucks, who was probably not wearing a hoodie. They rioted against injustice in Boston. In 1770. Back when Americans were tougher than Europeans. To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2012 BY CREATORS.COM 
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