How lucky are we to be born in America?

Talk about hitting the lottery. We are born into a nation of great wealth and power. We had a strong middle class and a powerful military and what seemed like a balanced form of government. We had the opportunity to take freedom and equality to the next level and change the world into a world never experienced before on this planet.

Look what we did, we built bigger bombs, allowed corporations to take control of the government, we've allowed the CIA to take control of the whitehouse and promote a war on drugs to profit and take control of resources on 3rd world countries. Here we sit apathetically as our country is turned into a corporate socialist country of ego centric behavior. Here we sit squandering our resources, destroying the middle class debating over nonsensical details obsessing over presidents and drug wars.

What is wrong with us and where have we gone wrong?

reply to post by onequestion


Were not lucky, were fortunate enough to show the rest of the world what humans can do when their freedom of will is not infringed upon. We showed the world what can be done when imagination becomes hard work. The US government is a business it is a commercial interest. The people of America however are the foundation of the things that all people in the world strive for. So it is not luck, it is fortune and with this fortune we shall make the best of. It is the place on earth that gives us all opportunity.

I was luckier. I was born in Australia.

P

George Carlin - "When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." Sums up my thinking pretty good.

To be honest, I feel luckier having been born in Canada... and on the west coast no less.

(post withheld)

Id say a big part of where it went wrong is the strength of the propaganda you guys are constantly subjected too.

I get the impression the majority of Americans would readily believe the 1st paragraph from the OP but most would be disgusted that you even dare utter the 2nd paragraph.

Blind patriotism, America can do no wrong and your either with us or against us.

At least you weren't born in North Korea.

Imagine being born in a labor camp, and dying there, never knowing that there was a whole different world out there.

We really did hit the lottery.

Imagine being born in Africa, and dying at 12 years old of starvation.

Imagine being born a Jew in world war 2 and dying in a gas chamber.

Kinda makes us all look like complete fools by whining about how "bad" we have it.

IkNOwSTuff
Id say a big part of where it went wrong is the strength of the propaganda you guys are constantly subjected too.

I get the impression the majority of Americans would readily believe the 1st paragraph from the OP but most would be disgusted that you even dare utter the 2nd paragraph.

Blind patriotism, America can do no wrong and your either with us or against us.

I agree with this. When I hear my fellow Americans start saying the typical "everyone else wishes they were us" (or that they had as much freedom as we have) I just slap my head, mortified by the extent of brainwashing that is done to us. I think they really need to get out - and for a while! Just visiting other countries for a short period, the brainwashing continues to influence your perception, and you misinterpret what you observe to fit this myth. But after a while, a year or two, you just start to find it too hard to continually twist reality to fit your own ideas and you end up having to face it. We were lied to. Big time.
At least that was my experience.

MrMaybeNot
George Carlin - "When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." Sums up my thinking pretty good.

if anything explode on the stage, front row seat gets the best experience. Sums up my thinking pretty good, too.

would call it bad luck to be born in amerika these days .. the day is long past when it was a good thing ..
Had the misfortune to be born in one of the americans internment camps for japanese citizens .. my parents only crime - immigrating to america at the wrong time.. wont ever set foot in america again.

Well the people didn't, the system was hijacked. And every soul that entered this knew it was a bigger test to try and retain peace, love, equality and goodness, and to try and show the way, be wayshowers. You guys didn't want to be lucky, you wanted to shine. To grow skills. Now we tend to get overwhelmed and programmed from cradle to grave here so its quite challenging to do this.

reply to post by onequestion


Not to be a wet blanket for your fire, but government has pretty much always been in the pocket of corporations and big business. Just look at how the railroads were formed:

Crony Capitalism and the Transcontinental Railroads

As creatures of government and of taxpayer-funded schemes to subsidize the railroads and their wealthy owners through cheap loans and outright subsidies, the railroads quickly became scandal-ridden, wasteful, and contemptuous of the public they were supposed to serve.

...

In general, however, the economy of the West coast turned to the more efficient and more competitive sea carriers. By the 1860s, the sea carriers were already taking advantage of well-developed trade with the Panama Railroad across Central America, completed in 1855, that was providing true transcontinental shipping at a much lower price over a much shorter overland route.

In spite of massive subsidies and free lands equal in size to New England, the lack of overland trade made it difficult for the railroads to turn a profit, and after a series of bankruptcies, bailouts, and other schemes, railroad owners like Leland Stanford, Thomas Durant, and Jay Gould managed to make a lot of money manipulating federal largesse, but many others, including families and ranchers who followed the flood of money and capital west during the boom, but who found themselves as paupers on the western plains after the bust, were ruined by the railroad’s bubble economy.

With the signing of the first bill to create the transcontinentals in 1862, it was already known that there was no economic justification for the railroads, which is why they were, according to White, “justified on the grounds of military necessity.” Lacking any privately funded-entrepreneurs willing to build a road through more than a thousand miles of territory uninhabited by whites, the 1862 Railroad Act created the Union Pacific, making it the first federally-created corporation since the Bank of the United States. Legal and economic shenanigans ensued, and it would not be until the 1890s that anyone built a privately-funded railroad, the Great Northern Railway.

All that sound familiar?

pheonix358
I was luckier. I was born in Australia.

P

No! Im luckiest! Canada!