Look. I'd like to think you're a splendid fellow, and you've given me no reason to think otherwise. I'd also like to think you mean no harm when you joke about the laughing stock that my people — and, by extension, me — have been reduced to. You do it in good jest, expecting your company to laugh about it with you. Here, you'd be about 99% correct in your assumption: those around you will laugh at the single-dimension image of a nation with grand history full of human virtue and human error.

I won't.

Why?

Because my people are not a laughing stock. Because I am not a laughing stock.

Because I hear the "drunk russhan" line of bullshit so much, it's sickening. I've become a punchline in the eyes of the whole world thanks to your government's propaganda efforts born out of fear and some serious discomfort over "them russhans'" nuclear arsenal.

Because your people, in particular, tend to assume the same blissful ignorance as they connect with the world at large and pretend like their images of other nation are what those nations are, and I've seen that too many times to even crack a smile.

Because when I tell people I don't drink, they look at me the same funny look and somethink you did: "You don't drink? Well, that does not comform with my stereotype of you" — and then the subtext kicks in: "There must be something wrong with you. No way my perceptions are false".

Sure, you don't mean it. It doesn't matter: that's what you're saying anyway. It's woven into your worldview since the day you were born. And you, of all people? God damn.