Poll: What is wrong with America?

[Laurie Barnes]

I used to watch "The Daily Show, With John Stewart" and have a righteous laugh, but now, for what feels like a year now, it only manages to piss me off what some Americans can get away with. 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.

Being a Canadian I have an special view of our big brother down south, being that I get both sides of the argument up here, and it baffles me when I see that one side has so little merit compared to the other and yet in America this seems to amount to nothing because that is the side that is winning. What the hell? On top of that, 9 times out of 10, the people perpetrating the merit-less argument are none other than Fox News and CBC News. They seem to portray the teachers unions as fat-cats who are taking advantage of the system and handouts, which is absolutely nothing like the fat-cats on wall street taking advantage of the system and handouts.

I really need some feed back on this, because I am honestly not sure what to believe anymore, and it is hard for me to accept that nuking the whole god awful mess would actually be for the best.

I like how you talk about delusional and then get on ranty tirades about how you should nuke America because you dont like our news stories. Get over yourself. There's nothing flawed about America that isn't there in some degrees in any other country, other than increased economic and political clout.

If you believe that I actually want to see America nuked, you need to read my post again.

I dont believe that, I do think that you put it in erreneously to insult and belittle, and that makes you come off as smarmy and biased, and that is why people are flaming you.

In short, make your god damned point without being a smartass, and you wont be treated like a smartass. It doesn't do anything to you point other than make you look bad.

Ok, you don't want me to be a smartass? I will do my best.

FACT~ You said so right in your post above"how you should nuke America because you dont like our news stories". implying you believe I think America should be nuked.

FACT~ I called you out on the fact that its completely not what my OP says, which in fact says I knew that thought was wrong, and was looking for people to support that it was wrong. Then you flip-flopped your position.

FACT~ The discussion of this thread is not whether I am Smarmy or Biased, it is "What is Wrong with America?" and to a lesser degree, what is going on in Wisconsin, so anyone flaming me for my opinion/or/delivery and not interested in the discussion should not even be here.

 

[Bwown]

A simple rebellion would effectively reformat C:\ and reinstall Windows, and god only knows we need to, but nobody wants to do it. We have the install disk, it's called the US Constitution, and we have the format tool.

Sadly, the few that do want to reinstall are labelled crackpots and nobody takes them seriously.



Seriously, governments are like Windows installs. They get bloated and inefficient the longer they run and need to be formatted and reinstalled regularly. For Windows that amounts to about a year on average, for governments I'd say about a century.

Revolution 2.0

 

[WanderingFool]

Honestly, Unions, IMO, are useless in this day and age. They were essential back in the early days of industrialized America, as the workers were basically treated like shit, and the government actually supported it because they were a bunch of fucking assholes who looked at only dollar signs.

If you can, go readThe Given Day, it takes place in Boston leading up to the Boston police strike, and talks about unions, immigration, social inequality, and other things. Its a damn good book to boot, also.

There are cases in the modern day that Unions are important, but there are also cases where the Unions are more damning than anything. But what the Governor in Wisconsin is doing is just bad. When given the choice, ill always side with teachers.

 

[sageoftruth]

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.

I usually don't jump into these things, but that doesn't sound like sound logic to me. Keep in mind that in North Korea, their media is supposedly portraying their place as a paradise with Kim Jong Il as their beloved God/Ruler (even if we can all see right through the farce). I think the media's criticism is just a sign of the fact that we don't suppress our media.
Furthermore, I don't think, "how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America?" is a statement that proves that your sources are reliable.

Overall, I'd say, congrats. You've seen the worst America has to offer. Sorry the news isn't interested in showing anything else.

 

[Laurie Barnes]

A simple rebellion would effectively reformat C:\ and reinstall Windows, and god only knows we need to, but nobody wants to do it. We have the install disk, it's called the US Constitution, and we have the format tool.

Sadly, the few that do want to reinstall are labelled crackpots and nobody takes them seriously.



Seriously, governments are like Windows installs. They get bloated and inefficient the longer they run and need to be formatted and reinstalled regularly. For Windows that amounts to about a year on average, for governments I'd say about a century.

Revolution 2.0

I preferred your response when it said "Marxism 2.0" XD.

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I usually don't jump into these things, but that doesn't sound like sound logic to me. Keep in mind that in North Korea, their media is supposedly portraying their place as a paradise with Kim Jong Il as their beloved God/Ruler (even if we can all see right through the farce). I think the media's criticism is just a sign of the fact that we don't suppress our media.
Furthermore, I don't think, "how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America?" is a statement that proves that your sources are reliable.

Overall, I'd say, congrats. You've seen the worst America has to offer. Sorry the news isn't interested in showing anything else.

So your Media is portraying your homeland poorly by only broadcasting the worst they have to offer? Ok fair enough, I can buy that. It still sounds like a problem to me. You would think they would want to show off their best and brightest.

 

[WanderingFool]

A simple rebellion would effectively reformat C:\ and reinstall Windows, and god only knows we need to, but nobody wants to do it. We have the install disk, it's called the US Constitution, and we have the format tool.

Sadly, the few that do want to reinstall are labelled crackpots and nobody takes them seriously.



Seriously, governments are like Windows installs. They get bloated and inefficient the longer they run and need to be formatted and reinstalled regularly. For Windows that amounts to about a year on average, for governments I'd say about a century.

Revolution 2.0

Well, it worked for the Tunisa and Egyptian servers, and it looks like the Libyan server is in the process, but it also looks like theirs may take a bit longer, and it will undoubtedly sound angry while processing...

[sub]I feel that was too soon... so I apologize ahead of time...[/sub]

 

[Kuilui]

A simple rebellion would effectively reformat C:\ and reinstall Windows, and god only knows we need to, but nobody wants to do it. We have the install disk, it's called the US Constitution, and we have the format tool.

Sadly, the few that do want to reinstall are labelled crackpots and nobody takes them seriously.



Seriously, governments are like Windows installs. They get bloated and inefficient the longer they run and need to be formatted and reinstalled regularly. For Windows that amounts to about a year on average, for governments I'd say about a century.

Revolution 2.0

I preferred your response when it said "Marxism 2.0" XD.

snip

snip

snip

I usually don't jump into these things, but that doesn't sound like sound logic to me. Keep in mind that in North Korea, their media is supposedly portraying their place as a paradise with Kim Jong Il as their beloved God/Ruler (even if we can all see right through the farce). I think the media's criticism is just a sign of the fact that we don't suppress our media.
Furthermore, I don't think, "how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America?" is a statement that proves that your sources are reliable.

Overall, I'd say, congrats. You've seen the worst America has to offer. Sorry the news isn't interested in showing anything else.

So your Media is portraying your homeland poorly by only broadcasting the worst they have to offer? Ok fair enough, I can buy that. It still sounds like a problem to me. You would think they would want to show off their best and brightest.

Sadly best and brightest does not draw in the views like "morons set pants on fire because the public education system failed them somehow." So that's what the world sees. *Sigh*

 

[sageoftruth]

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

What about Saudi Arabia? Their entire women's fashion comprises solely of a full-body, black, shapeless cloak. o_o[/quote]

Look up the exact statistics of how many women in the Middle East actually choose to wear Burkas(sp?) you will be surprised.[/quote]

How about Afghanistan? I read once that all the men there cope with their sexual deprivation by watching little boy porn. The author jokingly said that we could win the war if we just sent over an army of hot women and got all the people there to get over their sexual tension. Wouldn't that be a hoot. Still, if they're resorting to boys, there's probably some frustration in there.[/quote]

Hey! What happened to all the quote boxes?

 

[Azex]

america should have remain divided. as it is now as a united states thing...its too big. and a country that big controls too much of the world. not a good thing that idiots run the place

 

[Uszi]

Why isn't this in the RP board?

 

[k-ossuburb]

I find it ironic that the people that FOX would call "heroes" after 9/11 (firemen, police officers, etc.) are the same people they're antagonizing right now.

It's like FOX bases every one of its stories on emotional reactions and personal opinions instead of evidence and facts, and we know that's not the case. They're a news company after all. Herpa derp, derp, durrrr. FOX IS DA BESTEST COZ THEY SUPPORT JEEZUS AN' I LIKES JEEZUS! Durr.

 

[Zaik]

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 take a whole different view of that. my biggest question after reading that, is why and how did the union not keep the first teacher from being fired? seems to me that's a crime of omission rather than commission.

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.

And this is why unions are great. Here in Sweden we regulations regarding when and why you're allowed to fire someone partially thanks to unions for example "Talked too much about her personal life" isn't an acceptable excuse to fire someone.

Since you're both more or less asking the same thing, I'll respond to both.

It's my entire issue, the teachers union doesn't care about teaching at all. As far as I can gather, the reason she was fired for that is that it was viewed as "unprofessional". Because tenure is something like diplomatic immunity in regards to protecting teaching jobs, the time frame in which a teacher doesn't have tenure is analyzed with a nonsensical amount of scrutiny. I would personally go so far as to assume that the teachers union would have pushed for her getting fired in order to continue to lay low and "protect their image", but I have no actual evidence to support that claim.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Stuff like this:


Sure, the media only focuses on the negative. But, damn there seems to be a lot of material over there.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

"Ooh, our freedom is consuming itself
What we've become
Is contrary to what we want
Take a bow"

Damn do those lyrics seem so true sometimes.

What's wrong with America? The same thing that mad it what it is today: our values of freedom and liberty. These are the problems that democratic nations devoted to freedom suffer. It allows for people who don't care about freedom to speak out against it and be protected. It allows for people more interested in profit than ethical business practices to get away with it. It means that the village idiot has the same say as Socrates. Democracy has it's pros- and cons just like all other systems of governments. And it isn't helped by the powerful force of conservatism in this country that nears on reactionary.

 

[blazearmoru]

America is what you get when people become dumb and lazy with confidence through faith. Don't worry, many here wish the demise of those around them so I wouldn't be surprised if America nuked itself.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

The GOP hates unions, public education, and generally anything that provides even a modicum of happiness for the middle-class. This is old news, and thus, the actions transpiring in Wisconsin don't come as a surprise to me.

If it's any consolation, the only people who seem to really be against the teacher's unions are union-busting politicians. Real, everyday American people aren't having it. There are protests happening all over the country. Heck, there were walkouts in Idaho a few days ago. Idaho, of all places, the reddest state in the union. Kinda gives me hope.

The GOP does not hate anything that provides a "modicum of happiness for the middle-class". Republicans believe that people who get off their butts and try to earn their livings should be rewarded for it. That people that become independently wealthy should get to KEEP the money they made, not be forced to give it out to the poor. I cannot believe some of the garbage floating around this country these days, such as people thinking the rich should be taxed to death to give their extra wealth to the poor. Thats wrong.

As far as unions go, I am in one, but I have steadily become more and more disillusioned by unions as a whole. I have seen situations where they are helpful, but far more where they are not. Unions tend to protect the lazier workers, and I have witnessed this first hand. With that said, though, I fully believe that both teachers and law enforcement in our country are SEVERELY underpaid. Almost criminally so, to be honest.

 

[loremazd]

A simple rebellion would effectively reformat C:\ and reinstall Windows, and god only knows we need to, but nobody wants to do it. We have the install disk, it's called the US Constitution, and we have the format tool.

Sadly, the few that do want to reinstall are labelled crackpots and nobody takes them seriously.



Seriously, governments are like Windows installs. They get bloated and inefficient the longer they run and need to be formatted and reinstalled regularly. For Windows that amounts to about a year on average, for governments I'd say about a century.

Revolution 2.0

I preferred your response when it said "Marxism 2.0" XD.

snip

snip

snip

I usually don't jump into these things, but that doesn't sound like sound logic to me. Keep in mind that in North Korea, their media is supposedly portraying their place as a paradise with Kim Jong Il as their beloved God/Ruler (even if we can all see right through the farce). I think the media's criticism is just a sign of the fact that we don't suppress our media.
Furthermore, I don't think, "how the hell else are we supposed to learn about America?" is a statement that proves that your sources are reliable.

Overall, I'd say, congrats. You've seen the worst America has to offer. Sorry the news isn't interested in showing anything else.

So your Media is portraying your homeland poorly by only broadcasting the worst they have to offer? Ok fair enough, I can buy that. It still sounds like a problem to me. You would think they would want to show off their best and brightest.

Two points:

1: I do apologise for getting pissy with you, this topic is annoying and I have a cynical view of those that post it.

2: All news is like that, to some degree. It's why you see news of the WBO protests rather than Community Christian center builds homes for flood victims or something. It's why scandals and affairs get much more attention then anniversaries and births. It's why a fire is more watched than a new housing development being started.

I can guarentee that -your- news is like this. And if it were broadcast to other countries, they would see the worst of your worst quite often. That in itself I find to be the direct cause of cynicism. We're bombarded by negative images and stories all the time. Every local news station in the world is like this on some level. The BBC is like this as well.

Now, our news is somewhat unique in that it's divided into negative news about the left and negative news about the right. With both reporting also on important information as well, generally international subjects like the recent Egypt thing. But that's the only real difference.

But really the problem lies considerably in a catch 22 about news. The people pay for it, and so it needs them to watch to support itself, which means that negative stories are odd and gain more viewership. Conversely, if the government supported it, then it'd have a conflict of interest and it'd be difficult to believe the validity of anything.

In any case, news will always air out all the dirty laundry it can. That doesn't mean that the country is nothing but dirty laundry.

 

[4173]

It's been suggested to me that teachers (and other public employees) already have protected rights and are in less need of a union than most. I've also seen it suggested that union leadership is fighting as hard as it is, because the bill removes their ability to automatically take union dues from a person's salary.

I have no real idea as to the veracity of these claims, but if even partly true they do put the debate in a somewhat different light.