Ivylise Simones
Our glorious fighting boys of the US men’s soccer team are playing Belgium today in their first elimination match of the World Cup.
We want the US team to win. You should too!
Here are some of the things we hate most about Belgium.
1. King Leopold II
This guy! He oversaw one of the cruelest regimes in history in the Congo. His regime was responsible for 10 million Congolese deaths. If there is a hell, King Leopold is burning in it.
2. Tintin
Sure he’s cute and so is the dog. But he’s a terrible reporter and also Herge was a real racist.
3. The Smurfs
Did you know that possibly the most annoying cartoon franchise in the history of animation was set in a Belgian socialist village? No amount of French fries will make up for that crime against humanity.
4. Dr. Evil
Not only is he evil, and Belgian, but he was a seminal character in one of the most grossly overrated, discussed, and imitated films of the 1990s.
5. Jean-Claude Van Damme
He’s quite good at kicking, but Street Fighter was awful. Also, 1999’s Universal Soldier: The Return, in which “the Muscles from Brussels” has to off a rampaging fight computer-led robot army. Critics were not impressed. As the New York Post put it, Van Damme’s accent “makes Stallone sound like a master of elocution”.
6. Belgian waffles aren’t even a thing in Belgium
“What is known in North America as the ‘Belgian waffle’ does not exist in Belgium,” sayeth Wikipedia.
7. They are somehow even worse than us on gender equality.
For all the flack the United States gets over gender equality, the US actually beats Belgium handsomely on a few important counts. In 2011, the last year that data is available, 90.1 percent of US women got at least a secondary education. In Belgium, only 72 percent did. In the US, the boards of publicly traded companies are 12 percent women. In Belgium? 10.8 percent. In the US, 57 percent of women were at work in 2012— way above the OECD average of 54 percent, and way, way above Belgium’s rate of 47 percent.
No surprise that a country with fewer women in the workplace also has fewer women overseeing things. In 2008, the last year for which data is available, 13.9 percent of US working women held down some managerial responsibilities—more than double the OECD average that year. In Belgium, only 8 percent of working women were managing anything. Worse yet, that figure has fallen to 4.7 percent as of 2011.
On the other hand Audrey Hepburn is from there and she was the best. Still, all in all, USA > Belgium.
