when 9/11 hit, and I watched the towers falling, my first thought was "shit, people are going to go insane." And that is what happened.
Yeah I felt the same way. Everyone just got galvanized into nationalistic anger, it was crazy.
It was bad for arabs. Really bad. The govt used it to justify so many awful things, and people were all for it.
It was bad for all of us. Our freedoms were taken away, I was scared to dissent. Actually scared. People in my family joined up, which really strained some relationships, and I'm just glad they all survived.
I was out protesting the Iraq war at one point. We had people pretending like they were going to run us over and trying to start fights.
I've got a lot of respect for that. I did volunteer bicycle repair at a commune for a while, and they went on a lot of protests, but I never did.
Americans don't really think except with their gut. They are incredibly reactionary and pro-violence.
We (including you and I) are part of an incredibly diverse nation with unique issues. Anti-patriotic spiels are just as intellectually bankrupt and pointless as "AMERICA FUCK YEAH".
Iraq was completely unnecessary, and Afghanistan served no purpose. I was just incredibly scared and ashamed of my country for a long time.
Yeah... We hit a rough patch, got swindled by some powerful monsters, and still haven't recovered our freedoms all the way. We're still better off than most places, liberty wise, but we can do better.
Going to echo the sentiment that shit needs to hit the fan and fall to pieces one way or another before anything will get better. I don't think it has to be losing a war on home turf. But it needs to be something that feels catastrophic and effects everybody.
I've had the sense for many years that America just became mentally ill after WW2. The "Greatest Generation" that fought the war went on to create a political atmosphere that was obsessed with control and global military/economic dominance. Then they spawned the baby boomers, who can really just be characterized as obnoxious spoiled reactionary brats. If the Greatest are the people who turned America into the world police, then the boomers are your stereotypical cop's kid.
We've been spoiled and deluded by a long period of superpower status and material affluence, and the origin and nature of that status has been whitewashed by authorities for decades, while everyone else has been making honest efforts to mature.
Yeah no. Most of our current political problems are due to poverty, and a shrinking middle class. We aren't fat, we're starving. What we need is better education and infrastructure, not more poverty or another enemy to blame everything on. We've *had* war all this time, and it's just draining our resources and enriching profiteers. The worse things get, the more desperate people throw their lot in with the conservatives. Promise of riches for hard work, plenty of people to blame for everything, and old fashioned "safe" values like keeping women in kitchens. These things appeal to people who have lost everything, ironically due to Neocon schemes.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with America, or any of its ethnic or cultural groups. It's the neo-conservative ideology. They *love* it when poor whites and poor blacks blame each other for everything. They're the ones who profit over illegal immigration, that's why they want to keep it illegal - meanwhile poor white workers blame the poor Mexican workers for stealing all the jobs.
See? The 99% keep fighting *each other*, and the neo-cons win every time.
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