Being an American in 2003

[NightTrain]

Being an American in 2003 makes me feel like the frustrated parent of a wayward teen. You can see that the kid is on a collision course with disaster. You try to talk sense to him, you try to reason with him, you cajole and yell at him. But nothing gets through to the kid.

What you find particularly heartbreaking is that the kid has great potential to do good with his life and to make the world a better place. But he is too goddamned obsessed with living for the moment and with engaging in his greedy, destructive, self-indulgent behavior to even think about living up to his potential.

Having grown weary of trying to get the kid to change his ways, all you feel that you can do now is watch helplessly and with mounting frustration as the kid slowly destroys himself and causes harm to all those with whom he comes in contact.

That pretty well sums up hos being an American in 2003 makes me feel. How about you?

[MercutioATC]

1. Sums it up nicely, I think.

As a parent, I have 3 basic rules:

1) Give them all the good you can.
2) Encourage them to think as individuals.
3) Always let them know you love them.

Funny...that's not TOO far off for fixing our country's problem.

[bocadem]

2. Great analogy.

I like it!

[Tigermoose]

3. also like God's relationship with man.

nt

[NightTrain]

4. God who?

;-)

[newyawker99]

5. Congrats NightTrain!! 500 posts!

:toast:

[redeye]

7. No...

...god's relation to man is this: man created god, now god is avenging on humanity, trying to send it back to the Dark Ages (Neolithic if possible), to deprive it of knowledge, of thought, of the existence of the self, to make people no more than mind slaves.

[redeye]

6. I view the USA not as a child...

...but as a legal concept. Maleness and femaleness biologically exist independently of social constructs. Ditto scientific laws, geographical features, race (like it or not, there are some differences among the various races), and even human constructs such as buildings and cars. The USA will die the moment people stop thinking of it as existent.

Living in the stupidest nation on earth in 2003 has some of its quirks. Like everyone else on the planet, you're ruled by a dictator with a low IQ who can't eat pretzels without choking. You live among people who could just as well be sheep: they think selfishness is bad (if people had never thought of themselves, we'd still have been living in caves); they easily submit to religious, national, or political authorities; they barely know that there is a world outside their borders; and they think that everyone who doesn't live exactly like them is a dangerous terrorist. You curse Hitler for having made Germany's intelligentsia flee to the USA, which now binds you to this fucked-up nation for more or less the next 5 years until you get your Ph.D (that's how it is with me, at least). More or less the only people with enough self-interest in this nation to propel humanity forward are those who use it to make more money and kill millions.

I don't want to live here. I want out of this damned nation ASAP; if only Princeton and Harvard and Yale were in Canada, I'd be vying to go to them. Whenever I see the icon of the USA on TV - the aforementioned dictator - I either turn the thing off, or, if I can't, raise a book I'm reading so that it stands between me and the screen. I spit on the USA, I spit on what it now stands for, I spit on its flag, I spit on its hypocritical ideals.