I'm not really sure how or why to defend being an american anymore. America sucks. Like honestly sucks. Let's delve into this.
1) Religion. 1/5 American's believe the sun and the universe circle the earth. Yes, man may have gone to the moon but a fifth of americans still hold to geocentric values. this is beyond acceptable and highlights a very real problem in america. America was founded by crazy ass religious fundamentalists and this value (being fucking crazy) has survived throughout the centuries. From the Pilgrims and the Salem Witch Trials to modern geocentrists american's are intentionally ignorant. that's ignoring the fact that these same people are willing to accept the justification of torture.
2) CIA. the CIA have been actively killing democracy around the globe for at least half a century now AND installing fascists and dictators in their place. from mossadegh to pinochet the gov has literally been engaging in covert wars against democratic gov's because they fail to benefit America. This goes beyond the sleaziness of the IMF. Completely unnacceptable and still happening apparently. Assassins were recently captured in Bolivia where they were planning on killing Evo Morales. Considering he was responsible for nationalizing the natural gas (the exact reason they killed mossadegh) do we really have to guess who was behind it?
3) Torture. Ok, so here's what I can't handle. We did it. we did it and then at least half of america tried to justify it. and realistically, do we think we haven't done it before? you really think they didn't torture people in vietnam? we know they wiped out whole villages in bloodlust. This is fact. Same with Korea. Even obama still supports rendition.
4) culture. america has been bogged down in corruption due to it's wealth. it's disgustingly bloated on it's wealth and corporatocracy. obesity is the number one killer of americans now I think. fucking ew. Disney? christ, we've been exporting our little fairy tale around the world now and ruining entire cultures with our cutesy bullshit.
5) Police state. The right wing claims we are the leaders of the free world. shit the left does to. ...1 in 99 american's are behind bars. 1/33 are somehow being monitored in the prison system (from home arrest to probation). free? not likely. http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/62
6) War. Have we gone 50 years at any stretch without war in america? Mind you, I think WW2 and prior we engaged in relatively just wars. Unless your a constitutionalist (liberatarian), than we saw the death of the constitution during the Civil War. Of course, without the Civil war the South would still probably have slavery as it was such an economic means of production. maybe not, but they'd have bangladeshi style sweatshops for sure and that's pretty much the same. After world war 2 our imperialism arose. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1 and 2 and all the military and covert activities around the globe (such as supporting the taliban against the Ruskies in the 80's). some of this was relatively justifiable actually, Iraq 1 had an honest coalition but the only reason we came to kuwaits aid was because of their oil, it's not like we had humane intentions (if we did we would have gone into rawanda, and we'd be in sudan now). at least clinton seemed to have honest intentions in the balkans. good for him.
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings.php
The US comes in at 97. ninety fucking seven. Yea there are many nations out there that are worse...but i wouldn't want to fucking live in any of them either.
6) drugs. the war on drugs has had a devastating impact on both the US and the world. it's also directly tied to the CIA's operations around the world as proven by the Iran/Contra affair. You really think they stopped just because they were called out on it? it's also directly tied to the enormous prison system that is in control of so many american lives.
According to the American Corrections Association, the average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the US is $67.55. State prisons held 253,300 inmates for offenses in 2005. That means states spent approximately $17,110,415 per day to imprison offenders, or $6,245,301,475 per year.
-http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/62
Fucking disgusting and in case you weren't paying attention to portugal, it is completely counterproductive: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Portugals_drug_decriminalization_bizarrely_underappreciated_Greenwald_0406.html
7) Inequality. the US is the wealthiest nation on the planet. It also has the greatest wealth inequality currently as in any time in it's history. i've seen for myself the equality between white and black communities. why the fuck would I want to stick around for that?
I could go on but why bother? The reality is is that the idea of america being the land of the free and the home of the brave is a myth. an illusion. yea life there is better than a lot of foreign nations but there's also a lot of nations where you can live an equally fulfilling and secure life without the guilt of being an american. I swear I almost understand the christian sense of guilt when I tell people I'm american. I wan't to follow that detail with an apology everytime.
So where to go? I'm thinking canada. maybe ireland but probably canada. it's fairly close to america in most ways but it's missing all of it's major negative features. canada's pretty fucking awesome from all i know about it. none of the people who might read this are likely to go all pseudopatriotic but i would caution anyone who might against doing so. ultra-nationalism is an indicator of fascism. in fact...it's pretty clear that half of america is fascist. http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm.
1. obvious, 2. see justification of torture of accused terrorists, 3. 9/11 --> Iraq, 4. Militarism (way to go Reagan you fucking fascist), 5. meh, complicated but look at the treatment of women in the military and the disparity between pay and the number of women in politics, 6. Fox News, 7. Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, 8. obvious, 9. obvious, you'll notice where the bailout went, the dems refused to protect homeowners recently killing a senate bill. look into how much bailout money went to political contributions (corporatocracy, look into it), 10. the right is desperate to put down labor, 11. calling obama an elitist and "out of touch with the avg joe" even though he came from the people but went to Harvard whereas mccain understand the people even though he's a fucking millionaire, 12. see prison system, 13. political system and corporatocracy is dominated by cronyism (see the prior head of the US treasury). I'm astounded by how much moving around these high level CEO's do and of course political power has become concentrated in the hands of certain families to a scary extent.
if that's not reason enough to get out i don't know what is.
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