Bitcoin Forum

I would like to know the general opinion of my country.
Nobody seems to like it, I don't really like it and it has this weird dollar thing.

There's good people and bad people everywhere...

I voted "Fat people". :D

What about the last resistance agaisnt zombie stalin.

There are many good points of US for e.g. free speech, second amendment, etc. But I am sorry to state that it's all falling apart slowly :(
It's like the proverbial boiling frog story with the American people. Nobody feels the decline since it's slow and gradual but if one looks back 10 - 20 years they do realize it.

I don't like it.  I don't like any nation but America takes the cake for having the most corrupt, overreaching and powerful state with the most passive, sheepish (albeit paradoxically angry) people.  What they're putting in the water is working.  I'm on the first plane out once I can save enough, which is tough since they keep taking what little I earn to pay for the lives of people who I've never met and pay their own debts that have nothing to do with anyone; any entity which makes no money but forms a debt (and lets not even get to how big this nation's debt is) is essentially saying, "We spent your money frivolously and now you're going to pay for it."  And then we wonder how we're going to pay off all this debt like it's supposed to be our problem, which is twice as funny knowing that we won't be paying for it, it's future generations; to support the state is to sell your kids to debt, and you will be supporting the state, or else.

America: "I drink the kool-aid and so should the rest of the world."

Work hard to live the American dream. That's what life is about, isn't it?

Well I'm glad people are taking notice.
Say what you will about republicans, but atleast they seem like they're trying.

I don't know how it works in Europe, but the US is meant to have small government.
We're to blame for giving politicians that much power to begin with.
Anything from this point forth will be damage control methinks.

I actually compare EU to the USA, the difference is Federal Government has too much power over the states, this can be good or bad, it depends what issue is being analyzed, the EU does not have much power over the countries, it's all about economical agreements.

The tendency around Europe is for decentralized government, my country, Portugal, is not a good example, but in the Nordic countries many of the important decisions are being made at the local level.

I see many people talking about the US constitution as it was the best document ever made for a society to be organized, I couldn't disagree more, and I don't think a bunch of christian, slave owners, old white guys a couple hundred years ago ever could do such a thing, they did what they could with what they knew, now we know better, but I feel that that patriotic constitution thing is almost like religion, very hard to change, and dogma is always a problem.

This said, there are lots of good people in/from the US, and lots of bad people, like everywhere else.

I follow US politics as much as I can, and the republican/tea party/libertarian crowd are just too hilarious, for me it's almost unbelievable how such stupid people got into a power position, but like John Kerry said, in America you have the right to be stupid.

But they're the ones that want to balance the budget.
And John Kerry was the douschebag who had the nerve to declare war on syria on the president's/congress behalf.  >:(

D.P.R.K. is heaven in the sky and Belarus its oasis on Earth...  ;D

There is much more to politics than a balanced budget.

I also have no sympathy for the Democratic Party, but usually they make a little more sense, at least when it comes to social liberties.

But isn't the unbalanced budget and it being used as a political tool among the reasons why we are all here on bitcointalk?
I have no sympathy for the Democrats and I thought I was more inclined to the Republican party but if we keep this game alive nothing will change on a deeper level as this entropy* on the top will stay alive like a giant black hole.

* the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity

We don't like your country because of its addiction to war. There's really nothing else to say. Everything else is irrelevant.

+1

The problem is the general rhetoric of USA and how it has too much power compared to other countries.

Meaning how they always say it's the greatest nation ever existed, everything there is right and better than any where else and so on...

If it was on level of France, Germany and UK. It wouldn't be such huge problem for most. Then you could just ignore it like Israel, NK and other lunatics Middle East...

Ah, if only that were true! Yes, the US federal government is too powerful and dangerous. The EU has little power over its member states... other than over 100.000 pages of legislation, regulations, directives, etc. It has a strong tendency toward democratic deficit (power lies with the Commission and Council, not so much the Parliament), and centralises the wrong things (e.g. driver licence design) while failing to protect the so-called "benefits" of EU citizenship, such as equal sociopolitical treatment in all member states for all EU citizens (there are limited exceptions, but, generally speaking). Whatever "benefits" EU citizenship offers could be implemented through voluntary agreements, as kind of happens, for example, between Australia and New Zealand, without the need for an Australasian Union or Australasian Commission/Council/Parliament, and so on.

The economic agreements were/are centred around the EFTA (European Free Trade Association), and to some extent the EEC which was the forerunner to the EU, but even that was built upon political motives (a brief look at the Treaty of Rome confirms such). The EU is a bad move because it centralises power more and lots of people still identify with nations or nation states and not the imperial EU bloc. The EFTA is ok.


True decentralised and democratic government in Europe is more or less limited to Switzerland, and perhaps a few little outposts like the Isle of Man, and the microstates, e.g. Andorra, San Marino.

In some sense I see things organizing much like Orwell predicted in his 1984 with Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, but Western Europe ended up being part of Oceania (aka, 'the West'.)

Lots of Europeans like to piss and moan about the US pushing people around militarily, yet their governments almost universally join right in when instructed.  Economically even more-so.  Many, if not most, individuals in the US are getting pretty fed up with the belligerence in foriegn policy (and numerous other maladies) but at this point we have no real democracy at the federal level.  I would say that it must be pretty similar in the rest of the Western countries and thus their pliability.

Just as some of our leaders (or at least the think-tankers) dream of a 'better Middle East' and re-draw the maps to amuse themselves, I think it would be ultimately beneficial for humanity if the U.S. broke up into 5 or 6 separate states with at most a rough and narrowly defined mutual defense pact to deal with our strategic nuclear stockpile.  Some of the states, at least, would learn from the past mistakes and halt the influence of money in politics in their founding papers.  Those who were serious about this one critical thing would likely prosper given the fantastic infrastructure and nature wealth of the nation as it is currently.

I am grossly disappointed.

The www is a 2-edged sword, on one hand, great access to information, on the other, it can be just a click away from absolutely devastating information about the absolute abuse of power going on.

Wikileaks, the latest Snowden scandal, the alphabet soup gang terrorizing US citizens, it gets overwhelming. Sometimes, this shit makes me downright suicidal. The past month of learning all about Bitcoin actually gave me a speck of hope, for freedom and a new economy.

At least I can verbalize the cynicism, 9 out of 10 people are still asleep, buying the crap peddled by the mainstream media. aka corporate media. I do what I can to help educate people via social websites.

I just recently listened to 1984 audio book, ugh, totally depressing.

Humans, please, evolve, wakeup, and work together to change things. Before it's too late!

no, that's still gonna play out. Anti-US sentiment at governmental level here is rising with the recent NSA revelations, they have even been talking about an "European Internet" (not that they have any clue, but just to show the tendencies).

I think the US government is worse than China. Given it's core value as democracy, but the ironic thing is the US government go and fight other countries just to take away their oil reserve, but often using some excuse to attack to justify their reason. For example, where the hell was the Weapon of Mass Destruction which the US claim could target US? It was never found, because it never existed.

The NSA spying program and also a lot of power the FBI use to control the Internet globally. Is just not democracy. Where is the freedom?

China is a communist country, they suppose to be very bad at human right. They do monitor China's Internet and placed a great firewall of China. But that is just China, not globally like the US is doing. Then the oil aspect, China invest in foreign countries and help them improve their key infrastructures, such as roads, railways, telephone, clean water and so on. Then they work with the countries with oil and buy shares into their oil reserve.

I am beginning to think China is a country with more democracy then the US. I can't wait when China is the most powerful country in the world, and knock US off the rank. ::)

Where is OWHH?

Ya, I sometimes muse about the most likely way for Orwell's prediction to complete.  One must define such an entity by the makeup of it's 'inner party', and I think that it is as true in Europe as it is in the US that individuals of the 'inner party' and those who comprise the government are not particularly the same set.  My best scenario is if we went through a global economic collapse period where value was defined by gold, and the US simply flat out appropriated Germany's (which is pretty much certain to happen.)  At that point, coupled with Russia's energy supplies and favorable geography to gain control of energy transport routes, I could imagine Germany simply switching sides.  Being such a powerhouse, I've little doubt that the rest of Europe would follow (sans GB of course.)

Ultimately I suspect that the PNAC folk were right in that there is room for one more period of hegemony in a multi-polar world before a single entity takes over completely.  Even if they are right it does not mean that such a structure could not fragment but it might be difficult to provoke.  Anyway we are looking out several centuries for this stuff.  I personally, for whatever reason, find myself more comfortable and preferring a plethora of smaller states who jealously guard their independence and do the right thing as much as possible.

You may get your wish, but the recent experience of countries like the Philippines gives a preview of how much fun it is to deal with an ascendant China.

There is no doubt that US power is eroding and the NSA spying is horrible but there is still a lot of idealism in the US and its problems are on the front page for everyone to see.  Many other countries try and hide and cover up their problems often attempting to deflect blame somehow to the US.  

Actually according to the history lesson, China explore the entire world in 1405. They were peaceful and just do trading and visiting different countries. http://www.economist.com/node/5381851 (http://www.economist.com/node/5381851)

Whereas, when the Westerner explore around the world in 1492. They went around conquering different countries and killing other native people to steal from them.

If China become the most powerful country in the world. There will be no more war. Unlike the US, which love war. If you look at all the history, how many countries have they ruin? Just recent years; Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and they are targeting Iran next. How many war has China started in the recent years?

I do believe the world will be a much more peaceful place to live in. 

your crazy man ..............so the Chinese didn't brutally murder the monks in Tibet shutting down all the monastery and crushing there religion!!!!!!!!!!!!!  that the Chinese didn't kill 100,000,s of there own people when they decided to rise up against them. im sorry but your a fucking idiot to post that , go read a book on Chinese history man   

How many people and countries have the American destroy, including their own soldiers who goes to war? How many people have the American killed? Compare that to the Chinese, I think the US killed more people. Also fire work was invented by the Chinese to do celebration. The western countries reinvented the gun power to kill. How many people have been killed by the weapons sold by the US? Count all that then tell me, isn't China more peaceful? If you talk about religion US is attacking all the Islam countries. China only attacked Tibet. You said China had kill 100,000s of their own people. How many Native American Indian was killed by the American? How many people was kill in the civil war? 

your a twat............... did i support the US NO, did i defend the US NO....... what the fuck you talking about!!!!! dosnt matter how many people one people killed they still killed people your an R-Tard!! the chinese are taking over the planet and that alone will lead to war and the deaths of millions of people , your such a massive fucking stupid fucking twat cunt fuck face prick cunt . people like you make me fucking sick with your short sighted opinion i hate WAR i hate the need for the killing of people for resources of the greedy oligarchs of this world . your comment was ANTI American and ANTI HUMANITY i seek peace for all mankind and advocate war to the mentally ILL people like you.

Dose anyone talk about the Spanish killing millions of people in the south Americas NO THEY DONT
Dose anyone talk about the Millions Killed By Ghengas Khan NO THEY DONT
Dose anyone talk about the 6 Million Horses Killed in world war 2 NO THEY DONT
Dose anyone talk about the Millions Killed by Man Made Virus's that are produced by multiple country's NO THEY DONT 

you are a fuck-tard go fuck your own face

To all other members of this forum im sorry for my rage at this person

I do think you are over reacting, mate. Why all the insult? Did I call you any names? The topic of this discussion is about "Opinion on the US". So of course I only focus on the US!!

You should calm down, I have my right to my opinion. All those insults are uncalled for.  ;)

Also shouldn't you be saying sorry to me, instead of to all the other members of this forum, which you didn't insult to?  ::)

@dragonkid

As I see it, China has some significant problems.  Overpopulation and poor land for agraculture for one.  China spends more on internal security than external defence because, like most nations, the most salient threat is from it's own people.  We'd be the same except that we spend such a huge amount to support our far flung empire.

China also is getting reamed by the US since we've parked in the Middle East and control access to energy at the moment.

By militarizing heavily for external conflict and eventually engaging, China would kill a bunch of birds with one stone.  Rally people around the flag so they forget their domestic problems, reduce their population and re-adjust the gender gap, end up parked in the Middle East and in control of land-based energy routes, control farm land in Africa, etc.  China could lose 10-to-1 against the US and still win (Most people achieve a 1 to 10 body count ratio against us, but then we normally fight on foreign soil and count women, children, pigs, etc.)

Anyway, I hope for everyone's sake that China's leaders don't take up my ideas, but I suspect that eventually the solution will turn out to be to sweet to pass up.  Particularly if they are looking at a revolution and loss of power anyway.

I kind of laughed when I voted for fat people and saw it was the most voted choice :)

And to both
China had evil US Had evil
Superpowers tend to do evil XD

Minor point about overpopulation - China has about half the population density of the UK and is much less than many western European countries. Spain and France are lower.
ie China doesn't have a population problem.

China will not put resources into an international conflict - if they do they will open up possibilities internally for revolution (that's how Mao came to power in the first place).
The Chinese do not want another revolution - they just want to get rich.

I vote for Fat People, everyone is eating too much McDonald.

That is my perspective why if China is the most powerful country in the world. The world will be a more peaceful place.

Imagine, when that happens US or UK, want to start a war on some random country. Then they will ask for China's approval, China will just tell them, forget about fighting and just make money.

Whereas in the present moment, anything happens in the world, when US see they can get gain from it. They just go to war without consent from even the UN.

So when China is the big brother in the world stage, they probably will still monitor their own people. But they can also declare it as terrorism, when NSA or GCHQ want to spy on the world.

By the way, I am British. In case anyone is wondering. So I am neutral in this discussion.

A guy can only make so much money supplying tennis shoes to the world.  At some point it occurs to folks that money is simply a means to something more...usually this occurs after making a lot of money.  To a decent person, what comes after money is happiness, and that comes from doing decent things.  To a not so decent person, it is raw power.  Unfortunately those in a leadership position tend to favor the latter (which is related to why they seeked out a leadership position in the first place most likely.)

I suspect that it is foolish to suppose that whoever can gain control of 1x10^9 Chinese would be notably more benevolent as rulers of planet earth than any other individual or group.

Commoners rarely want to fight their peers in other nations absent a pretty robust engineering effort by their leaders.  To me the best hope is to empower common individuals to make decisions about geopolitical direction.  Wars of conquest would then be quite unlikely I believe as people would tend to be focused on, as you say, making money.

Why you just don't leave your country then?
Nobody will miss you probably

Typical answer from a purist American  ::)

For some communists "purist American" sounds same as evil.

USA is now one of the biggest communist country of the world. A country ruled by a government sponsored by big monopolies and backed by a private entity called the FED.

The problem with american people is that they are having a hard time to face that new reality. They prefer lies rather the ugly truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU

BTW that system is not very different for most of occidental countries. America is just leading the way.

I can agree that thanks to all very popular now pro communist views USA is not a country as it was before.
In 1929 US made more goods than all other world in total. Now we do not produce even t-shits. Thanks to welfare and other social programs we create a class of people who just suck that system generation by generation.
Sure they will vote for any moron who will promise them more freebies. And a lot of politicians just rely on this group of people which became the biggest one. Now private business can not even fire the employee without asking union first. This is a shame.

I think that Americans are in a very dangerous place right now.  Most of us are complacent.  We think our freedoms are guaranteed.  We forgot how many people gave up their lives for those freedoms but they are slowly being stolen from us and most people don't even see it or care.  For instance, the whistle blowers are banished for just revealing the truth?  Where is our freedom of speech?  That is just one issue.

I guess I am not longer blinded by the Stars and Stripes and my loyalty is not as true as it probably once was. 

:L We're shut down anyway aren't we

Yep. I agree with this. I wasn't born 15 years ago, so I wouldn't know the comparison, but I still agree with your points. The grand canyon is definitely a must-see, and luckily for me I live only about 5 hours drive from it :D It's truly amazing beauty.

Thanks for sharing this, this is a very good documentary.  :)

Lol! More voted "Fat people" than "Money laundering land"

Haha, Fat People got the most votes....

I love america (deliberately not capitalized), but I fucking LOATHE the United States. The two don't equate. A couple centuries back, some guys with various motives got together and threw off the yoke of an oppressive empire. So far, so good. It took them less than a decade to draft a document that guaranteed a return to tyranny, and "four score and seven" years to fight a war that made even the few roadblocks in that document irrelevant.

Even so, the spirit of liberty and self sufficiency remained.

Then, the descendants of the traitorous mob started this new idea called "making the world safe for democracy" as if that were some noble goal. Our "leaders" started or participated in multiple foreign wars, killed the currency, lied about it, and then stole the gold.

Even so, the spirit of liberty and self sufficiency remained, though it was coming under fire on a daily basis.

Then, the descendants of the descendants of the traitorous mob stopped caring about whether or not a thing was legal, if they could get away with it. They escalated wars in Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Iraq and Afghanistan and many other places. Called most of them "police actions" as if the nations they were incinerating were errant petty criminals within their own purview rather than independent nations. Largely, they got away with it.

Meanwhile, on the home front, they used every overt and covert tactic they could dream up to demonize the idea of self sufficiency and pervert the meaning of liberty.

It worked. Americans, who live under a police state reminiscent of Soviet Russia or the early stages of Nazi Germany, think they are free, while kowtowing to every whim of anyone with something looking like "authority". The idea of self sufficiency is under constant attack, and most people buy into this thing called "society" without analysls.

I was born in 1968. Outside of the big cities, america was mostly still a free nation then. I saw it begin to erode in the late seventies (The erosion was already advanced, I just finally saw it then). Now, just shy of 45 years after my birth, I cannot recognize this place as anything even resembling my country of birth. You now need official permission to breathe, let alone do anything useful.

Yet when I was a kid, the police and the officials in government would not DARE speak to average citizens with the open contempt they now display. It would have cost them too dearly. Now, they have reduced us to this. It's pathetic, and it's getting worse daily. They cavort high on the hog on the backs of all of us, and most of us LIKE IT.

I am damn near destitute, or I would have taken my family and fled some years ago. I have had many friends go on vacation to Europe or parts of Asia, and never come home. They found something far better, and went with it. I am jealous. I missed the opportunity.

There will come a point when the empire falls apart from within. The point of no return was probably passed in 1971, when the Nixon administration approved the default on american currency.  There is no saving this mess sort of it's complete dissolution, and that day will come. Unfortunately, it will come with little warning and no plan. I do not look forward to this, as at the rate it's going, I'll still be here.

What does it mean to "love america"?  Do you love all the atoms that make up the entirety of america?  Do you love all the 300 million or so people who live there?  Do you love the government?  I don't understand what this phrase means?  

And does it mean that any physical part of america you love more than any physical part of the rest of the world?   Do you like the local trash heap better than say a luxury home in another country?

This grouping stuff just seems like cultism to me.   A country is just an in group and outsiders are not as good.  

Here in Australia, people call others "unAustralian" to describe a douche.  Well, I'm unAustralian.  I don't subscribe to any of this country nonsense.  That people in a physical location are somehow joined in some way.  Just because you are an Australian (or American or whatever) doesn't necessarily make you better or worse than any other human.  

If you are talking about loving the idea of freedom and liberty, then I agree with you.  But that doesn't equate to america nor solely is it the province of americans.

hard to put into proper words. I am a bit more awake now :) For the most part, I agree with you. I'm trying to convey the idea that I love the land of my birth and the major concepts that led to it breaking away from Britain. I hate what it has become. I also love the wide open spaces and mountains and coasts. The people? Not so much. I have met people from all over the world, and the average US citizen seems to be blithely ignorant of the world around them to a greater degree than most other people.

Of course that could be a false impression, since I met most of those people IN the USA, but with the advent of computer based communication my impression seems to be strengthened.

Everybody put his own ideas saying "I love America".
I say, I love the spirit of people who build that country. I was not born in US and I can compare. That is why I live in US and I thank god for this. I can agree that this country became a different now, and unfortunately it looks like there is no way to get this country as it was earlier. Now it became so popular to talk about how bad US is (basically US became what it is MOSTLY because of them). I wish these people try to live in country like Russia for example, where biggest speech freedom lover run. He really chose the best country for himself. I am sure, that if he would call reporters he could be a hero. But he is a chicken, so he run to the country which (I am sure about that) made him a Russian spy for the money. He sold his soul to Russia.

Adds another Documentary to share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKnS-Adc_2E

You say you love the land of your birth, but what does that mean really?  It is an artificial border drawn around a wide area by a group of people calling themselves the US government.   The "land" where you were born was a very small patch of this.

As for the wide open spaces, mountains and coasts you'll find these in many other places.  Not to mention America is also very cramped in many places as well eg. Manhattan.  Do you love those spaces as much?  They are also part of america.  Not to mention the ugly parts of America.  To me this is just saying I love the beautiful parts of Earth.

As for the people, I have lived in 2 countries (Britain and Australia) and ignorance is pretty high in both as well.  Here in Australia people frequently laugh at "dumb Americans" but percentage-wise there are just as many dumb Australians.  I've found that people that like to laugh and say how dumb others are, do so often to cover up their own insecurities.  And when it's done on a national level, ie. laughing at dumb Americans but shouting "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" then it's just dumb nationalism.

I'm not so sure about the motives.  I think there were some people that wanted liberty but others who wanted power.  Those who wanted power were able to set up a government, but compromised on some aspects,  knowing how it worked and they would be able to subvert it later.  We are yet to see true freedom and liberty in this world.  Things are worse now than ever, we basically have fascist security states, but that doesn't mean things were good in the past.  They just weren't as bad as now.    Beware of looking through rose-coloured glasses.   

As of 2013, the USA ranks 10th out of about 177 countries on the Index of Economic Freedom. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_economic_freedom
While the US used to be higher on that index, 10th place is still not too bad. That said, there are many continuing threats to the US and Americans. Most of the Answers to these threats are in Milton and Rose Friedman book "Free to Choose". See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_choose
However, the American political leaders can not even keep their own government open so I highly doubt they could implement any of Milton Friedman's great ideas.
In short, America will be its own downfall. Fiat currency, fractional reserve banking and big government will bring it down. The question is not "if", but "when".

In all fairness who compiles the Index of Economic Freedom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation#Criticism

That said over multiple sources its not that bad

Anyways its downfall will be the Republican Presidential System
Tensions between two parties unable to make a policy might create a collapse
Chile is the only other example of a Constituinal Republic to last as long as the USA until Pinochet :)

Then surely you would be an even bigger fan of Africa.

I think the US need to stop policing the world and fix their own problems first, such as a certain national debt about to reach its limit. For example, Japan and South Korea don't need a stack of US military bases, they should allow for Japan to remilitarise to pre-WW2 levels and let them and South Korea work out a joint military alliance with other nations like the Philippines and Vietnam to keep China from trying to encroach on their territories. Same with the Middle East, the Arab League could easily provide their own regional security without needing US bases in Saudi Arabia. Even their base in Germany would have to be seen as pretty much redundant since the end of the Cold War and the expansion of the European Union to include former USSR countries. I also don't welcome the idea of US Marines being increasingly deployed in Australia, particularly in Darwin.

I find it mildly disgusting that they can blow a shitload on their military, but have thousands of homeless people and people dying because they can't afford ludicrously expensive healthcare.

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that while Americans (myself included) know that they aren't the best, they will sure think and give off the attitude "hell yea I'm the best!!!!!!" 


I know I've caught myself falling for this line of thinking...its not about who is better, but how you utilize everyone's strengths and weaknesses together. 

Yes I'm fat...totally a fat guy.  But I've seen what appears to be fat people on various countries not just America.  I like my size though...I noticed that fat people don't talk shit about fat people - its usually the awkward loser skinny people or insecure skinny people that feel compelled to point out obesity lol.  You know who you are...you made fun of fat kids when you were young....you're insecure lol.

Lazy?  Sure...I like doing less physical work at a greater level of efficiency than you.  I can't help it if you refuse to learn Excel stuff like MID, Text To columns, and VLookup lol.

I wish you would've added more colorful answers such as:

Has a dumbass government

Fucks up at policing the world

Costs more for healthcare than my country

Is full of too many entitled little shits who think the world should keel to them after college

Had a dumbass billionaire darknet empire king arrested in the sci fi section of the Public Library.




Since none of them could match what I desired I simply just don't give a flying spaghetti monster fuck nor shit nor private key of DPRs brain wallet. Fix the above and by all means I wont feel those sentiments...Thank you very much free speech. 

I heard USA is bankrupt.

Officially declared as such in 1971.

Since governments rule by force and threat of force (if'n you don't do as we say, we are gonna come lookin' for ya), I have a low opinion of any government.  I can rule myself, thank you.

I use to have a dream to live in America...but nowadays...not so much...

depends where there are places in the US that are now hell
but a few spots are still sort of heaven :)

Yeah the major cities are full of welfare scum.. better head for the mountains

Didn't know it was once bankrupted.

Too bad you can only vote for one.

I hate you people that can pull off brevity! (j/k, I actually just wish I could be that brief and still get my point across.

I agree with this post 100 percent.

taking the dollar off of the Bretton Woods standard, making it 100 percent fiat, was as close to shouting 'bankrupt' from the rooftops as you could possibly get. It's probably the biggest debt default in history.

The more a government control money, the more artificial is its value.


A Dollar bill can't even wipe the ass properly.

I wish I could disagree with you. But I can't. Since they changed the composition in '01, it don't even make a decent joint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=580GyjDTlc8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=580GyjDTlc8)

Unless you are unlucky enough to be a neighbor of China:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Tibet_(1950)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

Such a peaceful people, the Chinese.  They even play nicely over fishing rights:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands


If the Chinese would play nice with their neighbors, the US 7th Fleet could come home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Seventh_Fleet

DragonBoy, take your propaganda elsewhere.  ::)

It seems to be a rule that the more powerful a government gets the worse it's behaviour.  Logical when you think about.  They are just people.   People with very few restraints on their behaviour.  People who get away with invading and killing other people and destroying vast amounts of property over and over again.

But it's a necessary evil ;)

I know that was tongue in cheek (and I think we're on the same page at least 90 percent of the time) but I would like the larger audience to think about that phrase.

"necessary evil" and "choosing the lesser evil" are two phrases that grind my gears.

I will state as a fact that while always present, evil is NOT necessary, and that if you are going to deliberately choose evil, as in elections, then you should not be a pussy. Go ahead and choose the greater evil. If you are actually trying to escape evil, arm up and don't participate in the farce known as democracy.

Yes, I do find we are always in complete agreement; what you're saying is the truth.  There is no such thing as a necessary evil, there is only the good we cannot see.  But to be frank, I can't think of any evil that didn't consider itself necessary; humans always believe the evil they're doing is necessary or else they wouldn't do it.  Behind every villain is good intent and a winding road to hell.

In the case of democracy, the necessary evil is propagated in the idea that a law passed by majority vote is moral, when in reality it can be anything; if 6 out of 10 people agree that rape is lawful, it doesn't become any more moral than before.  If the foundation of law is morals and ethics, then democracy is, by its very nature, an invalid form of government, for there is a paradox in democracy: if the people are knowledgeable enough to effectively participate in a democracy to ensure that all laws are ethical and justice is upheld, they would have no need for a democracy; they would be anarchists.

Really?  Can you drive your Honda Civic over rivers and through forests, or do you need a maintained road?

Some level of government is necessary when people gather in groups, if only to pay for shared services.  It's the reach of the government that is important - you guys have given your road builders way too much power.

My significant other is from a country with a King. There's no asking questions, and your family may disappear if you say something like "He's an idiot".

Yeah, the USA is the worst country ever...

Maybe we need to be more like Gandhi and "be the change"  instead of sitting on a PC complaining about it. If there's anything bad about America, it's that we blame everybody else. Change some crap if you don't like it.

Corrupt politicians? Do you even know where the word lobbying comes from?
Starving kids? Easy fix.
Too much debt? Set the example first.
Too few services? GET INVOLVED.
Too many services? GET INVOLVED.
Don't like something? GET INVOLVED.

At least write a friggin' letter. It worked for America in 1776 and 1863.

I am rather dedicated. I'm better with words than with a placard in the streets (been there, done that), and I have been DEEPLY involved in politics.

What I found was that those who seek office should NEVER have any form of power over anyone but themselves, because they INTEND to use it for personal gain, or their personal vision of hell paradise. Being an anarchist at my age is not a reactionary or unreasoned position. It might be for the very young, a sort of diffuse teenage rebellion, but for those of us with some years under our belts, the philosophies of liberty are not abstracts or simply a topic for discussion amongst friends or internet fora.

Some basic truths about the United States of America. The corporation, not the nation of people.

One. The system cannot be reformed. Why? Because it works as it is intended. No, not the bullshit they sell you on the idiot box, the ACTUAL intent. Which is to gain as much power in the hands of a few "elites" as possible without fomenting a revolution. The "federalists" (imperialists, if we're to be honest and historically accurate) recalled very well the vast uncertainties and suffering caused by a full scale revolution. But unlike the "anti" federalists (who were ACTUALLY federalists rather than imperialists), the Federalists wanted a strong central government FOR THE PURPOSE of making the United States (plural, at the time) into one great empire. It took them a few decades and an otherwise unnecessary war, but they pulled it off. From 1865 onwards, nearly everything they have done has had the express purpose of expanding and consolidating the central authority. They have succeeded brilliantly. Alexander Hamilton would be immensely proud of the current government.

Two. Those who would rule want power like a drowning man wants air. I have personally met almost all of the current senate and about half of the current congress at earlier stages in their so-called careers. There is not one of them that I think this untrue of, except Dr. Ron Paul who I'm unsure of. That he is sincere in his beliefs, I have no doubt. But I'm not certain whether he has that lust for power. Unlike the whole rest of them, he was a gentleman to the staff. I give him points for that, and for much of his philosophy. But he sought power at the Imperial court, and he got it for many years. That makes him dangerous, even if his intentions are good. Which I am not certain of. The rest of them would throw their mother in front of a freight train for one more vote. And I AM certain of that.

Three. Voting is futile. You are given a very limited choice. You do not vote on law or regulation. You have no choice in that at all. The United States of America is not the Swiss Confederation. Citizens have privileges and duties, not rights. Nor real power. You can't even own the property you live on in any real sense. As Emma Goldman said, if voting could change anything, they would make it illegal. Contrary to the popular saw, voting TAKES AWAY your right to bitch, as you are supporting the system, regardless of the outcome.

I have much more, but that's enough to chew on for now.

You're total ignorant.

This is a common argument: "if the government doesn't provide it, nobody will."

The state doesn't build any roads; the state pays people to build roads.  If you've ever given somebody money for or to do anything, you've accomplished what the state is capable of.

Now consider how a business usually functions:

Group A wants/needs something.
Group B can give/perform that something for a profit.

Ergo, business; this is especially true when Group B does not gain, except for profit, for helping Group A, such as building roads they'll never drive on.  So the question is: if the state no longer held a monopoly over road building, would nobody, not a single person, not even the road builders who are paid by the state to build roads, step up and form a business around building and maintaining roads?

I would like to believe, after so many successful businesses surrounding far more trivial matters, we're capable of roads.

Irony poster child ^^
Why so glum, chum?  CHEER UP!

http://nimg.sulekha.com/sports/original700/2008-8-8-11-37-56-6fbc88301f8a40fbbd62f499f64cf227-6fbc88301f8a40fbbd62f499f64cf227-2.jpg

Police state 101, No thanks, they use strong arm terrorism covered up as a "fight against terrorism" to get what they want

Your viewpoint is interesting, though I don't know anything about you other than what you wrote in this post. I agree, to a lesser degree, with some parts of it. I was going to ask why you don't move to France or Russia or Zimbabwe or ________ but I think you alluded to something when you said you were not referring to the "nation of people". Does this mean you hold out hope for what it could be (i.e. what the actual people could make it), or that you've given up entirely on the US and you're just waiting for it to fall apart enough to reassemble the pieces?

I'm divided on the issue. I've lived in and traveled through about 2/3rds of the country.

I definitely do not see the United States of America as America. The people and the government are completely at odds, though most of the people don't seem to see it. the USA is a charter corporation by any rational definition. America, well, the word is a description of a place, and also a set of sometimes contradictory ideals.

Over the course of 45 years, I've watched those ideals go from largely being lived by the people (but never the government) to just about complete abdication of individuality in some places (like Western Pennsylvania and Southern California). 10 years ago, I would have said that leaving was the only option. That the experiment was too corrupted to continue, the people at large too stupefied to do a damn thing about it.  Now I'm not so sure. I keep running into people, especially younger people, who are just plain fed up with the antics of mordor The District of Columbia. And they are everywhere. Not a majority, yet, nor even enough of a mass to tip the scales, but it's a growing tide. I have high hopes for the ideals and idealism of the american people. But I can't see it getting better without getting a lot worse. I would hope that when it falls down (and it must, at this point. They've gone too far on too many things to ever right the ship), that it goes down more like the old USSR rather than what I see as more likely.

Revolution. People like to talk about revolution, but nobody sane wants it to happen. There is no guarantee that what comes out the other side will be worth living in. There is no chance of a revolution without massive bloodshed. And to be perfectly honest, I think that the USA would use it's nukes on it's peasants if they revolted. It isn't collectively long sighted enough to realize that doing so would be the end of it's viable existence. Nobody would trade with it ever again, and the USA doesn't have a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction. But they want that power...

So, as a father, I feel it fairly incumbent on me to physically leave before it gets that far. I don't currently have the resources to do it. But my wife and I have both come to that conclusion. But I at least hold out some hope that those who choose to stay might turn it around. Not a lot, but still...

I wish all american haters and talking with aplomb about corruption and so on leave the country for Russia, Cuba, North Korea where their socialist ideas already fulfilled. They don't even know what they talking about.
They just should remember that not one bloody revolution brought anything good anywhere. To destroy something is easy. To build something is hard.

Not even this one? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution)

i said not one

Is it really your country?
You have Russian name. Also, what you mean under "weird dollar thing"?

While I mostly agree with you, I'd have to say revolutions are a mixed bag. Usually a lot of good comes out of them, and a lot of suffering, and a lot of bad. They are NOT a good gamble, and should therefore be a last resort.

For the record I do not hate America. I hate the United States of America, a foreign power sitting in it's own nation called the District of Columbia. It IS NOT America, it's a ruling institution. By any rational definition, it is an empire. A rather egregious one, currently with more presence in the world than any previous including Rome and the British Empire.

If they were actually about the ideals they preach, they would not have a military presence in 3/4ths of the world, nor be dictating to other nations how they may live and what they may believe.

This parasite on the people of earth MUST be undone. Revolution is not a particularly good option, but the others take a long time, and we may not have that kind of time. I'll not be the first to pull the trigger. Education is a long game, and governments don't usually play long games, unless there is a king.

Did you know Australia overtaken the US in terms of fatties? It's now the Fattest country on earth.

It's also full of alcoholics now. Even the Irish look at us and think "those Aussies have an alcohol problem"

To top it off, cashed up bogans fill the streets because of the mining boom.

And still, Australians don't treat the rest of the world like the US does.

fwiw I tend to distinguish the USA from America. The government from the people.

America and everything it used to project is disappearing fast but it's always had a government in modern times that suffered a creeping paranoia and belligerence. Probably the worst problem facing America is the Zionist takeover of US foreign policy, creeping police state, fascism and seemingly endless illegal wars and rampant extra judicial killings on a whim, which all do nothing for its image abroad. They're nothing new of course but are becoming increasingly distasteful and blatant and perhaps a dress rehearsal for the coming collapse at home.

I live in the UK and have a similar attitude to the corporate stooges enriching themselves and running this corrupt shit hole of a country into the ground too.

Now ask yourself which of those two things the false wars on some drugs and some terror, the patriot act, homeland security, surveillance state and the NSA is doing.

I'm going to be anal and say that America is a series of continents, not a country.   ;)

When I use the word America I'm not thinking about geography and arbitrary fences.

I'm even less US-centric.  When i use the word America, i'm thinking about America, Limburg, Netherlands.

*the "series of continents" is called Americas, according to the series of tubes.

Ok, now you're being super-anal.   ;)

Murica!!!

Having been all over the world, people are more similar than not, though the political structures and regimes are as different as can be.
Stereotypically there are some big differences, which are fine to use categorically, but generally wrong when applied individually.

The thing that Americans generally have in common is that they are either immigrants or descended from immigrants.  This means that they tend to be somewhat more venturesome than average.  Either they or their ancestors were explorers, or more motivated and less risk averse than their cohorts.

This is a slight skew to the population from this, often this is a good thing, sometimes it is not.

Yes, the US has implemented most of Marx's communist manifesto's (http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/tenplanks.html) and hasn't come to terms with it.   Yes, we deserve your sympathy and perhaps your pity.  We have a massively burdensome government that is becoming ever more intrusive into our lives and yours, using fear and "terror" to accomplish that, and we struggle to bring any sanity to our polity.  We thank you for your help and understanding with all of that, no one is perfect.  The miss steps will always be more obvious than any good that may be done.

Americans also often blame the people of other countries for that other country's government, this is usually a mistake.  It makes little sense to generalize, but we do it.  Sorry for that, and will try not to hold it against you when you do it to us.

One great thing about the USA: no soldiers are quartered in people's homes without consent.

I think that the generations and the principle of 'regression to the mean' has pretty much nixed that for us old-timers.  We being recognized generally by having Caucasian features.

We have a strong contingent of more recent arrivals however, and this spark can be observed statistically in some of their behaviors.  Work ethic, propensity for education, etc.

Yes, I have Mayflower blood in me, (Capn Standish) and lots of mixing with all that have come since.  More in every generation until now.  If it continues...
Recent activities by TPTB against the citizenry may make it much less attractive going forward though.
The bloom may be off the rose.  I get asked by many, where to emigrate?  Where is the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Possibly Southern hemisphere somewhere.  Needs infrastructure though, so that is both a problem and an opportunity.

The worst thing about the U.S. is obviously meddling into other people's business, other countries, opression, war...

Regardless if I consider some folks in the U.S. backward or weird, some views or ideologies are obtuse, ultimately it's none of my business how people choose to live in their own country.

In my opinion the US wants to be the world leader in all kinds of markets and often think / act like they are. They want to be 'the best', for example concerning the economy, but also world politics and military. 

There's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't mean they can claim rights other countries aren't allowed to have. Such as the telephone wiring they do all over the world. If for example Russia would do this (and i'm not saying they don't), the US would definitely try everything to stop them, I think.

They also suck on a few matters, for example the healthcare and the drugspolicy. But who am I to say that. I'm just a guy from the Netherlands, with allmost the highest costs of healthcare and a drugpolicy which is vague but reasonable in my opinion. I'm glad some US states are now accepting medical cannabis for example. I my opinion you should regulate the drugs and the use of it in your country. Not by punishing, but by education and controlling like it's happening here in the Netherlands and our "coffeeshops".

So you wanna smoke some weed?
Do you want your kids smoke weed too?
Is it your biggest problem that you can not smoke grass openly in US?
If so, I am glad you are in Netherlands.

I'm not saying that I want to smookeweed or my kids should. I'm just explaining that in my opinion the US sucks on a couple of things, such as those policies. It's just an example. Our more open policy regarding drugs is working out way better. Simply punishing for the use of drugs isn't really decreasing the amounts of victims, education does. Atleast, it does here. And I don't think people really differ due to the country they live in.

The silly thing is, while Russia was SSSR, it was King Kong to USA's Godzilla.  She kept Godzilla occupied & focused.  With the great nemesis gone, Godzilla has to find new outlets for all the pent-up rage & aggression.

So careful how you talk at Godzilla :-X

Hehehe. Maybe it's time for Russia to be a King Kong again then. In my view there always should be 2 "world leaders" / countries which act like they are, as they can put pressure on each other in cases of faults. Some of you might say 'Well, Europe is the opposite player' (like Russia was), but I don't really agree with that.

Europe isn't as solid as one country is (in my opinion), allthough they act like they are.

The USSR provided a boogieman that leaders need to cultivate fear among the population, and, relatedly, served as the pressure to keep the military industrial complex fat and happy.  When in collapsed we simply needed a replacement or series of them in order to perpetuate the structures that had evolved under the cold war scenario.  I don't think that very many leaders in very many countries are driven by 'rage and aggression'...they would not have the skills to attain a high position.  Nor do normal people fall into that orbital state by nature.  The job of leadership is to provoke and direct 'rage and aggression' among the citizenry in order to achieve more useful objectives.

The "rage and aggression" part was pandering to the anti-US folks here.  I pretty much agree with you.
Though USSR was more than simply a bogeyman -- it was truly a potential adversary.  Like two different cultures in a petri dish, US & USSR kept each other in check.  Until they didn't.
 
The fat military complex is a complex thing, from the economic perspective -- not simply a drain on economy.  But that's a whole other thread.

USA is the country that waisted the greatest material and intellectual resources of all humankind's history combined to achieve the impossible materialistic dream and imposed it to the rest of the world which will probably cause the end of humankind as we know it.

Apart from that, US is cool. I want to go there one day.

Nothing wrong with pragmatism.  A lot of people I know were delighted to move here, and sometimes permanently, yet still held a critical eye to some of the ways and means of our nation.

A country which can arrange a decent place to live can 'high-grade' people from all around the world.  With good leadership, the advantage this confers can perpetuate the phenomenon.  I think the US 'had it goin' on' for a period of time and benefited hugely, but we are 'losing it' in a variety of ways.  Oh well.  The pages turn in every book.

"Ways and means" = subtle humor? (its the name of the US congressional committee that taxes, and spends on entitlements)

The bankers have had their way with the USA for a handful generations now. The US glory days were the interbank period which began its decline 100 years ago.  Those days with stable money and low taxes are beyond the memory of those that live.  The time since has been momentum and milking the laurels upon which the US now rests.  Bitcoin provides us the vain hope this time may come again, but worldwide, rather than constrained by national borders and tied to a national identity.  It is, for the good of all.

For the patriotic of all the worlds nations, there is some hope that those that govern whatever place you hold dear through your own experiences there, may recognize Bitcoin's merits and not crush it, like a sleeping giant rolling over in its slumber smothering an infant.

The US currently is the largest state holder of Bitcoin.  Maybe that will infect it with some needed sanity?  Hope for change springs eternal.

I think I'm hearing a giant sucking sound as BTC move to China.  I could be wrong though.

Anyway, I am actually actively looking for countries which, if not embrace, are at least not actively hostile to Bitcoin.  Such countries will likely enjoy my attention as a tourist destination and possibly more should the values continue to rise.

I doubt that there are enough BTC holders to make it worthwhile for a country to adjust their policies for persons such as me, though a cycle might evolve where it is worthwhile to do so.  OTOH, until and unless the makeup of those who tend to end up with BTC jingling in their pocket changes, it may be a mixed blessing to entertain such guests.

By state holder, I am referring to the government itself, not individual humans.
I was thinking the buying in China is not the government but individuals, but who can say?  I would think it to be too small for a government to be engaged.  I suspect like other governments, it is accustomed to currency transactions in many millions or billions, not thousands.

America is slowly being turned into a socialist state.

Millions have everything bought and paid for with food stamps, subsidized housing, and cushy government jobs for "minorities," (non-whites).

Whites are being discriminated against in the jobs sector, and it's getting worse every day Obama's administration continues it's reign of terror.

Privacy of US citizens is a thing of the past; with ObamaCare, Obama is driving the final nail in the coffin of free enterprise.

Pretty soon, medicine will no longer be considered a profitable career thanks to ObamaCare.

Fine with me.  If doctors want to be in the field because it is challenging and helpful to people, that's great.  If they want to get rich and play golf, fuck 'em.  I'd rather have a Cuban doctor.

I'm actually perfectly fine with MD's making a good bit of money.  I don't like that the insurance industry makes a lot.  They are, in my opinion, almost completely parasitic.  And the more they screw people, the more they make.  I dis-like Obama-care because it will stretch out our completely fucked up (private) health care system by another decade or so before we can start to catch up with the rest of the developed world.

ObamaCare gives more power to insurance companies, less to consumers like you and I. Increased insurance costs, less choice, etc.

Didn't you read the memo?

The point is, they are taking capitalism out of the equation, and that always ends badly. Whether you think doctors should make as much as they do now is irrelevant.

Every American is now even further beholden to the government thanks to ObamaCare.

If you like paying for other peoples health care, ObamaCare is great.

I cannot defend Obama-care.  In case it escaped you, I said 'dis-like'.

As far as I am concerned, there is more than enough capitalism in the health care industry and that's a big part of the reason that it's so fucked up.  I'm for single payer or at the very least, public option so that a good sized pool has some negotiating power at the capitalist table.  That neither of those came with the so-called 'reforms' is a sadistic joke on the American people.

A good capitalist will realize that when a person is sick or has a sick family member, they are vulnerable to exploitation.  And they do just this without regard or remorse (using the insurance industry as something of a buffer.)  For that reason I am in favor of going the route of pretty much every other Western country and socializing the whole fucking thing.  Until then I plan on self-insuring and practicing medical tourism if/when I need some sort of treatment.  Most of my liberal friend are completely bamboozled by the Obama-care joke/scam.

I live in one of those socialised first world countries and it isn't as great, nor as free as it's cracked up to be.  Here now you have to pay private medical insurance or you end up getting penalized in tax, essentially forcing people to get it.  Health professionals are getting paid more and more money due to an ever increasing shortage of workers thanks to the medical union racket.  Waiting lists are shocking.   You still have a gap to pay so it's not free.   

If I get sick, medical tourism is the way to go I think.  The scare-mongering over that is completely unjustified and just shows what a  government run racket health care has become.  Not unlike the government-run banking cartel screwing their customers.  Because that's why these industries want to get government involved.  So they don't have to submit to market competition.  They want benefits for themselves at the expense of their customers and the government complies.

The worst thing about it is having to foot the bill for every illegal alien / welfare family in the country. :(

What's next?

a lot of good people living under a dangerous government. The world would be a lot better place if the US government didn't exist.

The same tune has been sung for every empire in history :P  If it's not the US, it's somebody else.

Yes it's true, there is always the worst.

I'm not often a vocal defender of my country (the US), but I do suspect that the world could do worse when it comes to having a hegemon.

Alas, we are rapidly sinking deeper and deeper into depravity (e.g., double-tap drone strikes, sarin false-flags, and the list goes on.)  I do expect that the rest of the world will at some point decide that they need to coordinate and act together against us in the best interest of their own future.  At least if we remain a somewhat multi-polar world with respect to governance.

Good point.
Which one can we get to be the next hegemon?  The UK is still tired from the last time.
Its often been said that the job of a leader is to decide and take the blame.

China is looking like they might want the job, maybe we could let them wear the tall hat for a while? 
Its not as fun as most folks imagine.

The Saud royalty would probably go for it if given the chance.  Who else is in the running?

Don't you love thy neighbour? Don't you wish to do them what you wish to be done to you?

Who brought troll over to this thread? Thought you were busy bashing Christianity in the other one?

Bible is very clear laws are to be obeyed. Breaking the law and expecting free healthcare is not expected.

Why are you bringing the bible up here, troll?  Thought you were busy bashing reason in the other thread?

You know, right now dank makes more sense than you.


You should seek some professional help, stat.

So USA is it against the bible as it used terrorism to separate from Britain.

I believe you.  It takes a nut job to understand a nut job.

If ignorance is bliss, you must be in heaven!

:D

What I see as different (the only "American Exceptionalism" that I subscribe to) is that past empires didn't hide that they were empires. Most embraced it as a righteous cause (it's not, but that's not the point), and even those that didn't, didn't pretend to be something else.

The United States of America, LLC. pretends that it isn't an empire. Even teaches it in schools to the point that the youth buy it, often for a lifetime.

Yet every action they take is aimed at expanding both territorially and legally into the lives of everyone. They even use the language of empire, such as "nation building" and "expanding our influence" and similar things, but haven't the courage to admit what they are. Or rather, they are more into lying than telling the truth. I'm not sure which it is, but I suspect the latter. In my time in american politics, I found that most politicians would prefer a stolen dime to an honestly gained dollar.

I'll do it. Some of you will like the results. I guarantee I won't lie about my Imperial ambitions. And I won't pussy around about conquest either. All of the Americas would be my first goal. Fuck the rest of the world for now. I'll just take the Americas. Once I recall the troops from N. Africa, Central Asia, and the middle east, I'll take Canada. They have high tech, but not a big enough army to withstand me. Then, Mexico. They are numerous and would make good conscripts. I'll march them in front when I conquer the southern resource areas. Once the Americas are consolidated, I'll make a deal with Beijing to split the rest between us.

Oh. And you WILL serve in the armed forces.


















Still think we need another hegemon, people?

(NewLiberty, I know better than to think you would subscribe to the above, but you did pose the question. )

Hmm. Based on this, the ENTIRE history of Christianity is at odds with the bible.

Oh.

Wait.

It is.

Otherwise you'd be killing every one... Oh.
Wait.

Your rulers are.

That's a good point you're making; I didn't learn that America was an empire (nor was I really aware of what empires were at the time) until I'd gotten into my college U.S. Government course, where my professor keyed me in on the fact.  I believe this is intentional; as the methods of ruling become even more deceptive, I'm finding that the reasons why the state must own the schools is specifically to instill this modified version of history; it's best when your cattle are unaware of their ultimate demise, especially when they're so intelligent otherwise and about other things, otherwise they might get to thinking (as folks like you and I have taken to) that their owners don't have their best intentions in mind; ignorance is strength, and there's no force greater than an angry, unknowing nation of 300 million finding anything at all to put their blame into, anything at all but the source of their anger; they're designed not to figure it out, and it so far has been a success.

You did better than I did. I was in my thirties before I figured out that practically everything I was taught as US history in school was either whitewashed, misdirected, or just plain fiction. It took becoming seriously involved in the system and seeing it from the inside to realize just how well the system works. This is why I started questioning all "reforms" and "reformers". It eventually led me to the philosophy I espouse today. Anarchism. Not really the traditional anarchism that so many on Youtube and similar venues ascribe to, but the basic definition: No kings. I'll not go into depth about it here, especially since judging by our respective posting histories our views are similar. But what I think that most americans either cannot or do not realize is that the system they are trying to "fix" during the pseudo election cycle isn't broken. It works as designed, as a diversion.

On the subject of the elections, I once used this as an analogy to what voting in an american election really is.

You walk into a small room. On your left is a Beretta 92FS, on your right is a Glock 17. Both excellent weapons, with slightly different characteristics, but the same overall performance. You then choose one of them, point it at your head and pull the trigger.

Which is the lesser evil?


I really like this. Is that original?

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning,
And her name, Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome;
Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor
That twin cities frame.
"Keep, Ancient Lands, your storied pomp!"
Cries she with silent lips.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

(  Misery loves company )

This is hilarious :D  But that effectively sums it up; option 3, being the refusal of self-destruction, will never be found on a ballot.


I'm glad you like it; it's one of mine ;D  The logic is sound to me now, though it wasn't perhaps a year ago, before I'd begun to really explore philosophy; it reminds me of a quote by Aristotle, "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."  He's not my most favorite philosopher, but I believe he makes a valid point: the law doesn't make sense to a person who is unaware of why the law is there to begin with, and so either the unknowing individual should be educated on such matters (schools conveniently leave out philosophy from the core curriculum, so I've noticed), or the individual must be threatened into following the law, but if it's the latter case, why bother with law at all?--it leaves the person out of the function of law-making, which effectively cuts society in two, creating the disparity between the rulers and the ruled.  It delves into this form of lawlessness that we're all too familiar with, the kind Hitler and the Kim Jong lineage have showed us, where the law is so supreme and sacred that it melts away into the tiny portion of people who create it and thus, no longer represents any form of the philosophy, just the passing whims of whichever dictator is in charge at the time.

Anyhow, the way I see it, if one man is intelligent enough to pass law, and most of us are beyond the idea that some men are gods, it should reflect that we're all capable of following and acknowledging commonly agreed upon laws without need for a supreme being to guide us, and yet we're still here, still following man-gods out of fear of the unknown, as though we've made no improvements since ancient Egypt.  Strange times.

Thanks to this government you still can say it loud.
Try to do this somewhere in North Korea.

What are you talking about? Ask Russians and they still believe that Russia is not empire, despite that Russia was always empire and got a lot of surrounding countries under. And continuous to do so (see 2008 conflict in Georgia). So, again, what countries admit that they are empires?

Don't you think that it is not right to illegally cross the border and then bash the government of the country who still give you shelter and people who pay taxes to keep you alive, while you work for cash and do not pay taxes? If you hate that country so much, why you do not leave to better place?
This country can be just better without people who want a free pie.

it's kind of hard to generalize a country of 300 million, much less a country of 3 million. it's really hard to make a judgment on american society, since there are so many pieces to the pie.. but generally speaking, i think the negative opinion of americans is justified. compared to the rest of the developed world, i think we love our guns and we're definitely more capitalistic. we have more big corporations that exist only to suck the life of out of the general population, and then we have lots of bible thumping science haters.

On the other hand, there are notable segments of our society where free thinking and a fairly healthy quasi-rejection of standard consumer-centric materialism are pronounced.  I'm thinking of the hippie types I grew up around, but many of them still exist in more or less the same form, and a segment of the younger population follows that general mold.  Perhaps there are such segments in most countries, but I have not seen much sign of it.  I'll bet that there is something similar going on in some of the more developed Western countries, but I have my doubts that the same thing exists in nearly such percentages in East Asia, Russia, etc.

the way i see america right now.. is that it is falling apart. more and more groups of people are becoming extreme, especially the white southerners. this is starting to cause some racial/cultural unrest, as they are seeing greater numbers of non-whites coming into the country (that's why there's so much xenophobia on fox news). meanwhile, the people living in metropolitan cities are becoming more diverse, tolerant and liberal.

the problem is that rich people are using the ignorance of white conservatives.. they are basically the foot soldiers doing the dirty work (and profit from it). oddly enough, upper class conservatives are pushing this non-education agenda, and it seems to be working.

democrats on the other hand are offering free shit to buy approval of the poor/ethnic classes.

AMERICA IS EVIL 

All bad that you can imagine in today's world is somewhere related to world-wide actions of America.

They create their own terrorists then, tell them to attack the country they need oil from. Then, after a attack  they show the world they are the saviors and send their army in thousands to that country. And inside they smuggle all the resources of that country.

- 9/11 was done by America itself, to create a fake Osama named puppet and get resources from Afghanistan.  :-\

- GM seeds from america have spread all over the world to spread cancer, so that their tie up with medical industries reaches new heights while more & more people buy cancer treatment.

- The western medicine is a trap, when you buy a medicine it stops the symptoms of one disease, and inturn spreads another disease so you have to buy more medicines, and on and on in a cycle ~

- They spend billions on warfare technology but not on positive thing for example like how vehicles can get a alternative natural fuel or run on solar power.

..much more I can write a whole book on this. Its high time the world needs to know of the bad deeds of America

Not much of an endorsement is it.

"we're not as bad as NK" (yet)

not true, in fact it's just the opposite.

...and we pulled it off , too!  That's how slick my boy Obama is.  


Lolz, you don't know the half of it.  Not only do we give you cancer, we giving your cancer cancer & afterwards you can't even die right!  You turn into zomblers doing Obama's bidding!  
  

Now you're saying that, just wait 'till you turn into a grain zombie!  You'll chew out your own eyeballs for a Preparation H fix.  Ever had zombie hemorrhoids?  Too awful to talk about.


ORLY?  Pesky foreigner, we had Atomic Cars since the '50s. 8)

http://www2.diariomotor.com/imagenes/ford-nucleon-coche-nuclear1.jpg


Yeah, me too.  We should partner up.

FTFY. Most of the people of America don't have a clue, though the internet being everywhere is helping.

I do think some of the things you've listed are more accidental and synergistic than deliberate, but unfortunately I have to agree with the bulk of you statement. It sucks being born in America long enough ago to remember when they actually meant some of the things they preach. Or at least had some need to maintain the illusion.

If you are asking in regards to the individual US citizen, then it is a stupid generalizing question. I've met idiots and nice people in the US. Just like EVERYWHERE else on this planet I have been. The one thing I would say, is that US idiots are usually, ehm, heavier than in most other countries.  ::)

If you mean the US government: I am mad at my own right now, I have no time for anyone elses'. Though it would be nice of the US government to make at least a token effort of reigning in their intelligence services.

The land of law makers, making $1,000,000 per year. While a CEO barely gets to chance to make that amount, and create value with job creation.

Huh?

Politicians 'create' probably more jobs than corporations now a-days and probably always have.  At least since the 30's.  Many of them through by contracting through corporations for various projects.  Some of the projects result in durable infrastructure, and some of them just burn money into the economy.

None of our politicians that I am aware of may $1M/year unless you count kickbacks which are increasingly common.  OTOH, that is not an uncommon earning for CEO's.

We do have GINI index which is up into the danger zone where bad things start to happen.  This, more than anything, explains the rapidly expanding investment in internal security infrastructure (e.g., the NSA programs and integration of state and corporate security apparatus.)  It is fascinating that China is similar in this regard.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg/720px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png

I'm sorry, as a Canadian, I see Americans as plain fat people who have a huge nuclear explosion ;D

My opinion is that America is built for the rich, geared for the rich, and laws are for the rich where the rich feel they don't need to play by the same rules as the rest of people

If you are poor in America, you are nothing, you considered a failure. There are 300 million different people in the US but the culture of hyper-consumerism and materialism is dominant.

Canada's a real country?  It must be, right?  Always thought of it just as something that happens when you drive too far north...  Now that i think about it, we keep our old garden tractors & old furniture there, stuff like that...  Not really sure.

Bitcoin has the power to suppress USA, if it becomes an international currency > > The value of US $ will fall >> US Banks will overtax >> People getting cash strapped >> Protests >>> REVOLUTION  8)
Wish there was a way to tell all the poor citizens of USA its truth.
For e.g
That when they eat at their local McD's ~~ they eat "thing" which does not get spoilt for 4+ years if kept in open ~~that they contribute more to the GM industry when they eat at such food joints.

I'm not sure if USA is a real country either. It looks like weird mashup of pieces of desert and such run by corrupted tv show stars... ;D
And I don't even want to go to these pieces of desert... ;D

I'm sorry, as an American, I see Canadians as people who travel in USA to fix they medical problems, as with their healthcare system they wait in line forever just to make MRI.

LOL - clearly photoshopped but funny!

The two-tier system we are slowly moving to in Canada is awesome.

I can have my health care for free if I am willing to wait, or if I have money I can get it done right now, and thereby shorten the waiting time of people behind me.

Everyone wins.

You just have to remember: there is nothing is for free in that life. Somebody pays for it as taxes or other way. Yes, if you not willing to work and live on social help, you will get help, despite that you are a parasite.

Canadians pay monthly healthcare dues to fund the system, so I guess it's not totally free.

I don't mind that my taxes go to help someone with the misfortune to get sick and without the resources to deal with it.  I'm happy enough if I never get into that situation.

What pisses me off is that we have an extremely inefficient health care system largely because, IMO, it is for profit.  More profit is to be made by charging more and giving less and skimming the middle.  It's as plain as the nose on one's face.

I do not appreciate it at all that the government is complicit in forcing me into a situation where my tax dollars go not to people who need it but to and industry with useless parasite CEO's making $100k per day.  This is classic 'merger of state and corporate power' and Obama is as good at it as anyone has been to date.  It only takes a person who can complete a sentence to impress my liberal friends these days, and Obama is relatively good at that.

Or maybe a baby of a parasite :)

The FDA has a strong hand in this.  Having exceeded the bounds of its reason for existence long ago, it has created a giant and expensive approval process that is also ineffective.  The time it takes to bring new medicine to people has about doubled, from 8 years in the 1960's to about 15 years today and the cost is close to US$1B for a single drug.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/25/government-pills
As a result, we get less innovation for a greater cost, and a large incentive to game the process.  Less attention to more uncommon illness, and a proliferation of minor tweeks to existing medicine to prolong the patent protection without benefit.
Their process also increases medication shortages.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/02/13/health-care-leaders-drug-shortages-major-threat-patients/9XfOujrFRSEW5FBOkc1cmK/story.html

But worse even is that the FDA stranglehold doesn't end with the drug approval.  The manufacturer must get approval for how much of a drug it plans to produce with its "output controls".  We hear of fear of the "death panels".  they are already here.  Drs at John Hopkins had to ration cytarabine (treatiing leukemia and lymphoma) deciding who will live and who will die because of the FDA controls.  Other centers were less lucky and ran out completely.
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/06/08/rx-drug-shortages-regulation-can-be-deadly/

And the FDA creates artificial monopolies.  "17P" was used for years to help expectant mothers from having pre-mature births, made by pharmacists cheaply for $10 a dose by low income families, until a company called Hologic got the FDA to approve this progesterone fomula and got exclusive rights to it, raising the cost to US$1500 per dose (US$30000 per pregnancy).

The costs are really because of private for profit enterprise?  More so the costs are because "private enterprise" can wield the power of government against the rest of humanity to enrich themselves.  Where you put the blame sort of depends on whether you think government should be doing this sort of thing in the first place, or on the other side, whether you think government should be doing everything and we should all be working for government.  It is the weird blend that some people think of as "private enterprise" (that is in reality anything but that), which is the source of the problems.

This gets compounded year by year because any failure of the system is used as an excuse to increase the system, until the system becomes too-big-to-fail, and then fails.

Putting our health in the sole hands of policy makers is wise, up until it isn't, but in the long run, we are all dead.

Haha funny  ;D

I recall someone from the US blaming bitcoin where only used to illegal stuff like drugs, killing and such like.. Wonder what they use the dollar for, "apparently not the same" :)

Oh, btw. A great American :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

I find USA to be hypocratic, two-faced, noisy and too dominant to other countries :D
There noisyness is sometimes useful but mostly it's just not :D
For example they spied on almost every major person in most European country altough they have no possible threat from those countries..

Take down the USA Babylon  ;D

The spying was bad. At least the german governments reaction was worse. For months all the politician were like "nah, zhe americans are our vriends! all is a-ok". Later it urns out the NSA and the GCHQ were spying on Chanceller Merkels "MerkelPhone" and everybody throws a hissy fit. Idiots.

Well, at least we won't have to fear Merkel commiting any acts of terrorism, I guess.

why would they think americans aren't their friends?
they couldn't possibly know that they were spying them :/

That "Nah, all is okay" was the reaction to "finding out" (as if they did not know, how dense can you be?) that the NSA was basically wiretapping all of germany. Months ago.

The "ALARM! ZHE americans are spying on us" was the reaction a few weeks ago to "finding out" that Merkels phone was tapped. Somehow it makes me kinda angry that our politicians seem to think they are that much more improtant than, say, me. Oh well, derailing the thread.

USA is really crossing their limits  >:(  Will there ever be enough of their corporate plunder ?
Are their any hackers from Anonymous group here, wreck havoc on USA already !

American people are more or less  good or bad as everyone else but
american government is absolutely bad and I have the worst opinion of them.
All they want is profit and power.

As an American, I agree with this statement.

There is nothing wrong with the people of US its just that they are being brainwashed from a century so its not easy waking up from a century long sleep.

I think every country has the government it deserves, maybe not always true for dictatorships but often true for other countries.

Americans wanted a cowboy for president that starts wars, they had Bush, after they wanted a black President to get any credit, they have Obama.

Russians want a strong leader who can take decisions by force, they have Poutine.

Chinese people want a strong central goverment to be their political father who can direct them into their common goals.

In the Nordic countries, the People and their politicians are the most trusting and the least corrupt in the world.

Yes, Joseph de Maistre was right: "Every country has the government it deserves". Americans have the power to change, and if everybody complains about how bad the government is doing, it's their own faults for putting them in the first place.

Very broad generalizations.  Often US presidents have had less than 50% "approval ratings" for much of their time in office:

http://clipsandcomment.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/bush-approval-historic.jpg
http://s3.amazonaws.com/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2013/02/12/Obama_Approval_Trend.jpg

Usually just a pick of two choices, most do not get what they want, even when they think they do.

i think that is just broad brushing. gore actually won the popular vote, so more people voted for him than they did bush. and even if he didn't win the popular vote, it was still basically something like 48% vs. 48%. to say that a country of 300 million people deserved bush because 48% of the people voted for him is.. kind of reaching far.

i think governments all across the world do not represent the average citizen.

I don't suppose it would be a matter of time until a third political force start to challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats?

The more people I meet, the more it seems to me that humans generally, irrespective of race and/or national origin, have a pretty uniform distribution in terms of their methods of thinking.  There is kind of a 'fat middle' of people who can be pushed into a mushy general orientation by culture and state influenced education, but also a contingent of outliers who are just sort of in-born with characteristics that put them in a certain non-standard frame of reference.

I'd say that American culture generally is better than average at allowing the outliers to be themselves.  In other words, the culture is less constraining and less effective at molding the 'fat middle' contingent than many.

It does seem to me though that a pretty fair percentage of humans do have an ugly side.  There is relatively little concern among our population for the people we kill in the Middle East, for instance.  To some extent a lot of people are simply to pre-occupied, but there are plenty of people here to either just don't care or actually like that we do it.  Some of this has to do with our mainstream media to be sure.

Why exclude dictatorships?  Obviously the people chose the dictator, or the previous government (which was not a dictatorship) failed to stop the dictator, etc., etc.  They brought it on themselves :)
How 'bout them Germans?

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/12/article-2308244-1942AC3A000005DC-985_634x901.jpg

Add to this, that there aren't average citizens so much as individuals.  Each of whom have different ideas.


Statistically, a majority of Americans agree with it as well.
Not likely to see that on a ballot though.

Add to this, that there aren't average citizens so much as individuals.  Each of whom have different ideas.


Americans are bad because they are electing and supporting their shithead leaders. Also blind patriotism is not a good thing.

I don't know whether trying being powerfull or making profit is really a bad thing.. I don't think so. As long as you as you keep ethics in mind.

Why do you mean with 'blind patriotism'? Following a figure and not concerning your thoughts by yourself? I don't think patriotism is a bad thing by itself. It has some advantages though.

I'm a patriot and I'm proud of it!
But there is a difference, I love my country and I would  die for it but the author probably referred to the "blind patriotism" for the people influenced by the american propaganda, those "blind patriots" can be harmful for the rest of the world as they don't know the facts and just always assume that their country is on the right side :)

I spend a lot of time reading about stuff connected to my country so I know  when someone is playing against us, this kind of patriots who know what they're talking about and are not just "bullying" other countries as the US does are okay and not at any level dangerous, knowledge is the key of being fair :)

Yes, you nailed it.

Some dubious stuff happened which leads to escalation...
US President: Thailand has crossed the final line, we will have to act immediately. This means war!
Citizen #1: YEAH, fuck those taiwanese pigs! We are so much better than them, we will surely win this one. Stars and stripes!
Citizen #2: But.. We were the ones who blew up their research facility at the first place...
Citizen #1: Serves them right! Are you doubting our leader? Are you doubting the american dream, the land of the free?! Goddamn hippie communist traitor!


Yes, for example when you need to promote your own products, like Ford vehicles over import cars. That's surely beneficial for local economy and people.

It's crazy how many resources are spent on importing/exporting stuff in the world, which IMO can and would be avoided. But that's a different conversation.

North Korea could have been a really nice state without dictatorship, they are smart and hard working, they would likely have prospered like the other Asian Tigers.

Germans like order and authority, this mania for order also had some bad side-effects, but it's a logical consequence of a social-Darwinist mindset.

But education and culture are very important and they are the mainstays of our society. Humans are not animals, They can change, evolve and choose other values.

North Korea could have been a really nice state if America (and USSR) wouldn't fuck it over. In fact it could be an even nicer (North+South united) Korea.

Yes. I agree with you on that. It also brings the society together in most countries. Im not sure whether that's the point in an huge country such as the USA, but it does in for example the country I live in (The Netherlands). This 'bringing the people together' can has some disadvantages too, especially for outsiders who are placed 'outside the society' by some people.


I think it's more realistic that the world will explode than North+South will regroup, hehe.

If there wasn't of the USSR and the USA, there would definitely be a united Korea today, the cold war did this.
North and South Korea are no different from West and East Germany, they were splitten up for the advantage of USSR and USA but after the USSR and USA balance failed and one regime was stronger then the other.One of them failed while the more succesful side wanted to embrace their brothers over the border.
South and North Koreans are the same nation but as communism in Asia is just recently starting to fail (China is leading this trend),same thing might happen here in a 100 years or so.
This is NOT the communist fault, it's just that one regime will overpower the other and when one side overpowers the other for such difference they will finally surrender the fight and realize they are the same alotough their relatives live on the other side.

Given time, or maybe a bigger push - those two can merge again, and become a recognizable power in the region. North cheap labor and army + south money and tech. Maybe it will happen in our lifetime.

Interesting whats up with bitcoin in both Koreas?
*Gone googling

You can always ask to bankers...

There's nothing wrong with ambition but a society functions smoothly only when all members fill that role honestly and ethically.
Capitalism is not honestly and ethically, it's amoral and promotes greed.

However capitalism is born in a Christian ethic, and with that eroding, we now only have self-interest, modern Capitalism is based on property without responsibility, while Christian Capitalism is, or was, based on property with responsibility.

yes, since the last few years the number of atheists and agnostics has been rising and the Christians aren't really respecting their ethic as they aren't so religious, this greed is ruining modern society and we are we will see it crash (after USA every single country will crash along altough some are already down [Greece,Spain..]).

big city life in the US kinda sucks. money is the primary motivation. everybody is in a hurry. few people are friendly to a random stranger. the american dream is dead for all but the rich. the US isnt as great as it was back in the day. would rather live in canada australia new zealand UK switzerland amsterdam.

Let me tell you something, people don't choose their leaders they can only make a choice
between the ones that are offered. Take America for an example they have only two real parties who lead the same politics made by the rich and powerful people
behind them. So what real choice do they have.

They are just kind of brainwashed for many years by their media and their government so probably the average american
doesnt think to much about politics and stuff like that,they are more concerned about  their every day lifes.

So, why don't you move? Yeah, probably in Amsterdam or Switzerland money will no be a primary motivation...

I can bet you just vote for Obama yourself... And if you did not vote, at least you support his socialist ideas.

he probably isn't even an American which makes him ineligible to vote :D

EDIT:
Just checked his profile
Location: Latvia

you have been mistaken :D
just because we actively discuss US problems doesn't mean we're Americans  :P

I am an american. Deliberately not capitalised. I did NOT vote for Obama. Nor his "rival". If he had not been deliberately shut out, I would not have voted for Ron Paul either, even though I think he's the closest thing to a good man in politics. When you are given a choice of two pistols to shoot yourself with, the correct answer is "NO!". If you vote, you can't bitch, because you HAVE accepted the clearly illegitimate system as legitimate. As Emma Goldman said, if voting could make a difference, they would outlaw it.

I would like to say to the non americans who read this, the Imperial Court in the foreign nation called the District of Columbia does NOT represent America in any meaningful way, other than being our defacto owners. We have about as much choice in their decisions as any slave, but we are given a biannual illusion of participation that doesn't even hold as much realism as a good Hollywood movie. Or a bad one, really.

Unfortunately, and I have been all over the country, most americans either turn a blind eye to the system, or, more frequently, feel that there isn't anything they can do about it. I'm not sure what should be done, but shrugging your shoulders and bending your knee isn't the answer. As near as I can tell, the last time that the american people had any real control over their nation was 1788. For damn sure it ended in 1861.

+1 - Totally agreed :)

I like how Mr. Carlin puts it in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUywG-VXhug

I wrote in Elizabeth Warren in the last election.  Hopefully I'll have the chance to use a convenient mark in the next one.

Satoshi, the write-in candidate for 2016

Got birth certificate?

Are those even required anymore?

not really, that is a total passive way of dealing with problems
the correct way would be to forbid offering people to shoot themselves :D

more generally when someone does stuff and you don't like any of the options, change the way it works :)

By not making a choice yourself, you're simply letting the guy holding the pistols choose for you.
If i understand your analogy correctly, he's not your friend :)

if you are given the choice to shoot your self with a choice of two pistols, cut off both of your hands. it will hurt, but it's probably better than dying  ;D

I am trying. It's why I preach what I believe, so that others might take up the banner as well. The principles that the revolution were fought over, most of them, were lost before the nascent country was even 100 years old. So long as the majority are complacent (even if they see the problems, they are unwilling to see alternatives), then it will continue to spiral out of control until it breaks altogether. Then there will likely be a bloodbath, which is what I, and like minded men, are trying to head off. This system has run it's course, and it has failed the people completely. Not the politicians, it's doing quite well by them, but US, the people. Violent revolutions play into the hands of the politicians, but simply withdrawing your consent, one at a time and all over the place, will hurt them more than any number of bullets.

Life is what you make it...no matter the geographical location...USA is ok with me!

A very hostile country with very aggressive foreign policy and a straight up stupid monetary policy which transfers the wealth further to the monopolists.
The spying on your allies didn't exactly get you alot of positive PR. The 25+ wars you have started the last 50 years didn't help alot either and your countrys kill count is slowly, but steadily cathing up on Germany in the Hitler era.

Yes, the military industry is out of control.
There are more than 40 wars in active conflict right now, around the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
Most are ethnic / religious, US tends to come along after and take the blame (from both sides) for either being too late, or for getting involved at all.  Often both simultaneously.
One thing the US is great at, Ranked #1 in blame garnering, people like to hate it.

This is one thing that bitcoin, and hard currency in general, tends to help prevent.  Even Lincoln couldn't wage war without making a new fiat (greenbacks).
Napolean was the exception that proves the rule, and operated within the limits of hard money, but it cost him.

Well put. I'm one of those who blame the USA for getting involved in the first place. It has never worked out well for us, and has often (regardless of intent) prolonged and exacerbated the conflicts.

The original foreign policy of the united states worked very well. Be the cheerleaders of liberty, trade with all, and entangling alliances with none. Our nation became the biggest powerhouse in the world via this policy, and has spent the last 114 years dismantling that progress.

The US Gov't. Is always trying to be the "WORLD POLICE" or what have you, but these so called "Guardians of Justice" have gone Megalomaniac as of late.
My friends in the EU say that it's pissing the big boys over there off. Ever since Nam in the 60's and korea before that we've being sticking our noses into everyones business.
Now the NSA is even ALL THE WAY in everyones business. Citizens, Foreigners, even God's if he didnt have the ALMIGHTY firewall. (Made in China) LOL they own US.

Dear Enemy of Freedom:
Which God-forsaken foregny are you from?  Please respond with your exact GPS coordinates.  Our Hate-Seeking Missiles are gassed up & ready to peace the shit out of you.

~Your American Liberators~

Starting out with a government was the problem.   Rather than the rest of the world looking to America, your politicians looked to their counterparts in other countries and said "wouldn't it be great if we could set up a similar type of system here, especially with all the wealth here, imagine the power we could have".

Thinking the constitution was more than just a piece of paper was your downfall.

 What else is there left to do? US military has grown so big, than they need to constantly put it to use. They cannot simply disband everyone. Where will those people/equipment go. Work at mcdonalds? There's enough unemployment already.
 I always considered servicemen in most countries to be a waste of oxygen.
 I live in Latvia, it's a small country. If invaded by any of our neighbors - our military won't do shit. But it's still there, eating away our tiny budget. What for? Why the hell they buy new tech?
 If I came to power, one of the first things I would do - make those soldiers into part-time street-sweepers. To get at least some use from them.

Not mine. I agree one hundred percent. But it was, prior to the constitution, a good start. The dream didn't die as quickly as the revolution, but by 1791 it had been crucified. By 1899 the good that had been done was fully on the run. By 1913 the parasites were firmly in control of the host. Now we have Rome, only even more corrupt.

Funny thing about that. Our 'dear leaders' are in violation of their oaths of office simply by HAVING a large standing army. It's specifically illegal, absent a congressional declaration of war, and supposed to be disbanded after two years even in that event (unless the war is still going on, and congress AGAIN votes to keep it). None of these preconditions have been met. The american military was supposed to disband down to levels consistent with maintenance by the end of 1946.

The reason, and this is not speculation, was exactly as stated above. Standing armies are a temptation to those with a lust for power. Making it difficult to have them at all was supposed to limit that temptation. But hey, as a recent unlamented parasite said of the constitution of the United States of Imbecilies err... America.... "It's just a goddamn piece of paper".

Centralization simply doesn't work for large populations. It works well for those at the top, but nobody else. Even with good intent. Which is sorely lacking in the ruling class.

 :D LoL @""Dear Leaders"

the problem is that it's extremly difficult to fight those at the top as they are integrated into almost every part of the society..

True.  It held on a long time.  And there were a lot of good people who tried to enforce the good ideals through the decades and centuries.  Even today there is the occasional person like Ron Paul.  But the problem, at least from my POV, was that the structure was in place in 1788 and it was an inevitability from that point forward that you would lose your freedom.   It's a real shame, not only for you, but that the rest of the Western World politicians follow along, but I guess that's how empire has always worked.

I think though that the seeds of the new freedom, a true freedom this time, are being born mostly in America and spreading to the rest of the world as we speak.

I like the US

US foreign policies not always to my taste but I have no particular issue with the people of the US

I met a really cool guy today in my hometown.  He had and awesome workshop, and built his own very advanced plasma-cutting rig from scratch and it seems to work well.  He did it just for fun.  To top it off, he was a really nice guy who wasn't a conceited asshole or anything like that.  This is one of string of such people I've met around and about.  Like many of us, he had the resources to do such things which are denied to many in this world.  There are likely many such people around the world, and would be many more if everyone was rich.  But I think it is fair to point out that the U.S. is a diverse place with all kinds of people.  Some are fat wife-beating assholes.  Some are mindless flag-wavers.  Really, probably a majority of people have the basic instincts to be decent, and I expect that it is the same just about everywhere in the world.

Unfortunately it is hard to remember some of these things when U.S. foreign policy and empire building efforts are so disturbing.  I go through my own phases of demoralization and loss of confidence in the makeup of our nation.

most of them (not all) aren't aware of their surroundings, they think the USA is the center of the universe and I don't like them :D
there are some americans I completely respect because they aren't like this but the rest..

Why not to talk about Iran foreign policy or freedom in North Korea?

Aside from being a red herring, no reason.

I live in the Empire. I don't live in Iran or North Korea. But since you brought it up...

Iran, established in it's current borders during the British Mandate, formerly part of the Persian Empire. A State of (if memory serves) 27 million people, has a foreign policy of keeping their head down and flapping their tongues. They have never in their modern history invaded another country, unless you count pushing the Iraqi army back some twenty kilometers across the border in repelling their invasion.

During that same period, how many nations has the USA invaded (fuck the pretext, just the number.)

I don't know. I was born in the latter part of the first half of that history. But off the top of my head I get, in my lifetime or just before it, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Haiti (twice), Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Panama, Columbia (repeatedly)... And I know this is not a complete list.

During the aforementioned time frame, Iran has pushed for, gotten, and enforced economic sanctions (which only ever strengthen the radicals under them) against, again, no country. The Empire has pushed for, gotten, and enforced so many international sanctions that even THEY lose track.

Your flag waving is annoying, to say the least, but you should REALLY pick better negative examples. Just because the master whose boots you lick so lovingly wants to invade Iran doesn't make them a good negative.

As for the comic opera that is North Korea?

What foreign policy? Glare at US troops across the DMZ?

You're not comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to rocks. They don't even bear the relationship of both being fruits.

The biggest shortcoming of the US: The laws and judgements handed down vary GREATLY from state to state and jury from jury, and therefore in my opinion this takes away any feeling of 'rule of law'. Don't agree yet? Let me give you an example for the rule of law in America today: Morton Berger, a high school teacher gets 200 years for the possession of 20 lewd images of children. This happens in Arizona, where the 200 years is exactly the MINIMUM MANDATORY sentence for this crime of possessing 20 lewd images (10 years per count, each image a different count, to be served consecutively). Berger took this to the Sumpreme Court, which threw his case out without even hearing it. Why? because in America you dont discuss such taboo subjects, or else you will look bad. Not to mention that in a state like Hawaii this would not even result in his incarceration AT ALL, and even in neighboring states he would have gotten off with a suspended or a 1-2 year sentence. The federal law dictates 5 years maximum. Yet against all this, his quasi-life term was not ruled unconstitutional or cruel by any higher court.

Talking of which, let's now skip to 2013, when Terry Peters, the husband of the Bush era Transportation Secretary was sentenced to 14 years for raping a 7-year old girl. Arizona also, even the same county if I got it right. Have a look around, where can you find reports of either of these two? Google news will bring up 1-2 American reports on them.

This above example illustrates the rule of law in america where laws are made to please the masses, and if so need be, the media will do as told - just like in the so called worst communist regimes of the world. America, where downloading lewd images gets you life, while raping an actual child 14 years.

It could be a great country, and it sure was built on great values. However, as the above illustrates it has drifted far from those values in the past couple decades especially.

in short, justice system is a joke, and so is the media. I would rather live in a place like singapore where laws are as tough as they get, yet you KNOW what you will get or not get for a given offense.

Oh, you forgot somehow participation in World War Two.
Two bad you don't want to live in Iran or North Korea and prefer US. Some dogs bite the feeding hands...
I'm sure your favorite president is Obama. And the most funny thing is you voted for him again.

Why don't you talk about rules in Iran or Iraq, some people here like those countries so much. Over there woman would be killed if somebody rapes her. Sure the rapists would be free.
And again, why don't you really leave for Singapore?

Re: Opinion on the US

^

I don't think those countries are any better, for the record.

at the very least those countries you mention don't advertise themselves as bastillions of freedom, and their citizens don't believe that either. also, they don't go on invading random countries (Libya, Iraq) with made-up excuses every 5-10 years. In all, the US is probably one of the worst cases of a police state, and I personally feel a lot more free in China or Russia than in the US.

Singapore is a great place, and I would leave there given the chance. Any day.

and dont forget this democracy bullshit, either. Americans love to believe that their two-party system is the one and only truly democratic system in the world. Not to mention that really it does not make any REAL difference whether democrats or republicans are in power, have you not realized that yet?

Do you ever been in China or Russia?

Right on, bro!  https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRFxcHKkmAGNY0mpbenjAiew5qA1ne9-M3l5EYenAYli1rgFmma

I have lived in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Although HK doesn't count as China.

How about you, Oldgamer? Have you been to China or North Korea? or have only heard of these places on CNN?

You been in those countries as a tourist, you did not live there. China made some success only because they start to move to free market direction, and in most places people still very poor. In big cities they live better, thank to the jobs moved from US.
I lived in Russia, not been a tourist. My opinion based on my experience, not based on CNN, probably yours is cause that station is for leftists.
I wish you live there, probably you would have other opinion and more real knowledge.

I'll guess that he's one of the immigrants who feels that he has to be a hard-core right-winger to prove his allegiance to the U.S.  I think he said he's Russian or something.  Seems like a Fox News sort of guy.

I've not been to Russia, but I have been to China.  I most certainly did NOT feel more free there.  I felt safe enough because there seemed to be pretty a pretty significant understanding that Westerners were to be treated well by the authorities.  My friends did not seem comfortable with the police at all (and they were perfectly normal software engineers and so on.)  I don't think one can put lipstick on the pig and paint China as some bastion of liberty and personal freedom.  My main hope is that we can keep the U.S. from sinking down to that level.  Of course I hope that China continues to improve, but I live in the U.S. and I care a lot more about what happens here.  And of course I care deeply about our deplorable behavior globally.

if you care to read, I have lived in China. Also, I have been to russia and georgia (for two months), but never lived there longer, never claimed that, either.

I have no intention to settle down in the US, so long as 'emotions' govern the country instead of pure reason. Fox news? please.

for all I care you could make your country become another Singapore or another Norway. So long as you remain rational and consequential, and don't employ double standards where ever you please, I don't give a fuck.  

Also, I must not let this slip: have you noticed how just after my first post on here I have already been accused by Oldgamer of watching CNN and being a leftist, while tvbcof accused me of watching Fox and being a hardcore rightist? this shit is just ridiculous, and you don't realize it. that's my point.

I am neither, and don't give half a shit about your president, either.

It can be very entertaining though when people like you two find me in real life and start to bitch about the other side. I usually just agree with them to preserve good relations. And think what I do.

At first, in US I do not need to prove anything. Second, it is funny how one guy accused me to watch CNN, and another Fox.
And yes, in Russia you better be loyal to authorities. Not like in US.
Third, if I was feeling to prove my allegiance to the US, why I would criticize Obama? I actually can say that he is disaster for US. So, sorry, but accusing me in this does look stupid after all, does it?

let the people decide then  ;)

   Recent news: Young black kid was walking home, snatched by cops and some guy, which accused that kid of theft. Black kid went to prison at age 16, and was recently released at age 20. No compensation, "you're free to go".

In Russia you'd be at least charged and trialed with some fake evidence. In US judicial system is so awkward, that stuff like this happens all the time. Jailing for facebook comments, some black dude fined for using 'nigger' word, etc.

How badly did you fail your reading comprehension tests in school? Based on this reply, I'd have to posit that it was a train wreck.

I said these examples were IN MY LIFETIME. I was born in 1968. I remember Vietnam, myself. I wasn't very old, but I remember it. Korea was a recent memory for my parents, and WWII was a bit more in the past.

Further, IN THIS THREAD ALONE I have mentioned multiple times that *I* DO NOT VOTE. The system is illegitimate in every sense of the word, even if one were just to buy into the existing constitution. Not one of the wars I mentioned was given legal sanction by the very government that purported to support it, thus exacerbating the problem and allowing them to use truly egregious tactics, such as abandoning their own soldiers among other things. Mai Lai did not happen in a vacuum.

H.L. Menken, who you would hate since thinking was his forte, once said “The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”

This is me. I was once as bad a flag waving idiot as you. Well, no, not that bad, I actually read and try to understand history, but still, close. I woke up. I didn't hit the snooze button. Try it.

No, I did not vote for Obama. I did not vote for Ron Paul. I did not vote for any of them. I don't vote. If you could demonstrate any substantive difference between the Democrats and the Republicans since 1861, you'll be the first. Given your post history, I doubt you'll get there.

If you DO vote, you cannot bitch, because you have accepted the idiotic notion that the mob makes good decisions, and that they should be binding on everyone regardless of desired outcome. It's hokum, and anyone who gives it more than ten minutes thought knows so.

And one more thing. READ. When you don't, and reply anyway, it makes you look like a perfect idiot. Nobody is perfect, but appearances and all that...

I did not read your post to the end, I stopped after you called the opponent "an idiot". It says enough about you. And yes, I think it is good you did not vote. At least you did some positive things in your life.

Yeah, and only in US you can find streets named after black criminals.
Only in US thanks to special programs black guy will be accepted in college easier than white one.
Only in US the black community organizer can become the president just because his black.
Only in US the same community organizer will be reelected when country falling into disaster, and for the same reason.
And do not criticize community organizer, otherwise you will be called racist.
I can continue, but I am not going to follow this post anymore.

I only beat my wife once a week.  That guy over there beats his every day!  My wife should thank her lucky stars that she is not with that other guy and shouldn't complain.

I love it when anti-American fools can't even get off their own asses to fix their country so shit doesn't spill over their borders. Hence, requiring whatever international body or more often, US, to come in and remove the problem.

Case in point: China can't even talk to other asian nations without getting into a bitchfest about some piece rock in the south pacific.

US government is relatively benign compared to what other nations would be doing if they held such power and influence in their hands. Honestly speaking, no other nation comes even close in terms of how much fucking 'apologies' and 'reparations' that US government fully acknowledged and handed out. Even then, we don't believe that 'absolves' any mistakes made in the past - unlike certain nations who fling empty words of apologies and some money with an attitude that screams: "ok we gave you some money, we said sorry (not really), so FUCK OFF".

Meanwhile, japs can't even tell the truth about their crimes in ww2, chinese can't even get along with their next door neighbors without having a pissing contest on the international stage, pakis and indians fucking hate each other, and africa's always trying to scapegoat the west (sometimes chinese) for all their problems. Middle east just fucking hates everyone else with their racist antics.

The reason US is drawing so much childish ire from mouthy idiots around the globe is that America just can't seem to make up its mind about what it wants to be. More specifically, what the rest of the world THINKS and EXPECTS it to be: Either a forever generous and benign rich man whose generosity and prosperity they can all try to take advantage of, or cruel and absolutely vicious overlord that displays complete inhuman cruelty they themselves would love to exercise against whatever 'enemy' rubs them the wrong way.

Also, to all idiots in this country who thinks our government is 'corrupt', please check yourself and experience what that really means outside of US.

I believe that majority of actions taken by US, including fights against 'indians' (which btw so much anti-american shits seem to care so much about even though they never gave a shit before hahaha), bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, vietnam, and iraq/afghanistan war, are much more justifiable than any other actions taken by nations around the globe from 18th century on.

However, it seems that biased idiocy against US is the 'in' thing to do. I suppose easier thing to do than admiring or respecting someone who is powerful and influential is trying to denigrate them down to their level.

Compared to other nations, I don't think US is really all that 'bad' - except maybe we should learn to be more vicious towards those who think having a mouth means you can bitch anytime to anyone you want.

Also, please don't try to bring up cheap and useless tangents with buzz words like 'genocide' and 'imperialism', or my favorite, 'empire'. Empires don't negotiate or give quarters. Most of these idiotic nonsense is often spouted by people who are too pampered to understand those concepts and CERTAINLY have never experienced them from the point of view of those who are truly oppressed under such system.

TLDR: Go fuck yourself. Fix your own damn country first so they don't fly planes into buildings and let blind lawyer escape from your 'cops' to a foreign embassy in the middle of your fucking capital.

 

How many countries are free to go around the world, invade and occupy whoever they choose and carry out extra judicial killings on a whim, often in error and often without any recourse whatsoever.

Be warned, what goes around comes around and right now the USA's tab on that score is huge.

Regarding what your wife should do about your beatings:
I need to know more about your wife and yourself to offer sound advice.
If your wife is capable enough, i would suggest that she leaves you.  If, for any reason, that is not an option, i would need to know more about you.  Are you likely to get angry at her for complaining, and beat her more often?  If so, i would advise her against complaining unless she enjoys being beaten.

Thanks for proving my point.  I don't have a wife that I beat btw, just in case it wasn't obvious to you.

What was your point?

I love Americans.
I also love the people of every other geography.

The freedom to be self-critical is a powerful engine of self improvement and inoculation against group-think. 

Power corrupts, to the extent that the checks and balances in the US system keep that from being worse than it is, we can claim a modicum of success, but the failures are woeful and plentiful.  If you want to get rich in America, make a career out of anti-corruption prosecution, whereas in many places that is a good way to get dead.

we said sorry (not really) = Iran Air Flight 655 (States agreed to pay US$61.8 million, an average of $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims. However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized to Iran. The payment of compensation was explicitly characterized by the US as being on an ex gratia basis, and the U.S. denied having any responsibility or liability for what happened.)

What goes around comes around. It's a shame that Iranian civillians had to pay the price for iranian regime's racist and fucking childish tantrums they throw around. However, vast majority of Iranians love the idea of sticking it to the foreigners in such a way - motivated by remnants of 'pride' about persia or some such farfetched nonsense they managed to connect themselves to in order to gain some sense of identity and motivation called ethno nationalism. This is one of the primary reason why the world seems to detest Iran - no one likes bitch made punks with attitude problems and a runny mouth.

While US actions were not entirely benign with Iran, iranians are fooling themselves if they thought their 'democratically' elected government before Shah would have eventually turned out any better then Shah itself. At the very least, Iran would be suffering under significant Soviet/Russian pressure and would have been eventually made to decide between a security-laden communist state and eventual defacto soviet suzerainty. Even before that, all the oil and gas resources would have been siphoned off to the communist bloc in order for the 'people's government' in Iran to maintain their power base and secure arms and technological assistance from soviet union - the most important thing that went wrong is iranian people's choice to replace a secular tyrannical regime for an even worse wolf in sheep's clothing that had woven ethnic, religious, and racist motivations into a one nice little package called iranian islamic revolution.

What you may not understand is that Iran effectively declared war on US and has been waging a war of covert bombings and subterfuge all over the middle east against US and its allies. Fueled by short-sighted nationalism and ethnic racism, iranians have blindly lashed out at what they believed was a convenient scapegoat, US, while having little to no knowledge about the geopolitical situations. For a supposed descendants of an 'empire', they sure behave in a very narrow minded and short sighted way.

More than ten times 235 people died from Iranian-sponsored armed militias that were specifically engineered and operated by top figures in Iranian government during 1980s alone. That's not even counting the number of civillians in other countries such as argentina killed by Iranian muslim racist regime spewing childish ignorance left and right against the world.

More importantly, this is a country that advocates genocide and extermination of certain group of people solely for who they are. Save the usual deflective excuses. A parrot can attempt to deny, bitch and moan and try to play word/semantic games to convince themselves they are not racist fuckers with an attitude problem. What Iran is doing is purely racial, ethnic, and cultural warfare not only against its neighbors, but against the world.

For the blood spilled in the middle east and beyond based on actions purely out of spite and small-minded delusions of ethnic/religious grandeur, iranian civillians paid only a fraction of the blood price for their ignorance. The only regretful fact is that some uninvolved and innocent civillians on those flights were killed alongside those who were guilty.

Iran does not have the right to be given an apology at this point, due to the nature of their actions - perhaps in the future, when Iranians are ready to face the facts of their ignorance and crime against their neighbors, US would express regret and mutual apologies for event that led up to 655. However, it is iran that set itself up to be punished severely for their ignorance. US doesn't have 'imperialist' designs on the middle east or muslims. The chief interest of US national policy is to secure stability and peace in the region in a way that does not disrupt the global stability in terms of energy and natural resources.

However, like iran, many seek to blame outsiders for their own failings as a culture and people. They constantly lash out at others, while denying and hiding their bitch acts behind self-serving lies that illicit justified hatred and killing of their people. They have been cornered into a position by the virtue of their own failures and retarded lies, yet seek to blame everyone else for their problems.

Borders of those US fight against are bloody and without any strand of possibly justification other than ethnic and racial ignorance spouted by the same fools who claim to be victims of 'imperialism'.

Hypocrisy and short sighted adolescent 'ethnic pride' of Iran must be addressed first. US does not offer apologies to those who does not even deserve to be treated as human beings by the virtue of their own miserable hypocrisy and purposeful failures.

USA support of UAE, there's your hypocrisy.

My biggest beef wih USA is it's support of Israel. It's support of UAE. It's presence in Japan (and totally unjustified nuking of Japan). And supporting heroin production in Afghanistan, instead of burning those poppy seeds down.

You got no place having a 'beef' with Israel, fool. Little racist cunts from around the world are so easily manipulated by anything that seems to give them a momentary moral high ground, so much so that they actually managed to make an enemy out of people to whom arabs have done wrong far more than any jew has committed crimes against arabs. No one in Israel is calling for genocide of arabs or even 'palestinians'. Why is it that those EVIL jews pay and allow palestinians to work along side jewish citizens of Israel within Israeli borders? I do hear the opposite from muslims. Now, if arabs had even a fraction of excuse that jews had in their claims to Israeli land, they would be squealing at the top of their lungs about 'reclaiming'.

Selective muslim moralizing (i.e. bitch lies) is so obvious to anyone, even to someone such as myself who is not even remotely connected to either side in the conflict.

What of UAE? When have they aggressively invaded a nation to sack and loot their capital? When have they attempted to declare extermination of a race and ethnicity their goal? Cry me a river about 1000 dead in the protests within UAE while the whole of arab and muslim world make a scape goat out of 6.5 million jews many of whom arabs conducted pogroms on in various nations after a little encouragement from the nazis.

As far as japs, I hope you enjoy talking to chinese and koreans, or filipinos about what they think in regards to 'innocence' of those 12 year old children who tried to play at being an imperialist, racist empire who freely used cultural genocide as a tool and slavery of asian women. Or maybe you are too gullible to understand the difference between valid arguments and sentiment-laden not-so-subtle and quite pathetic attempts at twisting truths as japs love to do with their version of 'history'.

Afghan heroin production? What next, are you going to cry and moan about US not doing anything to stop the poppy and heroin production in the Golden Triangle? I thought you hated the idea of US being involved in foreign countries? You sure are selective on topics which you bitch and moan about.

Honeypot.  Is your goal to be "defending" the USA by actively generating hate toward it with vitriolic ranting, racism, generalizations and pretending the people of a region are to be held accountable for the actions of those governments who have power over them as if those people were personally involved in creating the worst parts of the history of the region in which they reside?

Since when did people's 'hate' become a legitimate concern and valid argument against another? I believe you need to rethink what goes through your head before piping up carelessly.

'Racism' LOL  now that just too cute. No one's pretending. Please fix that attitude of yours. No one, myself above all, could give any less of a fuck what you feel and laugh at your 'hate' while displaying blatant and outright disrespect against another based solely on whatever you feel comfortable with at the time.

Hypocrisy? You don't even know what you are mouthing off about.

How about some 'hate' for your own governments and oppressors who flaunt the basic common decency of your fellow people?  Or are they too scary for you to stand up against because they couldn't care less about some limp dick fucks bitching about human rights while you think your little 'feelings' are supposed to be legitimate arguments against US?

With an attitude like that, I have no problem with our soldiers raping and killing foreigners. Please, just give us more excuse. I don't think you have a slightest idea what you are bitching about.

I'm American.  My question is simple.  Is your goal with this profane ranting to encourage hate toward America, or do you have some more noble purpose?

The US government is bad for bitcoin because it has the ability to dictate bad fiscal policy to the rest of the world due to the preeminence of the dollar. Fortunately the USD will continue to decline and soon cease to be the world's reserve currency. I'm glad that China just recently changed its policy and will stop buying dollars.

If stating the obvious, true fact about another causes them 'hatred' against US, than that is the result. Their feelings have no bearing upon whether they are right or at best ignorantly mistaken.

Since when did the opposing side's feelings and reaction a grounds to validate or invalidate any claims?

Here's my question: Are you telling me that just because another reacts with 'hate' and 'discontent' that they are somehow in the right because they 'feel' so? Just what kind of carelessly weak minded position are you coming from that state something like this as if it is legitimate?

Are you even listening to yourself right now?

Agreed.  This holds true for you as well.
It doesn't.  I've not addressed your validity yet, only your intention.
Nope, not telling you that.  But if you are looking for Straw men, they are over there.  >---->

Me?  Coming from the weak minded position of curiosity...I'm not arguing with you about anything you are asserting.  Just curious that your writing seems to have the purpose of propagating profane nationalistic rants seemingly with the purpose to engender hatred toward the USA whilst apparently carrying its water, so I thought I'd offer you the opportunity of establishing some greater purpose, but you failed at that.

It makes sense.  "Honeypot" is the term used for an attractive trap.  In this case, you embody the indignant belligerent American racist to provoke others into senseless arguments over historical regional injustices of international politics of nations.  
No region is innocent of injustice, and many folks will have enough regional or national pride to get excited over such provocations.

Carry on.  I'll have some popcorn and leave you to your fun.

+1

I was going to address some of the diatribe about Israel, but maybe I shouldn... Ahh, fuck it. The issue was raised, I'm responding.

I have no problem with Jews. I have a huge problem with Israel. Specifically, I have a huge problem with Israel being backed by the United States of America. If Israel wants to get all medieval on their neighbors, they can AND SHOULD do it on their own hook. The British Mandate is over.

That's a specific. In general, I have a big problem with ALL foreign aid at the taxpayer's expense when our own nation is crumbling to ruin in a lot of places. I just moved from one of them. Western Pennsylvania looks and feels like the pictures coming out of the Soviet Union circa 1980. I now live in Idaho, where I have spent the majority of my adult life, and it's still pretty affluent. I have traveled all over the USA, having now been in 41 states, and a whole lot of it is a mess. If we are to have a central government (which I oppose vehemently, but it exists) then FFS can't they focus at least some of the loot they steal on fixing OUR problems instead of exacerbating problems abroad? We only need the rest of the world for trade. We do not need to interfere in their affairs, for good or ill. They are human and capable. If our alleged leaders continue down the path they've been pursuing, it will cease to enrich even them when our land goes up in the flames of revolution.

Another big beef I have with them is their "righteous" attitude when their poking at people causes a backlash. If the situations were reversed and, say, Mexico invade us because of some made up or even real slight, would our leaders claim that Mexico was in the right? (Nothing against Mexico, just that they are close by and populous. It is merely an example.)

From my travels and having grown up here, I have to say that over all, Americans are fairly decent people. Our rulers are not. At all. They are clueless about their own backyard, arrogant in their dismissal of the opinions and plight of their serfs, and downright dangerous to foreigners. They need to go. Before the situation becomes unrecoverable, if that hasn't already happened.

Your friendship with Israel benefits them more than it benefits you. Pretty much nailed by Biomech.

UAE = no civil rights whatsoever, while USA uses civil rights as an argument in criticizing unfavorable countries. My point was about hypocrisy.

Japs = Britain, France, Russia, many countries were trying to play imperialist in the past. USA nuked country which was begging to surrender itself. Just to prove a point, to exert a dominant stance in the world.

And finally Afghanistan = I hate the idea of US involvement, but they've already involved AND THEY ARE PROTECTING DRUG OPERATIONS. Not turning their backs on the problem, but BACKING IT UP.

2+2=4 (just to see if you will try to debate that too)

Except you have yet to answer any of my points except somehow try and simplify what I say as 'racist'. Now that's some ignorance. You are the first American to try and call me that seriously. I would at least give you that - somehow many people seem to think if you are not white, you shouldn't be called racist either.

My response to anti-American sentiment is completely justified by the fact that every single point I raised has evidence coming out of all the actions taken by these so-called 'victim' nations and ethnicities.

No one, least of all me, have stated that America is perfectly moral in all its actions. However, rest of the world attempting to criticize US from some delusional position of moral superioirity is akin to an employee who doesn't even show up for work half the week trying to bitch and moan about how another worker should be fired because he filled out an order wrong on one of his contracts.

The true discrepancy between faults of other nations/ethnicities and US is incredibly large, no matter which idiotic fools coked up with sense of nationalist racially charged ethnic 'pride' tries to bitch otherwise. No nation has been as forthcoming in admitting its major and minor faults as United States, or attempted reparations and reconciliations along with appropriate sentiment and gestures. Rest of the world is in no place to criticize US for its supposed 'mistakes' while they have neither the experience nor the ability to act as a strong, power-wielding nation.

What is going on around now is nothing more than selective posturing done by those whose ignorant ulterior motive is too pathetically obvious: They want to try to be the big cheese. All that, while not even able to deal properly with their neighbors and having bitchfest over a piece of rock or dealing with severe level of ignorance and racial biases in their own countries.

As for blaming our 'leaders', I would ask you to please put down that psuedo-revolutionary crackpipe and actually travel and live as a citizen (if you even can, that is. Most of the time you will still be a fuckin forienger and never really be included in the inner workings of their society the same way as their own people). The social, cultural, and political environment in many countries will do their best to shake you out of your little fantasies about how US is the ultimate evil empire or some other delusional and immature fantasies about sticking it to the man.

Just like how snowden or assange was too cowardly to go after real targets practicing imperialism and racial discrimination on a cultural, social, and historical level, or just as that idiotic bitch jane fonda only recently sheepishly retracted her ignorant endorsement of NVA (my lai was more or less SOP for them), you need to get some proper perspective before playing at being an 'enlightened' and 'progressive' people with awareness about REAL conditions of this world.

Otherwise, have fun being led around the nose by those who will happily manipulate your immature and infantile bitching to their advantage. Here's a hint: the big bad boss ain't US no matter how comfortable that may make you feel as opposed to someone who you REALLY can't stand up against and try to ignore.

Anti Americanism is for the weak and the ignorant. Those who love to squeal 'racist' should check themselves before they drown in their own shit and I will be glad to hold them in place while someone else does the fun work, my darker skin not withstanding even a little bit.

Fair's fair, bitches!

While I do believe Israeli lobby is a problem, I DO have a problem with people suddenly thinking Israel is the devil incarnate. It almost seems as if people are embarrassed by somewhat simplistic point of view they had about right and wrong and are desperately trying to play at being a contrarian.

No one told you to make such uninformed opinions than try to desperately correct it by trashing it overnight and playing for the other team. That's plain pathetic. Objectively weighing who take responsibility for what should place the majority of faults squarely on arabs and their hypocritical transgression against Israel.

Here's the deal: Israel is by no means perfect. But their neighbors have no standing or right to bitch and moan as if they are the victims. Israel has even attempted to reconcile and try their hand at two-state solution - meanwhile regular declarations are issued by arab public and figures about how Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth. Since when did Israel make turning arab world into a furnace their main goal? Don't anyone go fucking issue lies and denials about their obvious racist tendencies against a group of people barely holding out in a country half the size of NJ while they themselves sit on the riches natural resource on earth. If the position was the other way around, they would be squealing discrimination.

Israel is certainly not the one doing the poking. It will maintain its rightful place and survive as a nation without every single boy in middle east having a period over its existence. How about some fucking apologies for taking advantage of jewish people's misfortunes and pogroms of jews in the middle east? What of daily rhetoric coming from the middle east to 'exterminate jews' and 'destroy israel'?

Palestine? You do understand that was the name given by Roman exterminators to destroy jewish culture and forcefully revise the identity of the land.

How can any objective person weigh the 'sins' of Israel against the muslim world and not be outraged at the sheer ignorance of those who seek Israel's extermination? When was the last time Israel claimed the whole of Saudi peninsula as its 'holy land', plopped down a golden synagogue in riyadh and claimed it as their great holy place?

Being a contrarian against a simple idea of right and wrong is one thing, but jumping on the superficial, racist and ethnically biased bitchfest bandwagon is very, very pathetic.

This is not particular of the U.S., but people of a region ARE to be held accountable for their governments actions, at least when dealing with 3rd countries. If you don't want to be held accountable for droning people or being in a police state or economic meltdown, elect Ron Paul. If I don't want to be called a PIIG in the Anglo/financial media, I elect and campaign for more responsible politicians. If a Muslim does not want to be mocked and called terrorist, don't vote for Mohameed Morsi or work for the Saudi or Iranian status-quo...

Regarding anti-Americanism stated above ... Nobody would be anti-anything if your rednecks (and your liberals too) would mind just your own business. Since when it's your damn business to meddle into how Russia deals with gay propaganda towards children, or if people in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe are socialist?

Who's anti-India or anti-Brazil? They don't invade other countries or threat others as vassals of the empire. They don't force their views and culture down other people's throats. However, there are still today anti-Russians, anti-Japanese and anti-Germans for good reasons.

In short: if you even care that some have anti-American stances, you know what to do and not to do.

Poor honeypot, such a jaundiced arrogant brainwashed view.

Zionism hijacked Judaism for material and political gain. Zionism is a terror cult that has used theft embezzlement and murder to make Israel and enslave jews in a zionist entity. Jews lived there in small numbers along side others. This ownership of the land bullshit is utter invented nonsense to justify an eastern european inbred cult takeover of land that was never theirs to take.

Without the US propping up the filthy entity and protecting it from international justice there would be no Israel and the displaced palestinian arabs wouldn't have to do a thing to make it disappear.

Sure, except that is true exactly nowhere on the planet.
The only time it is true is immediately after a popular revolution before the power vacuum fills with the next wave of corruption.
One thing that you will learn as you travel the planet is that individuals typically have very little to do with what their political overlords are doing "in their name".


For what it's worth, I LOL'd at the "elect Ron Paul" stuff.  Even if he had support of 60% of US he would lose every national election without support of the banks or the military.  Politics doesn't work the way you think it does.  If you paid much attention to the last election, even the Republicans shunned RP.  When he would win or even come in second on a Republican primary race, he would not be even listed in the Republican news. 

The Liberals laughed at it too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B0QPcoTZg8
It was something the alternative media from both sides could bond over...
http://www.infowars.com/jon-stewart-on-the-media-ignoring-ron-aul/

Ron Paul is one of the better proofs of the point I was making as to why you can not really hold any individual folks in a region responsible for what their government is doing.  You would be more likely to find a Ron Paul supporter than an Obama supporter in very large areas.  One is a political nobody, and the other is the leader of the free world.  You have the American ochlocratic democracy to thank for that, and mobs are far too easy to manipulate.  The best you can hope for is a sane and rational local politician. 

LOL you can't even make an argument without descending into a completely baseless racially charged argument, and you suppose I am 'brainwashed'.

Typical ignorant fools these days. After a good deal of experience seeing things from many sides, I have more than enough confidence to tell outright who is the one doing the self-serving lying.

'Zionist' LOL. If my people were up in arms with their periods on because of a small group of people we outnumber by 200 to 1, I would be so ashamed I couldn't show my face in public.

I chose Israel as a response because you brought it up. I am not oblivious nor ignorant to the problems in the middle east. I'm not a young man, nor have I lived with my head in the sand.

I used it as an example only because you did.

I could list off a whole lot of examples of foreign aid gone wrong. Finding a few that went well is much more difficult. Something given is of no value, unless value is exchanged, thus "biting the hand that feeds" and all of that.

I am opposed to ALL foreign aid, other than the one that has historically been prove to work every time. Free trade. Ideas pass borders as easily as goods and services. Bastiat said it well. "Where goods and services do not cross borders, soldiers will".

I am an agorist. I do NOT believe that government is a "necessary evil". Evil, yes. Necessary? No!

America is a place. The United States of America is a corporation. All corporations exist to further the profit of their shareholders. Exactly who those shareholders are is somewhat shadowy in this case, but it sure as hell is not the "citizens" who in this day and age should be called subjects.

The America I grew up in no longer exists. We every day resemble Germany circa 1936 to a greater extent. I fear this. When I was young a great many of my friends traveled to foreign lands for various reasons. They were all happy to come home, even though they had fun. Fast forward 20 years (about ten years ago) and they started going on holiday to Europe or Asia and not coming home. Because they found better conditions for themselves over there. Mind you, they were NOT looking to leave the US hegemon, they were on vacation! Yet they found other places more attractive than the land of their birth.

Now I'm seeing this a lot. People are getting tired of living in a place where your every move is monitored. Even if they don't DO anything to you, they are still watching. Voyeurism isn't a great governmental paradigm any more than the territorial ambitions.

As for "appropriate reparations", what's that? Should we go down the road of the treaty of Versailles and guarantee future problems? Or what?

Personally, I'd like to see the United States say to the world: "Well, we tried. We have found that we were misguided. Good luck, happy trading, you're on your own". And then pull the fuck OUT. We do NOT need a huge military presence round the globe. We do NOT need to keep playing power games with the various polities around the world. We only need to trade with them. If our ideals are correct, we should not violate them. A hand in friendship and trade, entangling alliances with NONE. People see. If they like what they see, they emulate it. If they emulate it and their leaders won't, the leaders suddenly find themselves outnumbered, and either conform or get cast out. If you don't believe that, look to history. as little as 3 centuries ago everybody KNEW that the only "proper" form of government was a monarchy. Yet the monarchies faded away, didn't they? How many are there now? Ten?

Now the dominant paradigm, at least in discussion, is democracy. Another proven failure, because it never actualizes, but instead becomes a republic dominated by the loudest voices or the most coin. Usually both. It's inherent flaws are too many to list in a simple forum post, but there it is.

Final thought for today is that hating the United States of America and hating America are two different things. I don't hate America. It is my homeland. I was born in western Washington, I am of mixed ancestry but that includes a great deal of Cherokee. My roots run deep to America, Norway, Germany, Scotland and England. I have no problem with any of those peoples. Just their governments. As an outsider, it's easy to criticize another nation. It is much harder to be objective about your own. I tried to work within the system for many years, and found that at root, it cannot be reformed. This is because it WORKS AS INTENDED for those in power. Not so much for the vast majority of us. They can bail out a corporation for billions of dollars, but will hardly throw a bone to the people from whom they took the money, and future. The idea of a government accountable to the people is nice. It hasn't happened once on a scale larger than a small city. And it never will, as it CANNOT. Thus, decentralization makes sense if you are aiming for the best result for the largest number of people. This was well understood in early American history. It got lost along the way. People like me are trying to bring it back. For this we are called unpatriotic and even treasonous when we quote Thomas Jefferson and his posse.

I smell something rotten in a swamp a bit north of Maryland.

Yes, I've not answered any of your "points".  Yes they are racist but moreover nationalist ranting.  Since they have pretty much nothing to do with Bitcoin, I'm pretty much ignoring them.  So in that sense, yes I'm ignorant.  No argument there.

munch...munch...  popcorn needs salt....

You need educating. There is no racial element, charged or otherwise. "Jews" are not a race, that is a zionist invention just like Israel itself and the narrative used to justify the theft, colonisation and illegal occupation of land in the region. If you knew anything about Judaism you'd know the terror state is an abomination and makes a mockery of the teachings of true Jewish religion. It's nothing more than a US sponsored east european colony founded on extortion, terrorism and murder.

http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-the-jew-always-lives-from-the-blood-of-other-peoples-he-needs-such-murders-and-such-sacrifices-julius-streicher-270338.jpg

"I dream of a world without Jews" -- Ludwig von Mises

Post a picture of an elephants arse, it has about the same relevance you twit.

Or is that intended as the usual rot used to try and close down the truth. No wonder the zionist terror cult hijacked, patented and enslaved the suffering of "the jews".

http://www.jewlicious.com/wp-content/jew.gif   :P

Just for you.

http://www.algemeiner.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Netanyahu-2.jpg

What is this, stormfront?

Oh wait, just racist muslim sympathizers. Do they even know how their 'points' apply a hundred times more to themselves than others?

LOL @ all the weak willed fools getting swept up in contrarian bandwagon.


On the other hand, I am not too sure about the 'fat' thing - as far as statistics go, Mexico is the most obese country in the world. Also, I have seen some of the fittest and strongest people around the world in US, versus the 'fat' people. I believe that over representation of 'fat' issue is due to the fact that many obese people in America still behave and strut around as if they have no problems, thus being more visible, while in other nations people feel the need to be more withdrawn due to their physical problem, at least not being quite so social and forward with themselves due to pressure. I have personally seen some of the fattest people on earth in east asia as well as latin america and even africa.

Lastly, I really hope no one's going to try and look up BMI to see who's the 'fattest' since BMI does not distinguish between types of bodily composition in their study. If going by BMI, I would be considered obese, despite being 6 foot 5, 260 pounds and very little of it fat. So would the whole line of new england patriots and most of the heavy weight boxer types.

 

BS. Europe is being federalized now (http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/12/12/greece-to-default-in-2014-cycles-of-war-presidential-elections-2016/) with the debt situation. Watch the outcome and learn (well you never learn over there and now the Americans are falling into the same socialist sh8t hole).

Btw, nasty nasty Hitler like outcomes coming throughout the western world, including of course the USA.

$150 trillion debt (not including $quadrillion derivatives and another $quadrillion of unfunded social promises) is coming due western world.

Checkmate. Lights out.

The reason is geographical. China can't project power over the Himalayan mountain range. This also isolated them from being attacked. Thus they turned to domestic and SE Asia domination.

But now China seeks a blue water navy. They are not there yet though. Long ways away.

I find it interesting that Europeans think they live in a nirvana and they think the only problems in the world are not enough social system and too much adventurous militarism.

Just wait until the debt bomb unloads on you guys over there (social systems are not free!) and we will see Europe return to its world war history again. At least you stopped making children (except France perhaps a few others), so most of you are too old to fight. So perhaps we will just see Europe put to sleep.

Tut tuting Europeans eager to assuage their broken pride by bitching at US is really just digging their own graves. We both have much to deal with in this world other than quarreling between those who are practically cousins in terms of culture, demographics (get rid of those muslims first), etc.

I hope europeans are smart enough to know they should not be alienating US purely out of some need to compensate for their lack of strength on world stage.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA someone's never even heard of Leif Errikson and viking trans-atlantic voyages. Europeans knew about the new world before chinese even thought of sailing to middle east.

Never mind the drivel spouted by Chiasson and Menzies is a thoroughly discredited and that 'map' has been widely critiqued as a fake. Great wishful thinking, but at best that map would be a copy of earlier european and middle eastern discoveries.

Another idiot who conflates orthogonal issues.

Exploring is not the same as supply lines to project military power far away.

Learn what "blue water navy" means.

"Conflates orthogonal" = an highly smartiferous verbification.

It is also one of those unusual de-anonymizing idioms, there aren't many of us that would string those together.

And I mentioned Ron Paul as a sort of "passing by" example.

Let me try another one: we can say that it was Bush and Cheney that campaigned for the invasion of Iraq. However the media set up polls in their websites to check if Americans were pro or against invasion. The results in 2003 were clear: the people was pro-invasion. How are these not co-responsible for the chaos in Iraq afterwards?

Some (hopefully not most) European men are eunuchs that run away scared if they see a pack of muzzies harassing a girl in their countries. I'm very well aware that women would be safer if guys from Texas or Alabama abounded in some places of Europe  :P

The "lack of strenght on the world stage" is something that doesn't concern most, people despise colonialism now. Not everyone wants to be influential in the Middle East or Asia. HOWEVER everyone wants to be influential inside their own country. Which isn't easy for European countries that are not much more than de-facto vassals of the U.S. (like Germany, U.K. and a few others)

There's a reason why muslim cunts don't dare try to pull this shit in US, more like trying to play second fiddle to blacks and mexicans when it comes to trying to act 'gangsta' as they call it these days (Frank Lucas and other old school gangsters might have a thing to two to say about that). We term them wannabe-negroes.

US isn't the one trying to influence european domestic policies. In fact, europe could take a page or two out of how many people in US system and public go after such ethnic-minded cunts in full force.

I'd believe those men would run away scared if they see a pack of skinheads harassing a girl, instead of 'muzzies'. Anyway, you hear about gang raping mostly from India.

FIY I'm not a Muslim fan. I have an equal amount of hate towards islam, judaism and christianity. It's just in my part of Europe we are not affected by muslims in any way, I see a hijab maybe once in two years. But in turn jews are everywhere, one hand washing the other. School I went to as a kid was disbanded recently, to lessen the school amount in the capital. AND AFTER THAT THEY RENOVATED THE GODDAMN BUILDING, AND MADE IT INTO A JEWISH SCHOOL. With candelabras and everything. And mostly for taxpayers money. I mean WTF?

And while in my country jews are kinda hated, in USA they are embraced by everyone. Especially in media. Talk about zionists and conspiracies. And the lobbying, ugh. Pack of rabbis in full 'makeup' begging google or facebook, or even a white house for handouts.

Another funny thing. With the recent discovery of 'lost nazi' art. Our local jews are trying to prove one of the painting belongs to them.

http://s22.postimg.org/lt4nvyept/7593f1_4633329.jpg

that's rascist and so on you're rascist and you have no right to point fingers to someone as you're doing it too!

If a certain group decides to loudly proclaim their 'identity' than proceeds to act in accordance with 'their people' than they are asking to be classified under the same banner. You don't get to avoid responsibilities and group guilt when you want to enjoy group identity. Especially when they are begging to be identified as part of a 'special group'. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.

Don't like it? Don't make excuses for your 'people' (just a bunch of reactionary fools who thinks having that kind of 'identity' makes them 'unique' LOL).

Muslims are racists. Just ask any migrant workers in the middle east. Or the blacker libyan citizens who fled after 2011. Hell the migrant workers are supposed to be majority muslims too, but get garbage treatment. Besides, arabs have a long history of slave trade even before muslim times, having the honor of being the first mass enslavers of africans (or nubians as they called them).

The media is paid by government to support government agendas.  Who knows what those polls might have said if they were instead done scientifically.

Another example that supports my point.

Do you imagine that your neighbors are somehow more immune to being manipulated by your media and government authorities?
Did any of them go to state schools, or work for government?
If these authorities were telling them to be afraid on every news outlet and showing smoking skyscrapers continuously that they are somehow different and less susceptible to such influence over years of repetition?

Later polls, after the media barrage subsided show folks thought it was a mistake.

Racism is generally defined as actions, practices, or beliefs that consider the human species to be divided into races with shared traits, abilities, or qualities, such as personality, intellect, morality, or other cultural behavioral characteristics

As you are giving the same characteristic to all people in the same religion you're by all means racist!
you're a lot worse than this people because they know who they are and you act like someone else altough you're a lot worse then them, you hate the muslims don't you? :)

Back in time US could be an American Dream, but now it's just a place, otherwise i still can't get in there without visa ;s

it was the american dream just because they used other countries for their own gain, now they still do but just a few poorly developed countries and they can't build up to the expectations they created with their marketing enslavement of other nations ;)

I reserve the right to hate and kill those who display ignorance :)

You are getting pathetic trying to play word games and manipulate semantics (no one gives a shit about your bitching that way just so you know).

No body begged muslims or others to come to western nations. They have no right to be demanding anything, much less trying to convince themselves they are somehow 'victims'. Respect and dignity are two way streets. No one has an obligation to cater to anyone's fucking 'feelings'.

Also LOL @ 'enslaving'. I am sure your infantile bitching about how US is the enslaver is as pathetic as your self-convincing act of who is in the wrong.

You just love making bitch moves all over the place.

meh. Being Cherokee means I don't have to care about the lesser races.

Just kidding, though I do have fun saying that when people raise this blather. My actual opinion is that all races and groups are equally worthless. It's individuals (and to a lesser extent teams and corporations) that make a difference for good or ill, and their skin color has nothing to do with it. Cultures tend to have good and bad points. That's really where the "opinion on America" falls, culture.

American culture has some very good points. We have a deep seated belief in liberty, even though the actuality of it has escaped us, and we are, as a rule, rather innovative. Or at least were. But in recent years our culture has embraced fear as something useful and desirable. This is NOT a positive. We are also extremely litigious, to the point of absurdity. This needs to go as well. We have in recent years abandoned our distrust of those in authority, and this is suicidal. Our country was founded on such distrust, and it was not misplaced. The more we cooperate and/or ignore their depredations, the bolder they get. The way the cops act now would have gotten them killed in my youth. Not by criminals, but by common citizens who felt (RIGHTLY!) that their life was not the business of a hired thug. And that's the bottom of the ladder.

Those at the top are so disconnected from the common experience as to be a separate species. Watch C-SPAN once in a while (if you can handle the mind numbing stupidity) and you'll see what I mean. They care a great deal about their power, but the know jack shit about the man on the street. And couldn't care less, other than a few months prior to polling time. Not even very much then, as the Republicrat superparty controls the voting.

land of drons, GMO, chemtrails....

...and faux news

Rotten beyond belief
It is easier to give a friend $100 than to give $1 each to people you don't know (if you don't believe me try it at least you will make 101 people a little happier) and so it is with government they give larges sums of money to their friend and say FU to the masses. They are not inherently mean or evil they just can't see beyond the ends of their noses. This is a problem with groups of people. 5 people can be egalitarian and help each other, communicate and know each other, it would be anathema to them to not help one of their group if they fell on hard times. 100 people is still a community but they might ignore one man down on his luck at least for a while. 1000 people will give money to charity and hope that it helps that man. 1,000,000 people could give a damn!
Society has become so large that we need to revert to small independent groups to regain our humanity.

it's all soaked with corruption. greed is the prevailing attitude.

democrarcy in the the US is a thing of the past. a democracy with two parties, seriously? and the one with the most money wins. the system is a joke. and i think no other western nation has such an effective brainwashing machinery going to keep their people uninformed and distracted.

while at the same time i have a feeling that more and more people are waking up from the american dream and realize they are stuck with a system that only acts in favor of the 1% and abuses all the rest.

apart from that the US is an amazingly beautiful country and there are lots of awesome people over there.


 ;D

subtle bump.
YOU CAN'T SEE ME!

The way we resoundingly said 'Hell No!' to the Syria thing did a lot to restore my faith in our population.  This even when a lot of people bought the crap about 'the Butcher of Damascus' and his proposed use of sarin to 'kill his own people.'  Of course a lot of us (and seemingly a vast majority of clued in analysts world wide) had this pegged as obvious bullshit all through the media phase of the project.

Probably the most interesting thing was the dis-connect between our government and the attitude of the population.  Seems that Rice, Kerry, and their ilk thought they it would be no problem to herd us into yet another war and received an unexpected bitch-slap.  (And an equally devastating one from Great Brittain which was nice to see...to bad the French are such scum, but at least their influence is minimal.)  The unfortunate side effect of this is that now it is clear that a somewhat more powerful persuasive tool will be needed for the next run.  The effects of 9/11 operation are obviously getting a bit long in the tooth.

It no longer matters whether or not 9-11 was a false flag, the effect is the same.
We have yet to shed the excessive burdens we adopted due to perceived threat.
It is entrenched.

More and more I'm coming to the opinion that it does indeed matter.  The latest impulse is that it is being used fairly blatantly to make some significant changes to the foundational documents of our country.

The concept of privacy was probably equally well understood by the framers of the constitution as by some of us now.  There is nothing new about collection and collation of internal intelligence data, and the mischief that can (and almost certainly will) be caused by groups of people who have the ability to obtain and leverage this info.  There is no doubt in my mind that many of the framers had a very 'modern' understanding of these things because, again, they have not actually changed very much since Roman times and probably before.

9/11 is trotted out to justify these foundational changes and that is a bad thing.  A very bad thing in my mind.  To me and many other people who have studied things a bit (and are able to parse Harrit's study paper, have worked in demolition, etc) it is pretty much beyond doubt 9/11 was an 'inside job.'  As (and if) more people accept the event for what it is, it will be more difficult to use it as a justification to change the nature of our nation.

 - edit: spelling and link:  http://nielsharrit.org/ (http://nielsharrit.org/)

Weather it was or not, what it is being used to justify is neither a good end nor a good means.
The insinuations of past conspiracy drags folks away from the matters at hand today and now.

false flag country, without medical care

honestly, just a country (no offence meant)... currently it happens to be the world's superpower in military and economic terms but I don't see a reason why it should pride itself on being the greatest, most democratic country, etc. there are many countries in the world that respect human rights, guarantee freedom of speech, assembly etc. (just look to Western Europe). and not a few of them have better healthcare and educational systems than US. some of them also had their "15 minutes of fame" in the past (a bit similar to the current US position).

and I'm not sure about American dream - I've recently come across some sociological studies about declining social mobility (but I admit that's a problem in other Western countries too).

they have MBL, NHL and others league, and they call (themself) the winers world champion????
wtf

Yes,  I am American.
The dollar is foreign to me because of my potentially harmful obsession with bitcoin :)
Everyone here pronounces my name like 'Teris' but the only Russian thing about me is my name. I've never been outside of the states all my life.

Bump for new voters of 2014 :)

Seems as a joke, but...

[X] Totalitarian state under silent occupation.

http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/white-house-black-flag2.jpg

Yes, I think the corruption level in the US is absurd. I'd say the current political system here is an economical apartheid.
I agree that the US is a beautiful place, but the government needs to change.



also the land of guatanamo. we got all the best stuff  (sarcasm)

The americian dream is gone because excess regulations and taxes have driven businesses away annd because unions have bled the businesses that did stay dry.

Voted fat people because that is my only impression.

Missing the option of "global bully", so voted for money injection.

I'm old enough to remember what US manufacturing was like until the jobs were sent overseas.   The made in America was never as good as people claimed it to be.  I'm referring to those Zenith televisions that would always break!  Zenith doesn't even exist anymore.   :o  Now a more contemporary reminder are all those recalls in the US automobile manufacturers.

As much as people say made in China is junk - my clothes made in China haven't exploded on me yet, neither has my Ipod or the computer parts I bought over the years that came from China.  I haven't had a TV made overseas die on me yet, even though I witnessed multiple Zenith and other American brands die.   Let's face it the stuff made in East Asia is better than the stuff that was ever made in America.

Interestingly enough I was going through the history books and found out this has always been the case with American manufacturing.  Americans back in the 1860s, 1890s and the 1900s were calling for tariffs and the main argument was that American products (due to being inferior) couldn't compete with oversea products hence we needed a tariff to save our industry.

For all the argument of the WASP work ethic - it doesn't seem to have materialized much in US history outside of the armaments industry.  

government is evil ño matter where at or what form

I want to say that US is better than many place but the American dream is more and more killed by the government.

As a citizen I can say that the government no longer represents the people.  The U.S has taken on the role of "big brother" in the world and now is expected to resolve problems everywhere when we do nothing for our own issues.  There is constant conflict both in and of itself and worldwide!  Non-stop fraud and criminal investigations from the top to the bottom and never any punishment! 

I'll second this.  US citizen born and raised but I don't feel like the government has my best interests at the top of their agenda - I think their more interested in keeping personal power to live like little kings of their fiefdoms with the POTUS as emperor.

I don't really care about it. it's a global superpower but really all i see it good for is holidays!

I mostly agree with you both, but I have to disagree on your representation of the president as being the "emperor" - as far as I can tell, he's mostly a puppet, with the real "emperors" being those that financed his campaign (by the way, I don't mean this just about the current president).

Our government is like a store, the ones with the money have the power. The US president is in a way living like a king, but the "emperors" are the ones with the most money.

Just a fat people  ;D .

Make in US used to be something to be proud of and people used to avoid "make in Japan".

Guess time have changed.

Compared to MOST other places, the US is still better in terms of quality of life and "freedom."  However I do agree it is much harder to make a good living in the US than it used to be.

Regarding the government, I also agree it is mostly interested in preserving its own power. That's why I rarely vote for an incumbent and I think people need to wake up and vote for candidates who are not in the major parties.  I wouldn't vote for a radical but just someone who thinks more outside the box.  Our founding fathers also spoke of not letting 1 person stay in power too long.

that was in back to the future, right?

when the Doc said the DeLorean was crap because it was made in Japan and Marty told him that everything good is made in Japan
or it was the other way around :D


Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

Well before the US / Germany it used to be the British.  The British used to laugh at the quality of German automobiles and other industrial products.

Italy also saw substantial improvements after the war too.   Like in Germany's case, I guess it helped when all your factories were blown up that you remade them with contemporary technology.

I would agree with you about Obama being a puppet before the 2nd election.  The way he works and acts now is too fluid and smooth to be the work of any puppet master.  That would be like saying Cheney was a puppet.  Was Cheney Bush's puppet master or was he himself a puppet?

I think Obama is Machiavellian - he knows what he wants and is personally trying to get it.  He will use anything he has to go get that.  Look at his talk from 2004 to 2008 - for a puppet that's a lot of 180s.

The quality of the American products have slipped quite considerably (due to a large number of reasons such as taxes, unqualified staff.etc), while that of the Japanese products have remained constant.

Government hiring process is largely influence by politic rather than qualification. Reason why it is getting more bloated every year,

I would agree with that assessment.  15 years ago you would buy something made in china and you would curse at the horrible instructions and shody quality.  While today's stuff made in American may not be called shody, it certainly is not fine craftsmanship.  Even the manuals are horrible - they're in English but they don't make sense, and skip obvious steps, and the diagrams are pathetic.

Look at the ASICs coming out of BFL and compare that to the stuff Bitmain is putting out in China... so sad.

they are just jealous

Drug and fat people is my impression.

USA has a war on drugs and a war on obesity.
Both were started by the wives of presidents. (Reagan and Obama)
A people are judged by the wars started by its first ladies, it seems.

What an horrible way to spend the taxpayer money against him  :-[ I hope every country who have this stupidity will stop, it's fascism.

Given enough democracy, that's where it goes...

http://www.sifter.org/~brandyn/Democracy.png

President's wives aren't really elected.  Though Hillary tried.

Democracy without strong limitation is the problem, anything against individual choice or serious budget management should be forbidden.

it becomes anarchy  ;D .

Every country of this world is far away from anarchy, we have a long road of freedom improvement before anarchy. If the government would stop the most stupid thing he do i think life would be much better.

I'm not anarchist for few reason but i appreciate this guy.

There are always two sides of a coin. You like it or not but ultimately this is the reality and we have to live with it.  :-\