An open letter to Greeks: Please stop calling me a liar!

I was grabbing a sandwich at the local Deli on my way to a Bay area college game. While waiting to get my order my phone rang and it was my (Greek) friend Yianni asking me to join him for a little gathering for his name day. We chatted (in Greek) for a little bit and once I hung up the phone this gentleman next to me decided to challenge his foreign language skills and therefore asked me what language was I speaking. I smiled and replied "Greek of course, the mother of all languages". Whenever I meet random people I always try to surprise and kinda intimidate them for no other reason than enjoying the convo and this fine gentleman (a doctor working for Kaiser) was about to have it.
We started talking about Greece (of course) and the whole global economic mess when his face turned skeptic and he wondered, "How did you Greeks manage to screw everything up while living in such a beautiful country?? Really, I mean, what's wrong with you??". My Greek pride wouldn't let me unleash a few words about the lack of responsibility and the blame game that Greeks constantly play with the rest of the world and even their own people. Surprisingly enough, even for me, I turned to him and asked him the following question: "what if you had to choose between getting $ from somebody else (hello EU) just to work a few hours/day for the government (while enjoying full benefits) and spend a couple months every year by the beaches enjoying the greatest gift of god, the sun, while paying no taxes OR working nine full weeks (350 hours) longer than West Europeans do, paying a lotta of taxes (up to 40%) and enjoying a life with a pace that goes like "earn-spend-stress, repeat", what would YOU choose?" Well, he said, it's obvious, I would go with the first option. "I'm glad" I said, cause that's exactly what the Greeks do while resting on the Germans to pay their debt." What followed was a dropped jaw and a sad but quiet "wow". Now you know Larry, you are welcome.

I wanted to share with you this recent experience as an introduction before getting to my point and blasting Greeks about their horrible habit to not respect everyone's opinion and basically call everyone that disagrees with their point of view a liar. It's truly amazing and ironic how their ancestors invented democracy. Let me entertain you with some examples:

• Here's how it goes: your friend is driving his car through Tempi in a typical "large" situation where one hand is on the wheel and the other one is being used to smoke a cigarette, going well beyond the speed limit (which btw is nowhere to be found) and tailgating the leading car. He's not going faster and you are not gonna fly by him so this whole thing is really unsafe, pointless and plain stupid. By tailgating I mean following in a distance less than the 10m recommended as a safe distance between cars. Here comes my comment as a co-driver: "Hey bud, why are you tailgating him?" Driver answers back (emphatically shaking his index finger) "No I'm not tailgating, you are wrong". I'm ok with the lack of responsibility since this is how generations and generations in Greece have learned to grow up but saying that I'm wrong is equal to calling me a liar and thats where I have a problem with you my dude. See here's something that was never taught to Greeks, we can always agree to disagree. Just because you have an opinion that doesn't mean that you shouldn't respect my point of view nor does it mean that I have to agree with you all the time. It's a free country and everybody is entitled to express himself/herself, just learn to respect that already.
• In a recent debate, where again, me and some Greek friends were exchanging opinions about a matter here's what I heard in reply to making my point: "Your message is unfair and pointless", "You are allergic to common sense", "You are providing the wrong information", "This is one of your most pointless comments". Again, total lack of respect about my opinion and a behavior that seems to be interested more into attacking one other's ideas than elaborating on their own perspective. This is truly amazing, it seemed that they were more interested into making me agree with them (by erasing my perspective) than debating about the issue in question.
  
• Even when I try to explain to a friend how I get offended by that kind of behavior their reaction is automatic, "I'm not calling you a liar", which totally proves my case right?
  

Unfortunately, Greeks don't get it, for years they've been in a state of denial that has reached the level of arrogance and that's why the rest of the world is pissed at them..Time to take a look into the mirror!

P.S. Nobody can visualize this post better than Mr Panos himself.