The (Un)American Way (Political Thread - Danger! Danger!)

The DMCA, war-mongering with a country that would be too stupid and is too afraid to attack us first (Iraq) and the "Axis of Evil", tax cuts for the rich to solve a slowly failing economy, pull-out of several key world treaties, the Wasteland of Afghanistan... the list goes on and on.....

What do other (non-fanatical) folks around the world think of America these days and its "illustrious and heroic" president Bush? He started out as a mediocre loser who seemed hellbent on handing out the country's extra money in tiny denominations at the behest of an awful lot of people. Then he decided to remove the U.S. from world cooperation on the environment and weapons of mass destruction.

Then, 9/11 struck and everyone got wrapped up in a patriotic fervor and we ran off to attack a madman in the middle east. Now, not that I'm saying we shouldn't go nail this guy anyway, because he's been linked to an awful lot of bloodshed in the past, but the funny thing is, if you sit down and think about it, noone in power ever actually PROVED to the world that Bin Laden attacked WTC. We, the American people, and the other peoples of the world, were never privvy to any of the information that our government claimed to have. It more than irritates and disturbs me that our government won't share with us this purported information....

Shortly after the attacks (on 9/14) Bush invoked a state of effective martial law and most people never noticed. He had full veto and censorship power during this "national emergency" as well as the ability to launch attacks without congressional consent...

Then, Ashcroft, our attorney general, and my former governer Tom Ridge (who took up the position of head of homeland security - which to date doesn't seem to have done a damned thing except suck up tax dollars) started calling for all sorts of interruptions into citizens' private lives. They've begun holding people without charges, holding secret trials, denying them lawyers and family visits..... scary. As if this weren't bad enough, they've given the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Secret Service all sorts of mean tricks like wiretaps and surveillance powers... scarier.. I didn't trust these people to begin with because of their constant blundering... I'd rather have a pea shooter to protect myself from terrorists than some of the idiots they have running these organizations...

Now, the president wants to go blow up Saddam (who is, of course, a lunatic) come hell or high water and the fact that noone else wants to risk thousands of innocent lives to do it isn't about to deter him (I wouldn't mind the idea of going after the looney toon - but since we're not in firing range of him and noone who is wants to help...). He can't find one lunatic in middle eastern mountains, so he'll go blow up another one in the desert (presumably, if he can't find that one either, he'll try to go get the one in Iran, or, with the knowledge now that N. Korea has a secret nuclear program running, maybe over there). Don't forget the fact that wars have an interesting way of making people temporarily forget that their government has run their national debt into the upper stratosphere and the economic situations of individuals into the 9th circle of Hell (well... forget that part.. we're talkin' war here! YEEEHHHAAAAAWWW!).

Yea... I'm proud to be an American... whoopee... now, if you'll excuse me, John Ashcroft is outside my door with some nice looking men in black suits and dark sunglasses... maybe they came to give me that nice pitch black Mercedes sitting across the street and the interesting camera that's with it....

What I think about the USA (incomplete):
[political flamethrower on]
you elected a president. Obviously his political program fitted your ideas and dreams for the next four years and you considered him competent to implement your dreams and represent your contry on the "international stage". Your president is implementing your ideas by bombing countries on the other side of the planet and threating everyone who does not agree with him. Ouch - what are your political ideals again? Liberty and democracy, wasn't it? (And hey, Pakistan has become a democracy just weeks after 9/11, before which it was a military dictatorship with nukes, due for a deserved intervention.)

Oh, btw, we also can go further into US history. It doesn't look too good at any point. (Thanks for helping in WW2, even though the Normandy operation was rather late.) Have you seen the movie "Punishment Park"? It's forbidden in the USA, even though it's just political critique (and not even communistic).

One more thing: Americans have, from a European point of view, weird ideas of international politics. (Have you read ESR's weblog? That tendency to imperialism lacks just one more idea: "Wir brauchen mehr Lebensraum." ("We need more lifespace." - Hitler)) OK, ESR is probably not the typical citizen, but the typical citizen is never concerned enough about how foreigners see the USA to show his thoughts to the world. Hence, we only ever see a few persons and from them our emotions towards the USA are derived. (Another guy: Tom Clancy. No comment.)

Just fyi: in Europe, it has become customary to consider Americans weird until proven otherwise.
[political flamethrower off]

Please do not reply with flames against Europeans or non-Americans or anything else of this kind. I won't read them and you'll be off topic.

Moderators: feel free to delete this if you consider it too extreme.

I didn't vote. Quite frankly, if you actually LOOK at what the other guy has done, said, and stood for, he's not much better. In America, if you vote, you have to choose between a bad crook and a worse one. If you don't vote, you're lambasted as unpatriotic and unamerican or just plain lazy. Problem is, I looked at what the contenders actually DID and SAID and that's what caused me not to vote. Let me get this straight.. I'M lazy because I didn't vote. YOU'RE (not you.. some fictional third party) a patriotic American because you didn't pay attention to the race and then voted on name recognition in a 10 minute process? Give me a friggin break...


Not uncommon... the only major group that seems to have banned more than us in recent years is the catholic church (and we may even be ahead of them).


Can't say as I blame you... the big thing here is SUVs with American flags on them to help support the war on evil mideast terrorists. Ummm... right. SUVs that guzzle $30 worth of gasoline a week in a country that gets almost all of it's oil from mideast terrorists... great.. smart...


Really, you bring up a lot of good criticisms of the country that a lot of peolpe in this country simply don't want to face. We have pulled ourselves entirely off a world stage we were only really pretending to cooperate with all along. We have basically bitch-slapped the face of the world with an iron gauntlet and no one here cares. We have taken the ultimate haughty "better than thou" attitude by backtracking on almost every bit of progress the rest of the world has labored to accomplish in recent years.

As far a WWII... yea.. don't mention it... please. Especially since the only reason we likely joined the war was to boost the economy. If the people in power didn't know about the mass slaughter taking place in Europe at the time they were complete slobbering idiots. But, of course, to this day our people pat themselves on the back for the "help" we gave Europe during that time. Oh.. then there's all the great aid we provide poor downtrodden people... never mind that we're one of the SMALLEST doners in the world among developed countries... yea.. no problem.. don't mention all the great things we've done... please... no really.... PLEASE DON'T. And people laugh at me when I tell them I want to move to Germany, Japan, whatever....

You know, we're far from the worst country in the world, but we're definitely among the worst of the developed nations...

First of all, thanks for the courteous reply

This is a frequent phenomenon in the "First World" (I use the term solely in a geographical sense). However, if the government encourages (and, of course, allows) political engagement and the opposition does the same (it must, however be a real opposition, in the pluralistic sense), people are at least informed about the major political problems; at best, they become politically active. The worst thing the government and the opposition can do is to promote the "bad guy - worse guy" view. (Unfortunately, the major US parties' structure is too much controlled by interest groups which like it.)

There are industrially developed nations which are worse. Just consider the CIS and its systems. (It has been officially (!) estimated that if corruption in Russia was punished in all cases according to the law, 80% of Russian federal and local government officials would lose their jobs (and many of them would have to spend some time in jail).) As far as democracy goes, the US system is at least stable. Unfortunately, some of its values differ from Europe's (esp. the EU's) values.



Btw, I have read a part of ESR's weblog just now - there's really not much to say (apart from doing the Nazi salute and crying "Sieg heil" in acknoledgement of how the things he writes remind of Hitler's speech in the Reichstag on Sep. 1st 1939 ("Since 5:45 we are shooting back")) since his point of view has not much in common with what is considered civilized over here. That particular gap is just too large.

Bah lucky sods... My 1.1 punto costs more than that a week, and I don't use it that much!!!!!!

Eayah... yah.. but the point was how MUCH they use.. not what it cost (despite all their yelling over here, we still have some of the cheapest gasoline in the world).

hmmm... its not just a "First World" thing. it can be said true for most countries today. the world is run by crooks, thats why its all going to hell.

That's okay.. I just got my handbasket in the mail the other day

By the way.. the guys in black suits want to talk to you folks now.

Well what can I say, if you don't vote you get people like Bush and look at the French lately, they almost elected Le Pen, yet another fascist crook. I understand that the democracy in the USA is different (for those that still call it like that) but I mean there gotta be some alternative. What about that guy, Ralph Nader. If all of those that didn't vote would had elected that guy what would happen in the futur?!

Here in Canada in feredal elections we can choose among ~12 parties usually but we have 2 that are the major ones and 2 others that are gaining quit a lot of popular acceptance (Reform party and Quebec democratic action party, both right wing). Ho and another local leftish party has a deputy (provincial elections if I recall). If you ask me I voted for the Marijuana party ;_)-~~~ which *I think* has at least one deputy in the Parliement telling to those crawling politicians that weed should be discriminilized (owever u spel dat) or even better, legalized. Ya man!

Unfortunately when it is all said and done in the voting arena in the US, what the popular votes says doesn't amount to a hill of beans. This is only true for presidential elections. All the popular votes does is "encourage" an electorate to vote the way we want. It doesn't mean that they have to do this, they are just encouraged to do this. When they fix this aspect more people will more likely vote because the elections will actually be decided by the people.
The government in itself has become more like a corrupt corporations (like M$) and doing things for it's own self intrest and self preservation instead of staying fair and equal to the people of our nation. Only those with deep pockets influence the government today. That is part of the reason why we have many of our problems. Another one would be that a large portion of the populace is just happy being mindless sheep to be herded by our so called leaders. Don't get me wrong, a person can be a smart individual, but nine times out of ten a group of people are stupid. Just look at the senate & house. There are two prime examples.
Now, as unhappy as I am with the government and the corporations that run it, I really don't think I would like to live (full time, love to visit) in another country. I have been to quite a few and haven't seen anything that great there either.
We all have our own problems, some more so than others, and some are more publizied than others. What I honestly think the US should do is close the borders to imigration thereby locking down a population increase and then fix our own problems instead of worrying about the rest of the world. Once those problems are fixed, then open back up the borders and work on foreign affairs. I truly believe that eventually all countries will have to be governed by one unified government (and that form of government doesn't exist yet), but in the worlds current state that is a long way off.
I can sum up what the two biggest problems we have: Greed & Envy. Everyone wants more, more, more and everyone wants what someone else has. This applies to people, government, and countries.

Just my 2 cents.

Well, since I don't feel like committing hours upon hours of my time to yet ANOTHER anti-Bush/anti-US/etc. thread, I'll just leave with this:


I disagree with absolutley everything that you have said Ctb.

What do you mean fix it. That system was put in place to get mindless idiots from taking over this country, and to prevent "mob rule".

By the way, we are supposed to be a Republic not a Democrocy. And the Republic was founded on the Word of God.

Eclipce