Post by khyron1144 on May 16, 2004 18:55:36 GMT -5
I'm not talking about American people. Most of them are alright. There's a few that I will vehemently and completely disagree with always (hi galadon!), but I bear them little actual malice.
I also don't hate the actual physical geography that the United States of America claims as it's domain. Lakes to swim in and trees to lounge around under and hills to climb and cities with libraries, musems, and shopping. What's not to like?
I hate two things about America:
The public face we present to the world.
and
The government.
99% of my life I've been lied to.
-the great sage, Marshall Mathers
Lie Number One: We're the greatest country in the world.
We've been telling ourselves this all our lives, but I keep reading statistics about things like lifespan in other modern industrialized nations like The United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan. Anybody care to do the Google search that will back me up on this? This is from memory, but I'm willing to bet we're at the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of average lifespan.
Then there's common causes of death. Who leads the modern industrialized world in gunshot-related deaths? Us? the gun-happy Americans? I thought so.
Compare rates for rape, child abuse, and any other crime, and you'll find us towards the bottom of the industrialized world.
Lie Number Two: We're the free-est country on Earth.
One of our fifty states now recognizes gay marriage. One. And our President wants to change the constitution to ban it. You know how many western European countries have legalized gay marriages? Most of them.
And we call ourselves free.
Now compare recent efforts to legalize marijauna (to me the question of medical or recreational use is moot; pot is pot) and prostitution. Western Europe leads the way there too.
Lie number three: we're at the fore-front of science and art
Watch an anime. Now watch a recent American cartoon (if you can find one; most things these days at least look like dubbed, slightly recut Japanese cartoons, even if they're not). Which one was better?
Compare an episode of monty Python's flying circus to an episode of Saturday Night Live. Or a Terry Pratchett novel to a Robert Aprin novel. Or a comic book written by Alan Moore to one written by Geoff Johns.
Name an American painter. It's hard to even think of one. Now that you've thought of one, which is the better painting, the American one you thought of or Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers?
Okay so we lost the arts, so what? I'll let you figure out so what yourself, but keep in mind every civilization that has been great in the sciences and statecraft has also been great in the arts (like the Greeks).
In the sciences we used to follow the wise policy of stealing the best talent of other nations and paying them better. I don't know if we still do it anymore.
I do know that very recently (this year or last) Georgia tried to remove the Theory of Evolution form its science curriculum. The foundation of modern biology (which was thought of by a Brit by the by) was removed form the science curriculum because someone had a hissy fit about the religious implications of the only reasonable scientific theory for explaining the diversity of life on Earth.
You tell me that's not backwards.
So how can America get me to like it? By living up to its hype. That's all.
I also don't hate the actual physical geography that the United States of America claims as it's domain. Lakes to swim in and trees to lounge around under and hills to climb and cities with libraries, musems, and shopping. What's not to like?
I hate two things about America:
The public face we present to the world.
and
The government.
99% of my life I've been lied to.
-the great sage, Marshall Mathers
Lie Number One: We're the greatest country in the world.
We've been telling ourselves this all our lives, but I keep reading statistics about things like lifespan in other modern industrialized nations like The United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan. Anybody care to do the Google search that will back me up on this? This is from memory, but I'm willing to bet we're at the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of average lifespan.
Then there's common causes of death. Who leads the modern industrialized world in gunshot-related deaths? Us? the gun-happy Americans? I thought so.
Compare rates for rape, child abuse, and any other crime, and you'll find us towards the bottom of the industrialized world.
Lie Number Two: We're the free-est country on Earth.
One of our fifty states now recognizes gay marriage. One. And our President wants to change the constitution to ban it. You know how many western European countries have legalized gay marriages? Most of them.
And we call ourselves free.
Now compare recent efforts to legalize marijauna (to me the question of medical or recreational use is moot; pot is pot) and prostitution. Western Europe leads the way there too.
Lie number three: we're at the fore-front of science and art
Watch an anime. Now watch a recent American cartoon (if you can find one; most things these days at least look like dubbed, slightly recut Japanese cartoons, even if they're not). Which one was better?
Compare an episode of monty Python's flying circus to an episode of Saturday Night Live. Or a Terry Pratchett novel to a Robert Aprin novel. Or a comic book written by Alan Moore to one written by Geoff Johns.
Name an American painter. It's hard to even think of one. Now that you've thought of one, which is the better painting, the American one you thought of or Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers?
Okay so we lost the arts, so what? I'll let you figure out so what yourself, but keep in mind every civilization that has been great in the sciences and statecraft has also been great in the arts (like the Greeks).
In the sciences we used to follow the wise policy of stealing the best talent of other nations and paying them better. I don't know if we still do it anymore.
I do know that very recently (this year or last) Georgia tried to remove the Theory of Evolution form its science curriculum. The foundation of modern biology (which was thought of by a Brit by the by) was removed form the science curriculum because someone had a hissy fit about the religious implications of the only reasonable scientific theory for explaining the diversity of life on Earth.
You tell me that's not backwards.
So how can America get me to like it? By living up to its hype. That's all.