Poll: What is wrong with America?

[Dethpixie]

What's wrong with America?

Sexual tension. Every problem can essentially be boiled down to it and you'll be hard pressed to find a more repressed country.

I can't tell if you are serious.

Ehn, like 50%. I really haven't been following this particular issue. Like you I stopped watched The Daily Show some time ago when the news just started to get frustrating. Also I couldn't afford cable.

But it really wouldn't hurt them to loosen up a little. They've turned sex into a commodity with body sprays, lingeries and fancy cars. Almost everything they buy is related to attracting a sexual partner, all of their media portrays the ideal sexual partner (made from all of these products), and yet their culture tells them that sex is bad, shameful, and should be avoided.

I'm Canadian so I can't honestly say we're free from this sort of thinking up here but at least we're more accepting of homosexual/bisexual/transgendered individuals, we typically keep our politics out of our bedrooms (or living room floors, park benches, etc.), and we just seem less repressed in general... I think it's thanks to the French.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with your topic I just wanted to point out my beef with America.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

I'm really on the fence here. From my point of view, both sides seem wrong.

I would typically be 100% behind anyone willing to try to take down the teachers union in any capacity, they certainly do deserve it. However, paying teachers even less isn't really the right way to go about it.

I'm sure there's much better places the money could be taken from, but on the other hand the teachers union has turned the entire education system here into a pathetic joke up until college. I really can't say who I like less.

Actually more than likely the group responsible for that is the US Government. The unions have little control over the system by which they are forced to educate. The real thing to blame for the system being a joke is "No-Child-Left-Behind", which blames teachers for when students get low scores. More often than not the kids get bad scores due to poverty, social instability, racial barriers, and sheer laziness.

 

[mxfox408]

If this is refering to winsconsin the you need to rename the topic to what is wron with winsconsin. First off the governer has a choice, have the teachers cintribute more to thier OWN retirement(reducing how much the state pays into it and avoids layoffs face it no one wants to loose thier job especially with a retirement plan and benefits) or lay some off(meaning no retirement plan at all). They demand more money when the state is broke. What would you have the governer do? everyone is quick to bash him, but he has to reduce costs and balance a budget. If you people had a business that paid retirement plans and benefits but your business started to go into debt because your not making enough to cover costs. Only two options have your employees pay more into thier retirement letting them keep thier jobs or lay them off. What would you do in this case. Unions in this case are getting in the way.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Yeah and how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America? I use the internet, I start discussions like this to better my understanding. Furthermore, if your own media is portraying your country as not only a cesspool of the ignorant but a oozing sore our planet would be better without, and you still don't think there is something wrong, then you are delusional.

Yes, the way the media works is flawed. No, that does not ruin the entire country. It's still a great place to live, and if you think the type of stories the media focuses on is a bad enough problem to make the United States "a cesspool of the ignorant...a oozing sore our planet would be better without", then you are the delusional one.

Edit:

What's wrong with America?

Sexual tension. Every problem can essentially be boiled down to it and you'll be hard pressed to find a more repressed country.

Hey, look at that. Freud's alive, and he's posting on the escapist.

 

[Grabbin Keelz]

I see a thread like this almost every week now. America really isn't such a bad place to live in.

As for Fox News, its a joke. Even worse is that most of our media strives to be like them.

If you see this thread once a week, don't you think there might actually be something wrong if so many people seem to think so?

Not really, considering most of the threads come from people who only hear about America from our media (which we all know is a wholehearted reliable source) and our government.(again)
It's fine to point out stuff like that, but it kinda hurts when everyone makes America out to be a terrible place in general. I live here and I can tell you it's not as bad as everyone thinks.

Yeah and how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America? I use the internet, I start discussions like this to better my understanding. Furthermore, if your own media,(and/or government) is portraying your country as not only a cesspool of the ignorant but a oozing sore our planet would be better without(whether this is true or not), and you still don't think there is something wrong, then you are delusional.

At least I don't complain about it.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

I see a thread like this almost every week now. America really isn't such a bad place to live in.

As for Fox News, its a joke. Even worse is that most of our media strives to be like them.

If you see this thread once a week, don't you think there might actually be something wrong if so many people seem to think so?

Not really, considering most of the threads come from people who only hear about America from our media (which we all know is a wholehearted reliable source) and our government.(again)
It's fine to point out stuff like that, but it kinda hurts when everyone makes America out to be a terrible place in general. I live here and I can tell you it's not as bad as everyone thinks.

Yeah and how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America? I use the internet, I start discussions like this to better my understanding. Furthermore, if your own media,(and/or government) is portraying your country as not only a cesspool of the ignorant but a oozing sore our planet would be better without(whether this is true or not), and you still don't think there is something wrong, then you are delusional.

At least I don't complain about it.

You should, the problem doesn't get any better with you sitting on your thumbs and quietly accepting the stupidity of it all. You think it is a flaw of mine that I care enough to complain? I think it is a flaw of yours if you don't care enough to remain silent.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

Yeah and how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America? I use the internet, I start discussions like this to better my understanding. Furthermore, if your own media is portraying your country as not only a cesspool of the ignorant but a oozing sore our planet would be better without, and you still don't think there is something wrong, then you are delusional.

Yes, the way the media works is flawed. No, that does not ruin the entire country. It's still a great place to live, and if you think the type of stories the media focuses on is a bad enough problem to make the United States "a cesspool of the ignorant...a oozing sore our planet would be better without", then you are the delusional one.

Edit:

What's wrong with America?

Sexual tension. Every problem can essentially be boiled down to it and you'll be hard pressed to find a more repressed country.

Hey, look at that. Freud's alive, and he's posting on the escapist.

Also I would apreciate it if you reread my post, the quote you have there is incomplete.

 

[mxfox408]

I see a thread like this almost every week now. America really isn't such a bad place to live in.

As for Fox News, its a joke. Even worse is that most of our media strives to be like them.

If you see this thread once a week, don't you think there might actually be something wrong if so many people seem to think so?

Not really, considering most of the threads come from people who only hear about America from our media (which we all know is a wholehearted reliable source) and our government.(again)
It's fine to point out stuff like that, but it kinda hurts when everyone makes America out to be a terrible place in general. I live here and I can tell you it's not as bad as everyone thinks.

Yeah and how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America? I use the internet, I start discussions like this to better my understanding. Furthermore, if your own media,(and/or government) is portraying your country as not only a cesspool of the ignorant but a oozing sore our planet would be better without(whether this is true or not), and you still don't think there is something wrong, then you are delusional.

At least I don't complain about it.

You should, the problem doesn't get any better with you sitting on your thumbs and quietly accepting the stupidity of it all. You think it is a flaw of mine that I care enough to complain? I think it is a flaw of yours if you don't care enough to remain silent.

Depends on the complaint.

 

[Drakane]

I think it should be made clear that, to my understanding, the issue w/ Wisconsin isn't actually about the cut in retirement benefits... it was actually the platform in which he ran on that got him elected to Governor. It is that he is trying to abolish the collective barganing agreement of the teachers union at the same time. I personally am torn on this subject. I think unions had their time and place, but it has run its corse for the most part. In many circumstances the unions have grown to powerful and it actually hurts the end product. I know nothing of this labor union specifically and think teachers get fucked over to much in general, so I can't say I am against their ability to organize and collectively bargain for better treatment.

As for the U.S. being a cesspool and all that b.s. your spewing. You have the right to your opinion but flaming people/countries as you have been in this thread is juvenile and pointless, and saying the entire country should be laid to waste w/ a nuke is just plain fucked up.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

I think it should be made clear that, to my understanding, the issue w/ Wisconsin isn't actually about the cut in retirement benefits... it was actually the platform in which he ran on that got him elected to Governor. It is that he is trying to abolish the collective barganing agreement of the teachers union at the same time. I personally am torn on this subject. I think unions had their time and place, but it has run its corse for the most part. In many circumstances the unions have grown to powerful and it actually hurts the end product. I know nothing of this labor union specifically and think teachers get fucked over to much in general, so I can't say I am against their ability to organize and collectively bargain for better treatment.

As for the U.S. being a cesspool and all that b.s. your spewing. You have the right to your opinion but flaming people/countries as you have been in this thread is juvenile and pointless, and saying the entire country should be laid to waste w/ a nuke is just plain fucked up.

You should do a better job reading my posts. Firstly, I said that the media portrays America as a cesspool, not that it actually was, and I said I started this thread because that thought regarding nukes was something I thought was wrong and I wanted to discuss it to better my understanding in hopes of dispelling that notion. (Make no mistake though, if every person to respond had told me America would be better off as a radioactive crater, I would no longer feel any guilt.)

 

[spacewalker]

I would guess the near worship of capitalism combined with coorporations growing more powerful than the government.
Capitalism can be very bad when one of the most profitable things a company believes it can do is something that would destroy the country.

 

[Zaik]

I'm really on the fence here. From my point of view, both sides seem wrong.

I would typically be 100% behind anyone willing to try to take down the teachers union in any capacity, they certainly do deserve it. However, paying teachers even less isn't really the right way to go about it.

I'm sure there's much better places the money could be taken from, but on the other hand the teachers union has turned the entire education system here into a pathetic joke up until college. I really can't say who I like less.

Actually more than likely the group responsible for that is the US Government. The unions have little control over the system by which they are forced to educate. The real thing to blame for the system being a joke is "No-Child-Left-Behind", which blames teachers for when students get low scores. More often than not the kids get bad scores due to poverty, social instability, racial barriers, and sheer laziness.

'

I won't even pretend that no child left behind was a good idea. It does somewhat address my entire point, but it does it all the wrong way. Also the teacher's union running the education system is at the least indirectly related to it coming about.

I guess the easiest way to explain it is to tell the story of the biggest issue I had with it.

I'm sure most people know that the US government does set guidelines for what students are to be taught. They don't restrict teaching additional stuff(to my knowledge, at least). So, the guidelines are more or less intended to be the bare minimum that a teacher is required to teach.

In high school, we had to take two foreign language classes, which consisted of Spanish or....probably just Spanish. So I was taking the first class and we'd had a newer teacher. She was actually an English major, but she was from Panama so she obviously knew the language well enough to be teaching it. She had a bad habit of going off on rants and stories explaining things that didn't directly relate to the language, but we still learned a lot. At the end of that class(4 months or so) I couldn't speak spanish fluently, but I could have a short conversation or ask relevant questions and mostly understand answers.

So, I wanted to take the second class with her again, but she got fired. Not because she did her job poorly, or tardiness, or theft, or any other reason normal people would get fired for. They said she "Talked too much about her personal life". I didn't personally get it, because it hadn't prevented us from learning anything, but whatever. So I end up with the other teacher, and boy was that depressing. We actually learned more in Spanish 1 than in 2. The teacher never actually taught us anything at all, she just sat at her desk and gave us handouts and told us a few page numbers in a book.

Point of the story is, the teachers union has made it(might be past tense, I was out of high school a number of years before no child left behind was passed) so that teaching wasn't required to be a teacher. As long as you hit the bare minimum the govt. requires, you don't actually have to do anything at all. Instead, holding your job requires just following a strict code of social rules that don't have anything to do with education at all, so that the union can't be marked as supporting any kind of "deviant" behavior and can stay in power.

I won't pretend that the government doesn't screw it up too, however if you're eating a bowl of cereal with spoiled milk, complaining that you don't like the brand of cereal is dumb.

 

[beema]

Yeah I really cannot watch domestic news of any kind anymore. All it does is royally piss me off and send me in to a fervor about how incredibly ignorant and stupid most of my countrymen are.

Lately everything I hear is Republicans claiming to support the "working man" but then turning around and doing everything in their power to royally screw all but the very rich up the asshole. I can ignore hypocrisy, but not when it effects something as far-reaching and important to my life as the US economy, my career, my health, and my options in life.

 

[ultimateownage]

I don't get the whole thing about teachers being underpaid and under appreciated. Around here our teachers get a upper middle class wage and are paid quite well for the hours.

 

[Kuilui]

From what I have heard on this debate is basically that teachers benefits are being cut. The reason for this is because the states wallet is empty and it was either start cutting back or raising taxes on everyone. I like unions personally but sometimes things happen and you have to deal with it.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

The most recent debate, of the Wisconsin Teachers union set off a new level of ire for me. I felt my blood boiling, and the thought crossed my mind that if bombs fell tomorrow and leveled the entire country, they might actually be better off starting at square one than continuing like they have.

You should add a fourth option to the poll: It's Wisconsin. Who cares?

Sorry if I come off like an east-coast elitist snob (which is exactly what I am, BTW), but pretty much the entire country west of Chicago are a bunch of morons, with the possible exception of the extreme west coast (California, Washington state, Oregon, and Nevada). Sorry to anyone who lives there - if you're on this website, you're probably the exception to my blanket statement, not the rule - but really, I couldn't care less about this very stupid argument.

I mean, it's Wisconsin. Seriously, who cares, other than the people who actually live in Wisconsin and will experience the results of this debate? I don't honestly know how this got to be a national story (other than it's kinda funny). I'm not even sure why you, a Canadian, care. National issues are one thing, but this is a state issue, and really, Wisconsin might as well be another country.

For the record, I'm a teacher, so teacher issues do matter to me. In my home state, where my paycheck is written and issued.

 

[zehydra]

The problem ultimately lies in the misconception that bad teachers are to blame for the low grades across America. What's to blame is the lack of discipline, self-inspired or otherwise. If kids don't apply what they learn (ex: do homework) they're not going to remember what they learned for the test, or later. Furthermore, there has been an increase in disruptive kids being undisciplined because of the increase of lawsuits. I'm not saying that they should be beaten with a stick or something, but if you want a productive classroom, they're going to have to be removed and helped in someway.

tl;dr:
Kids, do your damn homework!

 

[THAC0]

Oh, this is an easy one.

Conservative.

And that extends to just about everything you mentioned in your poll. The problem isn't "the government", the government can be quite good and do amazing things. That is, unless conservatives have any say in it, and then it becomes a tool for corporations and the suppression of freedom.

just look at American history, I know your Canadian OP, so I will try to summarize it. All the cool stuff America has done has been the result of liberalism, often against conservative opposition.

--Won independence: liberals were for separating from England, conservatives were loyal to the crown.
--Civil War: liberals were willing to defend the union, conservatives were preaching about State's Rights.
--Public Education: Liberals wanted an educated populous, conservatives were yelling about socialism.
--Workers Rights: Liberals were wanting safe working conditions and a 40 hour week, Conservatives were still on it about socialism.
--Civil Right: Liberals wanted the races equal, conservatives wanted them separate.
--Women's Rights: Liberals wanted gender equality, conservatives were yelling about traditional values.
--Gay Rights: Liberals are all for it, conservatives are yelling about traditional values.
--Health Care: Liberals want it for everyone, conservatives are yelling about socialism (they never get tired of this one)
--Economy: Liberals want people to be able to afford to life, conservatives are all about keeping the rich rich and making them richer.
--Abortion: Liberals think women should have the right to their own reproductive organs, conservatives are back on traditional values.
--War: Liberals tend to be against it, conservatives AMERICUUUU FUCK YEAH!!! also we need to support military contractors.

 

[Togs]

Americas like a stereotypical adolescent- melodramatic, full of themselves and lacking in wisdom

 

[IndianaJonny]

(From what I hear), education in the US gets a bit of a raw deal in general. I'm waiting on the UK release of the 'Waiting for Superman' documentary in the hope that it can push this idea into a more public spotlight.