'Murika

[beingnobody]

In your opinion, what one word represents what defines America?

 

[TheRealCallie]

Overrated

 

[Abstamyous]

Special

 

[CenotaphGirl]

Large

 

[TheRealCallie]

Large

You calling us fat? :O lol

 

[CenotaphGirl]

You calling us fat? :O lol

Not fat but lol everything's bigger out there food portions can feed 9 people

 

[Unsigned]

Oscillating.

IMO, we've been on a downswing since the mid 60s.

 

[TheSkaFish]

"Contradictory", or "hypocritical".

We claim to be civilized, yet seem to be regressing to survival of the fittest, Darwinian competition, "might makes right".

We claim to be "a Christian nation", but the way this country is run seems to have more in common with the teachings of 50 Cent, than the teachings of Jesus. I must have slept through the sermon where Jesus said "if you have more money and have more sex than the next guy, you are better than the next guy, and it is your divine right to flex on him, to remind him of what a loser he is and how much better than him you are."

"Brainwashed" would also be another choice.

 

[TheSkaFish]

IMO, we've been on a downswing since the mid 60s.

I'd be a little more generous and say we've been on a downswing since sometime in the '70s (about 30 years after WW2).

(On a side note, I don't think it's a coincidence to say punk really started becoming a thing in the late '70s - it wasn't that the kids were dumb, or wanted to be "bad", it was that they knew something was wrong, and it was - that's when the attack on the middle class began, in full swing.)

Or I'd be even more generous and say that the '90s were good, and we've been on a downswing since 9/11.
DEFINITELY on a downswing since Hurricane Katrina in '05, which caused a gas price spike for a few years after until the Recession in '08, and things have been pretty lousy and getting lousier ever since.

That's why I'm not enamored with Big Tech - because tech has been increasing/improving all this time, but most people's quality of life continues to go to hell. So it doesn't seem like more tech will solve anything.

I looked at history books in school and I always thought to myself, "the past looks so bad, I'm glad I live in the modern world where things are better than they used to be". I thought the future meant things would continue to get better, like they always seemed to over the course of history. The fact that things seem to be getting worse instead, despite advances in tech, makes me so angry.

In my opinion, the creation of the middle class, and having it be relatively easy to get into, is what made us a modern, advanced country. That's what made the economy strong. Since the middle class has been under attack, we've been regressing to how it is in third world countries, where there is no middle class, or it's very small and difficult to get into. Look at Russia - an unfathomably wealthy elite, a small middle class, and lots of people stuck at the bottom, with lots of crime, alcoholism, drug addiction, and despair. There's a lot of heroin use in Russia, and it's not because the people are dumb, it's because they feel hopeless enough that being strung out on heroin is more attractive than reality. The same thing is happening here, though not yet to the same extent. I feel like that's what we're headed for if we don't start adopting more middle-class friendly policies. This is why I think Darwinian competition is bad. Most people won't thrive in an environment that's more Darwinian than less. Most people aren't cut out for it. And if most people are doing badly, you're not going to have a healthy economy, because to do that, people need to have money to spend. But they can't have money if they can't compete. And they can't compete if they don't have competitive advantages to start with, which I feel most people don't.

I'm a strong believer in, making the middle class accessible, even for people who weren't academic achievers. I'd rather have a healthy economy because more people have more money to spend on things, than worry and nitpick and play weird goody-goody holier-than-thou games about who does or doesn't "deserve".

But generally yeah, I agree that we're on a downswing, and have been for a while.

 

[ringwood]

Self-righteous

 

[TheRealCallie]

Self-righteous

Oh so now we're fat AND self righteous....

 

[ringwood]

Oh so now we're fat AND self righteous....

And touchy too, apparently. . .

 

[beingnobody]

Large

You realize you could put maybe four America's inside Afrika? And the total population of United States is only about 5% of world population.

 

[TheRealCallie]

And touchy too, apparently. . .

I'm 'Murican, don't tread on me!

 

[CenotaphGirl]

You realize you could put maybe four America's inside Afrika? And the total population of United States is only about 5% of world population.

Wonder why the world map tells a different story

 

[beingnobody]

No one sad "freedom." I'm shocked.

 

[beingnobody]

Wonder why the world map tells a different story

Dunno what map you are looking at

 

[Unsigned]

No one sad "freedom." I'm shocked.

See my comment about the mid 60s.
The more laws we created, the less freedom we had.

 

[NoxApex(N/A)]

Concept.
Because that's how it established itself, as a new concept.

And the U.S. is roughly around the same size as the Sahara Desert.

 

[beingnobody]

See my comment about the mid 60s.
The more laws we created, the less freedom we had.

There is nothing I "WANT" to do that is prohibited by law. We need laws because too many people have snot bubbles for brains