Poll: What's wrong with America?

[Ninja_X]

Sigh another "what has america become?" thread. I see this on other forums too.

America is great. We have more freedom and rights than any other nation on earth. We are a nation of many different ideas, religions, ethnicity's and nationality's. The amount of cultural diversity we have here compared to most other countries is staggering. The kind of freedom and diversity we have here is something to be proud of. We are the strongest military in the world and despite the hard times we are still a leader in world economy.

We aren't perfect, but we are one of the best countries on the face of this earth.

Before you start up on the "woe is us" crap, get a grip, take some angst medication and look on the bright side for once.

 

[Terramax]

The problem lies in the fact that it's how the world perceives us that's difficult to swallow. I realize I need to break out of the pack, much like the millions and millions of others who don't fall into the category of "typical stupid American" it just bugs me that we got there in the first place.

My personal opinion is that America is too big a country (they're not alone there though).

I've never been to the US, but from what others who've described it, it seems like another world within a country. Cities have different lifestyles, cultures, ways of thinking, ideologies, environments, etc, and lumping them all together is like trying to make Europe a singular country. Impossible and stupid.

Split America into smaller countries that way it'd be easier to associate people from particular parts of the US. That way we can acknoledge that the bright sparks come from 'that' part of of the US, the fatties come from 'this' part, the patriotic, gun crazy ones are from 'over there' etc.

This wouldn't have to mean complete segregation (just before anyone thinks that's what I'm implying). You could still have one army, one currency, etc. But the idea of one president and one stereotype representing 300+ million people, too me, seems obsurd.

 

[QuirkyTambourine]

The problem lies in the fact that it's how the world perceives us that's difficult to swallow. I realize I need to break out of the pack, much like the millions and millions of others who don't fall into the category of "typical stupid American" it just bugs me that we got there in the first place.

My personal opinion is that America is too big a country (they're not alone there though).

I've never been to the US, but from what others who've described it, it seems like another world within a country. Cities have different lifestyles, cultures, ways of thinking, ideologies, environments, etc, and lumping them all together is like trying to make Europe a singular country. Impossible and stupid.

Split America into smaller countries that way it'd be easier to associate people from particular parts of the US. That way we can acknoledge that the bright sparks come from 'that' part of of the US, the fatties come from 'this' part, the patriotic, gun crazy ones are from 'over there' etc.

This wouldn't have to mean complete segregation (just before anyone thinks that's what I'm implying). You could still have one army, one currency, etc. But the idea of one president and one stereotype representing 300+ million people, too me, seems obsurd.

That's an interesting idea, we did try that once, and ended up with the bloodiest war in our history. The problem with doing that though, is that we'd get the split where New England, which has NYC and Connecticut, would be a very wealthy nation all on its own while the rest of the countries would be shabby compared. I'm not being an elitist New England jerk, it's just fact that a great portion of America's wealth is localized in New England. Not to say the rest of the country's poor by any means, but that New New England would really be the dominant American Union Country or whatever quirky name they thought of for it.

And I shudder to think what would happen if the bible belt were given sovereignty. Yet again, not to lump them all into one category but it IS called the bible belt for a reason, some of the people I've met from there are religious to the point of zealotry. It'd be like having the Vatican on a hundred (thousand? million? My geography ain't that great) times the size piece of land. Only this Vatican would be Protestant i believe, not Catholic.

Although I like the idea of multiple presidents, makes me feel like more of a citizen if my particular leader only had 25-50 million of us to listen to instead of 300 million.

 

[Shadow5]

Easy solution, move to Australia like the rest of the cool kids.

Yes, Australia is Awesome.

But really, I think that the 'problem' with America is that it is has a wide range of subcultures and some of these subcultures attract a fair amount of bad press.

All the Americans that I know are intelligent, well balanced people (maybe because they need to leave the country for me to meet them), who openly decry the strangely well publicised subcultures

 

[asinann]

I have a question: Why do so many people complain so much about one country?

Probably because said country is responsible for quite a lot of horrible things in the world. The fact is, we're the biggest oil importer, and we're the biggest food importer. This leads to people rightly thinking that Americans are fat. The last I checked, the average American weighed about 300 pounds. We're gas hogs, and, for the most part, we spend gas on a commute that could be done by bike or foot.

America is actually the world's largest exporter of most foods, comes from having an ungodly buttload of farmland when most of the world turned theirs into cities and deserts.

 

[HentMas]

I have a question: Why do so many people complain so much about one country?

I actually think that it's because, well at least in my experience, that...alright I'll use "I", I was raised to believe, from all of our history books, that America is the shit! And now that I'm older and have actually seen what things are like, that it's not like that at all. It's unfathomable for a 10 year old to think that any country other than the Middle Eastern ones hate us, and that people from the Middle East can actually like us.

well my friend, waking up to the reality of your own country is one hell of a shock, in my experience they shoved that bull into my troath about all the revolutionaries were heroes untill a teacher came and told us "they were a bunch of murderers, criminals and egocentric bastards that only cared about themselves and wanted the power to do as they pleased, to proclaim themselves as kings of a country too poor and ignorat to even try to refuse, they dont deserve to be mentioned as heroes, actually they should have never being mentioned at all"

and from that point onward he would teach us what history books said and show (prove with facts) how many ways those books where wrong.

yeah... he was a great teacher, too bad they kicked him out after 5 years of teaching, on topic, that made me realize something "well, yes, they might have being bastards but in the end they helped form this wonderfull country we live in"... to wich lead me to the greatest conclussion of all times: "we are soooooo fucked..."

i´m Mexican by the way

 

[Stryc9]

America went down hill when we started to listen to the lunatic fringe that people used to just ignore up until about the 60's. I know I'm going to catch all sorts of hell for this but tough, this is the way I see it. Our government has at one time or another tried to cater to every damn special interest group there is just about. From the environmentalists to the religious whackos America has done something to appease them all and we're worse off for it.

The problems really started when we STARTED TRYING TO SOLVE THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS!
Instead of letting other countries sort their own shit out ever since the end of WWII really, America has had to step in and basically say, "We're America, here's how it's gonna be or we gonna blow one of you up!"

We used to make a lot of own stuff right here in our own country. Now we import a lot of the stuff we used to make because it's cheaper to have it made in China by a bunch of 8 year-olds than it is to pay an American citizen a wage they can live on which mean more profit for the company and the fatass CEO gets a bigger end of year bonus so he can buy his spoiled twat of a kid a brand new Mercedes(engineered in Germany, manufactured in Mexico) who will smash it into a brick wall a week later.

I'm not saying go back to living like it's Leave it to Beaver or some other bullshit 50's idealistic time depicted in those disgusting TV shows from that era but if we would tell certain groups of people to shut up and piss off, stop trying to poke our noses into other countries shit where it doesn't belong and start making more of own stuff here instead of importing it from China, or Honduras, or Pakistan or wherever this crap comes from America could turn itself around and we'd be great and maybe even respected again.

Also, as for our "fine" congressmen getting caught up in scandals as of late, this crap has gone on since the beginning of our great nation, it's just now, in the new information age it has become easier to catch people at it. Hell JFK was doing Marilyn Monroe and the truth only came out after he was dead and gone.

 

[Washboard]

The voters are whats wrong...anyone who would elect george bush twice....geesh.

But you are right about having an image problem, i'm afraid our view of a yank here in blighty is a fat sweating man with a nasal voice wearing a hawian shirt, white shorts and trainers.
Or a texan Bible Basher

aside from that though, i dunno, i just think of you as brits that speak differently, like the irish really (though you dont drink as much).

 

[lizards]

Between the whole anti-Obama faction decrying everything that the man does (Fox News and the shouting town hall meetings and such) and a very publicized broken governmental system, it's not easy to find things to be happy about.

i like Obama...
i think that he's acually try no matter what everyone else is saying about him.
people are also going to doubt him because he is the first African-American president.
its going to happen..

stuff like that is going to happen because us as humans are going to complain because we are a bunch of retards..
i have lost my faith in humanity because of it.. (if i even had it before..)

First off, E.M. White, don't play the race card. You are opening Pandora's Box. Racial prejudices and motivations are not tangible enough to throw into a discussion. You don't talk about the doubts being racially motivated here, and I won't talk about his popularity being racially motivated.

No, let's talk about it. Let's talk about:

--people wanting to elect a perfectly qualified candidate in part because he's black and what the symbolism of that would mean and say about all Americans in terms of social progress

vs.

--people who use code words when they really want to say:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "******, ******, ******." By 1968 you can't say "******"?that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics#United_States

--people who, when confronted with the question of getting elected by encouraging racial fears of rape and murder, asked "the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

--racism so "tangible" that even the RNC itself has acknowledged that the "Southern Strategy" was an attempt to get whites to vote Republican out of fear of blacks:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302342.html

Please--let's have that discussion of 'racism'. That's not like opening Pandora's box: that's like opening up a can of whoop-ass on yourself while the other side opens up a practical joke can of peanut brittle.

Second, why do people become offended when Obama gets criticized?

They don't--they get offended when he gets criticized in a manner meant to make people dislike him because of ignorance about him instead of because of truthful knowledge about him.

Really, that's the problem people have with Republicans and Conservatives: they wrap themselves up in political correctness in the sense of throwing out all logic and reason and focusing on the most misleading possible connections. They equate people being excited about a black candidate with talking about 'welfare queens and poverty pimps'. They equate criticism based on facts with criticism based on hysteria.

No wonder the American people finally got sick of them.

it makes me sad that im considered a "moderate conservative" although i would like to see everyone even connected with fox news beat with a thorn bush then thrown into lava

 

[thechode]

I lost faith in your spelling and sentence structure.

 

[thechode]

obama sucks it hard

 

[Throne]

You shouldn't be proud to be anything. Proud to be human is acceptable, but patriotism leads to wars and conflicts.

 

[Scaredpanther0101]

slightly off topic but Russia saved our ass in WW2 im British/French btw