Un-American?

The worst is when the worker-breeders tell you you should be just like them because for some reason none of you deserve happiness.

Blind patriotism is stupid, America has many problems that most other first-world countries attempted to fix decades ago. It also put it's nose right in other people's business.

(Editing this)----- breeding creates happiness? ---To me, it created a level of caregiving, like no other. Broad generalization to state those with kids have expectations of those without. I get in workplace seems unfair when mom or dad must leave work to attend to school calls or doctors appointments for their dependents. Sorry, if you've encountered the type of people who don't separate their identity and believe the world is rosy to have spouses and kids and that's their only world view...it's not everyone who sees it like that.

What's unamerican is the fact we are a despised nation, when we all bust our butts to the bone to scrape by and worry about where the next paycheck is coming from and having a roof over our heads and bills to pay and lights to keep on and food to feed ourselves. ..

What bites, they non americans look at us with disdain?

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I am grateful to have two children who are passionate about social causes, and politics. They actively engage in trying to change the things they care about---and spend time with friends, with learning, with sports, & being creative----They are both adults now but have had the same attitudes from their early years.
I also see many of their friends who also share beliefs/desire for and willingness for action...(environmental, civil rights, poverty....)----As a 60's "child" myself, who still believes that change does and will happen, I feel GOOD about most young people. (& I get to see them as a nurse, in camp, in school...)---And I remember the "lazy" ones of my own youth (TV, pinball, junk food, bullies, etc...)
However, that being said, we Are too comfortable as a nation, and we deserve much of the criticism we receive from the rest of the world. It is hard to rouse the comfortable, and that has always been true. And the comfortable like to maintain comfort, sometimes at the expense of the "others" by blaming them for their lousy luck/poverty/despair/conflicts...
We have never had our cities destroyed by bombs, our nation taken over by a zealot during times of social strife, we are still a very young land...
And continue to treat the people who were here when we arrived very badly...

Still find that a generalization. Maybe I just surround myself with people who've just been here one or two generations.
Collectively, as an entire country, our historical facts stink. Why run here, though?

Maybe we are hated because by coming here, to escape all that...we harbor their enemies?

Maybe there's complacency, apathy and lack of choosing to be informed. Or too busy, by the end of day, opening a thick book isn't top of priority list?

Or....to add, the lack of knowing how to discern truth in media. Who paid for that story and who's views do we placate?

If Russian media is government run, most watching know how to find out what they need to find out. American media is big business. ..

I still have hope, too, in the youth of today. ..

I know people in USA has to take a lot of crap for what their government does. I would not like that either.

I am too in a country where many people run to. I guess no matter how cold the weather is here no matter how cold the people are... it is better than war.

When you want others to do everything for you, you are allowing yourself to fall into a trap no matter what the politician or political ideology or employer or Corporation or school or organization or country. If you expect a media outlet to do "for" you, forget it, it ain't gonna happen in spite of their promises to be "for you or in your corner".

AL, by the way I loved your first post in the thread. Lovely writing!

I second that also!!!!

[QUOTE=winter4me;3868590]I am grateful to have two children who are passionate about social causes, and politics. They actively engage in trying to change the things they care about---and spend time with friends, with learning, with sports, & being creative----They are both adults now but have had the same attitudes from their early years.
Good for you! I believe that this starts with the parents- sadly there are too many parents who aren't there for their kids enough to really be able to say they raised them, let along raised them to be conscientious (or they are bad influence, continuing a bd cycle they learned from their parents) Though I do have to say I have seen some change in the younger people- slowly yet surely. But it'll take some time - I just hope not too long- I'm getting tired of waiting . . . . thinking of maybe doing something to help push the movement along . ..

I find that most people are willing to talk about the issues at hand, often quite intelligently, yet nobody will take any action.

Mediocrity has ruled for so long now I doubt it will ever change, and none will believe this until society is too late driven into the ground.

Take great pride in everything you do from cutting the grass to voting, then perhaps we can start to turn the tide.

Our country is in deep you-know-what. It is so lopsided economically that it's pitiful. Our government doesn't care about anyone but the wealthy, banks, corps, etc. We literally don't count. I'm envious of other countries that have much better governments than we do, who have universal health care (although I know about the fact that sometimes you have to wait a long time for service that is deemed less important, like my friend's aunt's back surgery in Finland, she waited 2 years, but it was free), who are happier people, more equality, less gender and wage gap, free education, etc, like the Scandinavian countries. Denmark has been rated as the happiest country in the world. We have no paid maternity leave, I mean don't even get me started. We might have been a great country a long time ago, but not anymore. I don't care what side of the political spectrum a politician is on, none of them care about anything but wealth and their own personal agendas. When are more people going to wake up and smell the roses in this country? If I seem un-American to someone, then so be it, but our country is bottoming out fast.

I think all the politicians need to be FIRED & it needs to go back to being a government of the people & by the people.....the way it started out to be.....the politicians have corrupted the government.

I am thankful that we don't have the military overthrows that they do in other countries that don't care for the governments they have.....this country has lasted so long because of the foundation that was laid for the government.....but they have found their ways around how it was set up & have convoluted it to the point there are some areas that need to be overhauled.

Wealthy white male land-owning slaveowners in control of everything is "by the people"?

Past the tipping point. Close to past the tilting point. The herd, sometimes called constituents, is following the Gadarene Swine on its way to the cliff.

I was thinking more of the Pied Piper of Hamlin but our herd is all blindfolded.

Interesting rendition of the Pied Piper story:
http://www.readroom.com/rroom/booksr.../PiedPiper.pdf The Mayor is our very typical politician.

Instead we are ALL being made slaves to the government.....I don't want to be owned & controlled by the government thank you.....& the Wealthy white male land-owning slaveowners was IN THE SOUTH....not all over the country if you remember your history correctly. And those were NOT the people who set up the government of our country.

You don't seem to remember our history correctly. The original Constitution limited voting rights to men. Men who held property. The Constitution did not make slavery illegal. Originally, the economies of all thirteen colonies relied on slavery. George Washington himself owned hundreds of slaves.
The US Constitution is a living document. It can be changed (amended) for the better, and by and large it has been changed for the better. Constitutional amendments are the reasons that slavery is no longer legal, that all citizens can vote, that all citizens have civil rights.
Okay, so much for history.
We aren't being made slaves of the government. The government, if you mean the federal government, is an entity that is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It is a necessity. But it is no longer functioning as intended. It is controlled by the wealthy. That... is the problem. Who changed that? Rich white (and black) men.

That's extremely appropriative and disrespectful to the millions of African victims of chattel slavery in the United States over the centuries it existed here. You are in no way owned by the government - Federal, State, or Local, by any comparison, in the way those human beings were owned by their masters. It's an unbelievably ignorant and offensive analogy at best. Your fears manifested in the worst possible way are people in government wanting to set up a fairly liberal social democracy, like Bernie Sanders - not slavery, by any measure of the imagination (and in America, most "liberals" are more to the center anyway). Just stop while you're ahead with this obscene nonsense. And beyond that, it has nothing to do with what I said, it's a red herring.

I do remember my history correctly. Slavery extended through the north in the United States - it was limited to the south and some western territories come the time of the Civil War (1860), but during the time of the Revolutionary War was in no way limited to the south. Some of the most northern states still had it after the Declaration of Independence:

Vermont abolished it in 1777
Pennsylvania in 1780
Massachusetts in 1781
New Hampshire in 1783
Connecticut in 1784
New York in 1799
New Jersey in 1804

and mind you, New York, for example, was phased over like two decades into the 1820s. Please don't lecture me on history. Please. I do remember my history correctly, I remember that the north abolished it before the south was forced to stop - not that the north never had it.

And yes, those were the people who set up our country. Jefferson even raped and had children with Sally Hemmings - his slave. Here's a few of our "honorable" founding fathers (though certainly not the only) who owned other human beings:

George Washington
Benjamin Franklin (even allowed the sale of slaves in his general store!)
James Madison
Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson (as mentioned)
George Mason (aka "The Father of the Bill of Rights")
...amongst many others

Granted, some individuals talked a good talk against slavery... while still owning slaves, and did nothing of meaningful substance that stopped it. The same people, such as Jefferson, often having fairly brutal Overseers watching over the slaves.

These same men who only wanted land owners to vote.

Only wanted white people to vote.

Only wanted men to vote.

My comment was accurate. Yours was racist and appropriative. My history is accurate. Yours isn't.

The founding fathers were tyrants in fancy clothes, America is just a country, just like South Africa or France, and that's okay - but this isn't some awesome better than everywhere wonderland. It's a place, like other places. It's better than a lot of places, some places are equal, some are better depending on perspective. And that's okay. Earth is a big planet, there's all kinds of places - America is one of them. We're just lucky those tyrants aren't in charge now.

This goofy worship of these guys is just that - goofy. That's what they were - racist, classist, sexist slaveowners. A whole lot of counties were founded by corrupt, violent, evil people. That's how history can be. They wrote those words for their very small subset to be applied to, not minorities, not women.

If anything - please, don't appropriate slavery as if social policy you don't like is comparable to being put in a "hot box" for 20 days for trying to run away while your loved ones are mauled to death by dogs for trying to do the same. Or you're separated at an auction, because your husband looked like a "strappin' young buck!" to a different "mastah'" despite the horrid lash scars covering his back. Taxes and healthcare policies aren't quite the same. Like, at all.

Thank you! History is always important.

And yea, USA is in no way the best country there ever been. I understand people usually are attached to where they grew up and nothing wrong with that! But other countries exist as well and we get by too. The difference is many of us don't understand patriotism, we know why we like where we live... we are used to it! Also we don't seem to be so embarrassed by our history. Ashamed maybe, but not embarrassed, we accept looking into it. My country too has done many weird and crappy things in the past. But we don't glorify the past.... some even try to learn from it.

I'm just a person, not better not worse, for not being an American.

Not me!

Thank you AllonsY for contributing to this thread! I don't think you should be so hard on Eskielover though, I think his heart was in the right place- I think more than ever he was stating his concern for the seemingly blind and ignorant following of the majority of the American people of our elected leaders- while it seems that there is a lot of corruption that continues to go unnoticed/unprosecuted. Hell, most of the police throughout the country have severe racial profiling- with New York being notoriously known for 'stop and frisk,' with of course the high percentages of people being searched being of non European heritage (by the looks of the color of their skin). As a White woman (of mixed heritage) I am often disgusted by the entitled attitudes that a lot of other people of European descent have in this country, as well as their ignorant yet underlying racism that they don't bother correcting and continue to pass on to the next generation. While none of my ancestors owned slave- I don't have white guilt (anymore), so much as anger towards the injustices and prejudices that still prevail today- Being a white man or woman in this country still affords you many luxuries that one takes for granted(such as the assumed innocent unless proven guilty, unlike the guilty until proven innocent that usually is ascribed to people of color in this 'great' country of ours). I still hold fast to MLK's dream that one day we shall all be seen as equal under the law, no matter the color of our skin, but the content of our character- as well as the fact that we can reverse/amend the laws written into place in the guise of homeland security that are slowly taking away our unalienable rights as human beings. I'm tired of the NSA and the CIA overstepping their boundaries and creating more of a police like state of affairs. We need free health care- hell, I wish The United States was more like European countries such as Denmark, they get free education from elementary through university schooling and master programs!
Far too long has the economy of this nation been held up by the backbone of the working class, with the rich paying less taxes and don't get me started on greedy stockholders and CEO's buying out politicians and pushing GMO's hidden in plain sight with us all being used as their guinea pigs. Not too mention that the president bailed out the bankrupt car companies as well as corrupt and greedy companies like Fanny Mae with the peoples money- we have all these taxes applied and taking out of our earnings, were the one's left with the bill for big government eff ups and they still can't raise the minimum wage to where it should be in accordance with inflation over the last several decades.
It's been calculated that it should be at about $22-23/hr.
Whew! Ok, that's enough for tonight.

What a fascinating conversation! You are all so intelligent and dedicated to your beliefs.

I must say I sympathize. I come from a small country that has been attacked for many hundreds of years, villages razed, women raped, men tortured and all taken away as slaves. A hundred and fifty years ago a famine drove my people to this country and when they tried to obtain work, everywhere were signs that said 'No Irish need apply.'

So they took on the dangerous jobs-most of them becoming cops and the heart of NYC cops is on every Irish face you see. They are still fighting, my people, and it saddens me. To fight for freedom from the Enlish is one thing, to fight over religion is shameful. The same goes for my Welsh and Scottish brothers.

I absolutely expect to walk into WalMart one day and see someone go mad
at the check out lane. There will be gunfire over the prices and the revolt will begin. Smaller packages of food and higher prices. More contaminated food and less real food because real food cost more. Young mothers on welfare that can't afford diapers anymore. And people will storm the gun section and by the time it ends there will be a bloodbath. But the prices will still be higher next week.

La-di-dah, Miss Scarlett-we're tippin' way past the point of reason or return. La-di-da

It's already happened with pepper spray on Black Friday, but due to bargain greed instead of a revolt. And every time I see the obligatory news coverage of Black Friday, I am sickened at being told by US media how much I should CARE about unbridled, boorish, loutish hypercapitalism.