Topic: Opinion on the US - page 16. (Read 18980 times)

What does it mean to "love america"?  Do you love all the atoms that make up the entirety of america?  Do you love all the 300 million or so people who live there?  Do you love the government?  I don't understand what this phrase means?  

And does it mean that any physical part of america you love more than any physical part of the rest of the world?   Do you like the local trash heap better than say a luxury home in another country?

This grouping stuff just seems like cultism to me.   A country is just an in group and outsiders are not as good.  

Here in Australia, people call others "unAustralian" to describe a douche.  Well, I'm unAustralian.  I don't subscribe to any of this country nonsense.  That people in a physical location are somehow joined in some way.  Just because you are an Australian (or American or whatever) doesn't necessarily make you better or worse than any other human.  

If you are talking about loving the idea of freedom and liberty, then I agree with you.  But that doesn't equate to america nor solely is it the province of americans.

I love america (deliberately not capitalized), but I fucking LOATHE the United States. The two don't equate. A couple centuries back, some guys with various motives got together and threw off the yoke of an oppressive empire. So far, so good. It took them less than a decade to draft a document that guaranteed a return to tyranny, and "four score and seven" years to fight a war that made even the few roadblocks in that document irrelevant.

Even so, the spirit of liberty and self sufficiency remained.

Then, the descendants of the traitorous mob started this new idea called "making the world safe for democracy" as if that were some noble goal. Our "leaders" started or participated in multiple foreign wars, killed the currency, lied about it, and then stole the gold.

Even so, the spirit of liberty and self sufficiency remained, though it was coming under fire on a daily basis.

Then, the descendants of the descendants of the traitorous mob stopped caring about whether or not a thing was legal, if they could get away with it. They escalated wars in Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Iraq and Afghanistan and many other places. Called most of them "police actions" as if the nations they were incinerating were errant petty criminals within their own purview rather than independent nations. Largely, they got away with it.

Meanwhile, on the home front, they used every overt and covert tactic they could dream up to demonize the idea of self sufficiency and pervert the meaning of liberty.

It worked. Americans, who live under a police state reminiscent of Soviet Russia or the early stages of Nazi Germany, think they are free, while kowtowing to every whim of anyone with something looking like "authority". The idea of self sufficiency is under constant attack, and most people buy into this thing called "society" without analysls.

I was born in 1968. Outside of the big cities, america was mostly still a free nation then. I saw it begin to erode in the late seventies (The erosion was already advanced, I just finally saw it then). Now, just shy of 45 years after my birth, I cannot recognize this place as anything even resembling my country of birth. You now need official permission to breathe, let alone do anything useful.

Yet when I was a kid, the police and the officials in government would not DARE speak to average citizens with the open contempt they now display. It would have cost them too dearly. Now, they have reduced us to this. It's pathetic, and it's getting worse daily. They cavort high on the hog on the backs of all of us, and most of us LIKE IT.

I am damn near destitute, or I would have taken my family and fled some years ago. I have had many friends go on vacation to Europe or parts of Asia, and never come home. They found something far better, and went with it. I am jealous. I missed the opportunity.

There will come a point when the empire falls apart from within. The point of no return was probably passed in 1971, when the Nixon administration approved the default on american currency.  There is no saving this mess sort of it's complete dissolution, and that day will come. Unfortunately, it will come with little warning and no plan. I do not look forward to this, as at the rate it's going, I'll still be here.

Haha, Fat People got the most votes....

Lol! More voted "Fat people" than "Money laundering land"

Thanks for sharing this, this is a very good documentary. 

Yep. I agree with this. I wasn't born 15 years ago, so I wouldn't know the comparison, but I still agree with your points. The grand canyon is definitely a must-see, and luckily for me I live only about 5 hours drive from it It's truly amazing beauty.

:L We're shut down anyway aren't we

I think that Americans are in a very dangerous place right now.  Most of us are complacent.  We think our freedoms are guaranteed.  We forgot how many people gave up their lives for those freedoms but they are slowly being stolen from us and most people don't even see it or care.  For instance, the whistle blowers are banished for just revealing the truth?  Where is our freedom of speech?  That is just one issue.

I guess I am not longer blinded by the Stars and Stripes and my loyalty is not as true as it probably once was. 

I can agree that thanks to all very popular now pro communist views USA is not a country as it was before.
In 1929 US made more goods than all other world in total. Now we do not produce even t-shits. Thanks to welfare and other social programs we create a class of people who just suck that system generation by generation.
Sure they will vote for any moron who will promise them more freebies. And a lot of politicians just rely on this group of people which became the biggest one. Now private business can not even fire the employee without asking union first. This is a shame.

BTW that system is not very different for most of occidental countries. America is just leading the way.

USA is now one of the biggest communist country of the world. A country ruled by a government sponsored by big monopolies and backed by a private entity called the FED.

The problem with american people is that they are having a hard time to face that new reality. They prefer lies rather the ugly truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU

For some communists "purist American" sounds same as evil.

Typical answer from a purist American 

Why you just don't leave your country then?
Nobody will miss you probably

A guy can only make so much money supplying tennis shoes to the world.  At some point it occurs to folks that money is simply a means to something more...usually this occurs after making a lot of money.  To a decent person, what comes after money is happiness, and that comes from doing decent things.  To a not so decent person, it is raw power.  Unfortunately those in a leadership position tend to favor the latter (which is related to why they seeked out a leadership position in the first place most likely.)

I suspect that it is foolish to suppose that whoever can gain control of 1x10^9 Chinese would be notably more benevolent as rulers of planet earth than any other individual or group.

Commoners rarely want to fight their peers in other nations absent a pretty robust engineering effort by their leaders.  To me the best hope is to empower common individuals to make decisions about geopolitical direction.  Wars of conquest would then be quite unlikely I believe as people would tend to be focused on, as you say, making money.

That is my perspective why if China is the most powerful country in the world. The world will be a more peaceful place.

Imagine, when that happens US or UK, want to start a war on some random country. Then they will ask for China's approval, China will just tell them, forget about fighting and just make money.

Whereas in the present moment, anything happens in the world, when US see they can get gain from it. They just go to war without consent from even the UN.

So when China is the big brother in the world stage, they probably will still monitor their own people. But they can also declare it as terrorism, when NSA or GCHQ want to spy on the world.

By the way, I am British. In case anyone is wondering. So I am neutral in this discussion.

I vote for Fat People, everyone is eating too much McDonald.

Minor point about overpopulation - China has about half the population density of the UK and is much less than many western European countries. Spain and France are lower.
ie China doesn't have a population problem.

China will not put resources into an international conflict - if they do they will open up possibilities internally for revolution (that's how Mao came to power in the first place).
The Chinese do not want another revolution - they just want to get rich.

I kind of laughed when I voted for fat people and saw it was the most voted choice

And to both
China had evil US Had evil
Superpowers tend to do evil XD

@dragonkid

As I see it, China has some significant problems.  Overpopulation and poor land for agraculture for one.  China spends more on internal security than external defence because, like most nations, the most salient threat is from it's own people.  We'd be the same except that we spend such a huge amount to support our far flung empire.

China also is getting reamed by the US since we've parked in the Middle East and control access to energy at the moment.

By militarizing heavily for external conflict and eventually engaging, China would kill a bunch of birds with one stone.  Rally people around the flag so they forget their domestic problems, reduce their population and re-adjust the gender gap, end up parked in the Middle East and in control of land-based energy routes, control farm land in Africa, etc.  China could lose 10-to-1 against the US and still win (Most people achieve a 1 to 10 body count ratio against us, but then we normally fight on foreign soil and count women, children, pigs, etc.)

Anyway, I hope for everyone's sake that China's leaders don't take up my ideas, but I suspect that eventually the solution will turn out to be to sweet to pass up.  Particularly if they are looking at a revolution and loss of power anyway.