Cop at town hall rally tells protester "This aint America no more", page 3

Originally posted by jam321
reply to post by jimmyx

he said you americans don't have a clue what it is like to live in a socialist country. he says america has provided him and his family so much freedom that he still loves living here compared to constantly living in fear inside russia.

Your friend is correct. But remember, he can compare the two because he has lived in both. Many Americans can only compare the America they grew up in and the America they now live in. It's the only country they know.

Glad to hear your friend is enjoying a better life.

Most Americans have access to public schools, libraries, and the internet. You don't need to have lived in Russia to understand the absurdity of saying the United States has become the USSR or Nazi Germany. You don't even have to have lived during the 50s to criticize the hysteria that had a nation accusing people of being communists, destroying their reputations and costing them their jobs. If you had asked me in August 2001 about that period of time, I would have told you how grateful I am to be living today, knowing that the US has moved beyond that kind of fear and ignorance.

Then, we began calling everyone a terrorist. Then, we began calling everyone a communist. We haven't changed at all. It seems that we will always need an excuse to hate and distrust people. We can't feel like "Americans" without being able to label someone else as "unAmerican." We choose to be so blissfully ignorant to the world outside our borders and the history recorded in detail that is easily accessible at our fingertips. Widespread confirmatory bias permits each of us to disregard any information that contradicts the conclusions we have already reached and to which we have committed ourselves.

We look at our "enemies," both foreign and domestic, as dispassionate, inhuman and nothing like ourselves. We fear criticism because we are afraid of appearing foolish. We are afraid of discovering that we've made a fundamental mistake in our reasoning. We see ourselves as infallible and we will follow anyone who agrees with us anywhere we are told to go.

The corporate media tells us what we should think by telling us what "everyone else" thinks. We presume our preferred sources of information are unbiased, "fair and balanced" when they are in fact catering to our own biases.

We will forever bounce back and forth between left and right, each side hating the other rather than the game. The law was supposed to unite us all under a scheme in which we were all treated the same, but that law has always been subject to the whims of a small group of men who fight with each other, back and forth, left and right, to decide how it will instead be selectively enforced, under the direction of lobbyists and special interests.

The right claims to act at the direction of God, and the left claims to act in the interests of the people as a whole. Both claims are utterly ridiculous and impossible. You people see yourselves as so different from your neighbor but if you were to look at the US from outside the fish bowl, you'd see that nothing ever changes. We all have families, children, and jobs. We are all looking for purpose and direction. The majority of us are generally disinterested the events that place outside of our own lives, outside of the pleasure of novelty and memorable anecdotes. We want money, respect, and power. We want to control what other people think and do. We define ourselves by the level of authority that we can impose on others.

We hate each other for being different but the inescapable truth is that we are all the same.

[edit on 29-8-2009 by andrewh7]