Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBig3KilledMyRainDog
I have to say that this is horrifyingly scary. You seem to suggest that the U.S. is nothing more than a crumbling empire fronted by corrupted neo-facists while the rest of the "developed nations" are all roses, peaches, and cream.
Respond to what you want but please answer me this one yes or no question: If the U.S. vanished tomorrow, I mean everything including the land mass itself, do you think the world would change for the better?
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The insularity of most Americans certainly does work to the advantage of those who wish to advance "American interests" for corporations like Halliburton, the health insurance industry, etc. And all this at the expense of Americans (who are quite willing to go along or are at least apathetic) and in the case of wars or proxy wars, we can turn a blind eye to others lives being uprooted or destroyed. I could go on...
There are no "saintly" nations but when the US is isolated from other developed nations in terms of environmental concerns (thankfully the Aussies are finally signing onto the Kyoto Protocol), the death penalty, universal health care, extremely low educational standards, a bogus two-party system, giving more free rides than usual for corporations, and where corporate lobbyists have more of a voice than voters, and its media which glosses all this over (funny reading CNN and then reading a lot of overseas papers, the differences in what they report) the US sticks out like a sore thumb. Most people in the US don't actually see that of course, they have no idea. Add on top of that a war which neither party cares ENOUGH to put to an end (the Dims are more guilty in this regard that Repugs as far as I'm concerned), blatant torture policies and "black sites," propping up tyrants in other countries because a "capitalist tyrant" is somehow better than a "communist" one (we helped prop up Musharrif, the Taliban and Saddam and Pinochet for example), both also parties are gung ho about "kicking ass" in Iran now too? And I don't want to even get started on other cultural factors like guns, religion, the "evil" of *** marriage and how half of Americans actually think evolution is hogwash and can't even locate many major countries on a world map.
I don't want the US to vanish-- I would just like it to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of the world political dialogue. Until then, we're screwing ourselves and we're screwing the world. The US has a lot of great potential and for decades, thanks to people being active, lucid and informed of their civic responsibilities, but now...?
The bottom line is the whole entire political spectrum is shifted so far to the right in comparison to all other developed nations (many conservatives in Europe are more to the left than Clinton and Obama). I think that's bad thing. If you want to perceive that as being "anti-American" or "unamerican" or whatever, well, I'm sorry you feel you have to see it that way.
~ josh