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[Strife26]

Originally:

America, I’m tired of this fucking shit.
Strife’s plans to fix the world.

I was bussing at work tonight and we were pretty slow. Being the time messing-up idiot that I am, I thought that it was a week night (where I tear down the salad bar and go home at 2130-2200). However, because it was Saturday, I was done with all of my cleaning early, and couldn’t take down the salad bar for a while. So I had a couple of cups of coffee. Coffee tends to get me into a ranting mood. Tomorrow (possibly today by the time I’m done typing) is Father’s Day, and do you know what? My dad will be in fucking Iraq. This got me thinking about all the stuff I would change. After work, I went to my favorite 24 hour coffee house and got a friend to mix me up a ranting energy drink. Apparently, it’s the equivalent of 5 espresso shots.

I might take a few of the bigger issues here and split them up into their own separate thread so that this thread may be used to talk about the smaller ideas and the plan as a whole. I’ll also occasionally update little sections underneath to describe how the debate is going. For now, my arguments are going to be in rough, honest form. Tomorrow, when I’m not so riled up, I’ll coach them in bureaucrat-ease (probably in italics or something).

1)   Fuck Iraq-
(Along with the next one @ http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37646.0)
Get the United States out of Iraq as quickly as possible. We don’t need to be wasting treasure there. More importantly, Americans should not be dieing unless it is important for the safety of the US. We’ve destroyed Saddam’s dictatorship and (according to my father), we’re really trying to get everything Iraqi run. Let them stand on their own two feet. Nation building is not beneficial to the US.
   Major benefits:
      +Military not in a fucking unwinable war
      +Political Capital (international)
      +Political Capital (home front)

2)   Military strategy-
(Along with the previous @ http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37646.0)
Nation building must stop. Saddam was an evil dictator type, but (as far as I know) he wasn’t attacking us. Unless America is threatened, we have no business there. If we do have to get involved, it must be for the shortest duration possible. Get in. Smash enemy. Kill/ capture anyone else. Destroy hostile infrastructure. Get the fuck out. No more than a year in most cases. If we topple a dictator great. Let someone else build a provisional government. Give them some weapons if they seem especially democratic (we can blow them up easily enough later if it comes to that).

If the problem lies within a civilized country, alternate steps must be taken. Pakistan for example.

For our simplistic purposes, imagine three square that form a line.
From left to right, we have Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. We control Afghanistan. Pakistan and India hate each other’s guts with a passion (if you want to draw in a circle and label it Kashmir, you can). Draw some little tanks on the Pakistani-Indian border. Add some missiles as well (both countries have nukes). Then on the Pakistani side of the Afghani border, draw some guys with AK-47’s (they should probably by 74’s, but the guns look similar). This is the remnants of the Taliban, and lots of Al Qaeda types. They’re camped out in the Swat Valley. They’re particular friends of the (relatively) nice Pakistani government. Right now, we fly UAV’s into the Swat Valley to smash terrorist stuff (if you want to draw one in, you can).This isn’t enough; Pakistan won’t let troops be on the ground. We (USA) must more or less give an ultimatum to Pakistan. We’ll give them as much support as we can if they’ll take care of the problem (draw arrows from the Pakistan tanks to the terrorists). Or else, we’ll be (regrettably) forced to do it ourselves. (add some helicopters to Afghanistan, then arrow them into the Swat). Neither us, nor the Pakis want that (Pakistan’s government is a constant competition between really mean Muslims and somewhat nice ones. The nicer ones have more control right now).

Basically, our foreign policy must be somewhat pre-emptive (just because Iraq was a fucking hell-hole doesn’t mean that a doctrine of pre-emptive warfare isn’t important). Once terrorists become too emplaced, they must be removed. It the host country takes care of their own parasite (with or without our support), great. If not, we go in (hopefully with their support). If we have to go against the whole country, so be it. No middle east country (except Israel, I guess) can stand up to us in a traditional combat).

3)   Intelligence Apparatuses (the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency)
(The next few are found (3-6) are found at http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37647.new#new)
Must be redone to a large extent. I’ll describe them part by part.
   FBI:
      Currently more or less national police force. Doesn’t change much. Keep on the lookout for home-grown crazies. Then arrest them and interrogate them.
   CIA:
      Traditionally the ‘spies.’ Must be changed to a large extent. The CYA crowd must be slashed and burned. CYA stand for Cover Your Ass. Spineless bureaucrats. The CIA must work on getting human intelligence above most other tasks. Get guys in the cells. Then kill said cells. I’d rant more, but don’t have the inclination to do the research I’d need to do it properly.
   NSA:
      Traditionally electronic espionage (my dad was ‘volunteered’ into it) they’re the guys who do Clancyish spying on cell phones. Must be bulked up considerably. I listened to an address from a guy who is an expert on Al Qaeda’s internet programs. Find and kill those servers if possible, analyze the holy fuck out of what they put up. Bulk up language services (not the way that’s happening now, I heard a pitch to join a Latin class based on the idea that it will help the government. Fuck. That. Shit.) Learn thy enemy above all else. Get American ideals out there. Spy on whoever we suspect of anything too. If you have dealings with a suspected terrorist, then tap your lines even if you’re an American (with the caveat that they can not be disclosed to anyone, or used in a court case if it isn’t terror-related).

4)   Procurement
(The next few are found (3-6) are found at http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37647.new#new)
God-damned awfully expensive weapon systems must be looked at. Give wasteful military spending trial by media if need be. Weapons come in two flavors. Fucking up Mahkmude the terrorist and killing a traditional enemy (call it a Lion of Babylon tank). Both have to be remembered. Raptors are fine (who knows when we’ll have to fuck a minor or major power up, the military is designed for air superiority). The Joint Strike Fighter isn’t. It’s here already, but it should NOT have been as expensive as it was. If we pretend that there is a metaphysical guy of the Air Force, we slap him here. Keep the money going to the people who need it (read the Corporal with a M-4). Take the Key West Agreement (army may keep fixed wing air craft ONLY for recon (barely that) and medical evac purposed) and tear it up. Then burn it. Then shoot it into the sun if need be. If the Air Force feels that ground support doesn’t matter (fuck them), then you should sure as hell let the Army take over the Warthogs. If you want to restrict all air superiority and strategic bombing to the airheads, feel free (probably necessary from a political capital view).
Bone yards need much more money. It’s often claimed that, if need be, the Sovie Russians could pull out their WWII artillery pieces if they wanted. Can we? If we have to, we should be able to pull up all of that generation old equipment (the M60 tanks, the F15 and 16’s, the varks (god I hope not). Stuff like the Blackbird shouldn’t EVER be thrown away. Recon is everything (the key west limits weight, so that the army couldn’t even use the super-fast recon Blackbird WTF?!).
Keep the usefulness FIRST. Don’t spend craploads of money on theoretical projects. Do not get rid of the tried and true things.

5)   Space and NASA
(The next few are found (3-6) are found at http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37647.new#new)
If we are slapping the air force, then we are tackling NASA. We need to reprioritize our space program. Why do we give a damn about mars right now? We might need the space? In a couple of hundred years. Worry about the here and now.
More satellites of all shades. Get a program up for many more recon birds. Kill-sats. Get anti-laser measures. Look into Star-wars again. Rods from fucking God.
The more recon birds we have the better. This is pretty simple. Get the information to the grunt on the ground (in this case it’s more for his Captain and General, but you know).
Kill-sats: (a satellite that runs into and blows up another satellite) If we get into World War three (against the EU, Russia, or China (god forbid them all), can we blast their sats? Can they blast ours? America should get space superiority.
Anti laser- measures: Some people (read China) apparently like to blind our recon birds with lasers. Try to find a way around this. If we can’t defeat them, then figure out how to plot the station’s location (so we can blast them if the war starts). Build our own stations as well (but don’t use them on their sats, test them on our own). They get to be a stop gap if the war starts before we have good enough kill-sats.
Look into Star Wars: (while keeping costs in mind). An anti-ballistic missile screen would be pretty cool, you know? Don’t break the bank on it though. We can’t depend on our enemies going broke trying to keep up again.
Rods from God (basically, if you take anything in orbit and drop it on someone, it does lots of damage): Get kinetic strike platforms of all sizes (telephone sized rods that are the equivalent of an unblockable, fast nuke to baseball bat sized rods that’ll just mess up a city block). It serves double duty. First of all, you have a super weapon that’s on par with an ICBM (deterrent must be kept up at all times, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s cheaper to keep kinetic strike platforms then hardened silos). More importantly, you have a replacement (to some extent) of artillery, tactical bombing, and strategic bombing. We have to keep all those specialties of course. We can’t get the sheer mass of fire down that arty provides, or the flexibility of airpower, but we can have similar artillery strikes almost anywhere we want at short notice (depending on the number of stations), or strike anywhere with impunity (Spirit and Bone bombers are god-awfully expensive to replace if they get shot down).

6)   Global disengagement/ legacy garrisons
(The next few are found (3-6) are found at http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37647.new#new)
We still have stuff from the cold war (why are there Abrams based in Germany?). To a large extent, they’re all in Iraq right now, but when (if?) we leave that pit, we shouldn’t be putting them back. Obviously, we keep our NATO pledges intact, but we can decrease our funding and equipment costs of overseas bases.
Don’t get involved if it doesn’t affect us, basically. That’s the UN’s job (we could probably be part of UN missions, just not unilateral stuff). Notable exceptions though.
First, we sure as hell don’t abandon South Korea. Keep our boys planted on the DMZ.
Second, keep supporting Israel. We like the Jews, you know? If need be, I suppose that Israel could be abandoned for political capital, but there should always be the knowledge that, if they need us, we’ll be there. We sure as hell don’t want them to have to pop off nukes.
I’ll put non-proliferation here as well. Try to keep anyone else from getting the bomb, and from its use. Deterrent forces (once again) stay in place though.
We can save lots of money by not protecting people who don’t need our protection. It’s good for political capital in a lot of places as well.

7)   UN
(Going to stay here for now. If we get too much, I can break it off)
As much as I’d love to kick them out of our country, we can’t really do that. We do slash the amount of money that we give them considerably. We try to work with them as much as possible (if we get some buddies when we’re smacking up terrorists, great!), but we may have to ignore them as well. If we’re going to play world policemen (like in Sudan or Somalia), then there had better be some cute blue helmets with us.
Possibly go unilateral in Somalia, smash and grab only of course. Kill the bolder pirates and all.

8)   Tax Code
(8-11 are @ http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37648.msg612388#msg612388)
Massive rewrite. Start mostly from scratch and get us a nice, clean graduated income tax. IRS gets redone, make everyone pay if possible. Have some sort of Tariff based on the trade balance/imbalance (from free trade if it’s within %10 of balance or in our favor to being somewhat restrictive. Maybe a bit more in certain sectors (read cars and steel)). Harsher safety laws as well. I’m tired of killer Chinese garbage.

9)   Government Spending
(8-11 are @ http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37648.msg612388#msg612388))
Fuck pork. Find some system for getting rid of pet projects. Trial by media is possible in some cases, or some sort of petition system. I had the cute idea of allowing one third of congress to demand that certain items be subjected to public vote of a random sampling of the nation. Do I, here in fargo, want a multi-billion dollar bridge in Alaska? Get Ron Paul to right up pro/con sheets. Eventually, we’d want a political climate where it goes away by itself.
Spend cut wherever possible. Kill social security. Pay out what people have in it right now. The new social security would work something like this. You still pay the same for SS taxes. This money goes directly into a federal account with your name on it. When you retire (whatever the SS age is right now) you get that sum of money paid out over time with the prevailing interest (of government bonds, probably). If you want, you could fill out a form and request your money now (a lot of people wouldn’t bother). You could also request all of your money in a lump when you retire.

10)   Nationalization of certain industries (holy shit! Strife’s a socialist!!)
(8-11 are @ http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37648.msg612388#msg612388))
Not the traditional socialist concept. Basically, Socialistic capitalism. There are some industries that have pretty insane profit margins (read oil and drugs are robbing you blind). I’d like to see the Government more or less enter the competitive market. Capitalism is ensured, but there is a Federally run company in the arena as well. Most of the profits can go to governmental cash flow, and some of the more insane price margins can go down. The government would be allowed to ignore patent laws but only in cases where the product is being sold for a price margin of more than 9%. This would mostly be in response to being able to get mini-monopolies if you have a patent on a drug.
Falsifying financial stuff would be a MAJOR crime. Meaning massive fines, trial by media, and the rest.
Environmentally conscious drilling would be allowed in ANWAR. It would be completely run by the government though.

11)   Banking system
(8-11 are @ http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37648.msg612388#msg612388))
Reregulated. You have to find evidence that Mr. Idiot will actually be able to afford his mortgage payment. You know the state bank of Fargo? Where I keep my (limited) cash reserves? Only affected by ripples in our meltdown. They never really let their lending practices slip. Try to keep bubbles from forming as well, if at all possible.

12)   Politics
(Also staying here. Open for suggestions for implementation)
Partisan Politics can go fuck its collective self. Repeatedly. With a chainsaw. I have no idea how that would work (a completely awesome independent party might work). But voting on the basis of color isn’t good. Both the reds and the blues have been fucking up pretty bad, I have to say.

13)   Assorted odds and ends
(Also here. Keep the flames down! Please.)
Virtuous electorate- try to keep idiots from voting. Require pre-registration. Maybe abandon putting the little D or R by people’s name. Have a paragraph of campaign promises instead. It’d be cool if someone were to make a third party website that got questions and one paragraph answers from candidates. Trying to keep the BS down, no?
Abortion- law of the land. Not wasting capital on it. Sorry.
Voting Age- WTF mate, I can enlist right now (I have classmates who have) but I couldn’t vote? Same principle applies to drinking, really, but I wouldn’t go there in practice.
Drug use- Can we just legalize Marijuana and tax the crap already? Make it easy but expensive to get. Last I checked, it wasn’t any worse than drinking.
Support democratizing Iran- We all know that the election there was fucked up royally. Say something along the lines of “We trust that a full investigation will be looked into the election results and stand by those who seek dente with America.”

As per usual, I probably have more but have forgotten (this thing’s 5 and a half pages long in word!). Let the firestorms begin. Let’s try to keep flame wars down though. Mokay? And wait a minute so I can set up some of the sub threads. Not that you should have finished reading it all that quickly. Once again, this thread can be used for comenting on the plan as a whole, or for the sections that don’t have sub threads.

Sorry to Toady and ThreeToe if I’m not supposed to make more than one thread about the same thing.

[Strife26]

Sorry for the wall of text. Reserved for when careful notes about the arguments push the first post over the text limit.

[Strife26]

See above.

[Tormy]

Strife...perhaps you should try to post about your ideas in a single topic? The general subforum is now full with the topics created by you.  This was just a friendly advice of course. 

[Strife26]

Well, they're all unique ideas, so I feel that they need to be considered separately. Otherwise, if they were all in one thread, any discussion would get horrible muddled.

[Toady One]

I think it's important to meter yourself though.  There's limited front page space and it just generally rubs people the wrong way to see like "pop! 4 topics!".  It's kind of like a takeover or something, he he he.  Anyway, there wouldn't be a problem spreading them out a day at a time, and I don't think that would change how the discussions went while dulling the sudden rush.

I don't mean to derail things.  It's not like the front page is full (on my settings anyway, I've forgotten the default...  I generally like to use the default, but I couldn't hack whatever it was on).  Anyway, please continue.

[BradB]

Send a copy of this to Obama.
(paper + bright red envelope, not email. That way it doesn't get ignored as easily)

[Muz]

It seems that a lot of the problems you mentioned don't exist in countries outside the USA. It's all caused by the USA anyway. USA is a country based on money. They're so fricking rich because they don't spend any of that money on their people. Look at Germany.. free education, high wages, and health insurance mandatory. Those are basic things in life. They stopped trying to take over the world and are happy now.

It's nothing new, though. All other countries work fine. USA got itself into the whole Iraq mess. Nobody else really bothered to join it, it was a symbolic gesture at best. I think everyone else has done everything you proposed. Or not done the ones that are a waste.

[Strife26]

First, everything I wrote is from an America-Centric view. I'm sure as heck not knowledgeable to write much about other countries.
However, I have to disagree with you Muz.

Everything being cause by the US is justifiable to a large extent. We're still recovering from the cold war (mind you, we did reunify Germany). I'd argue that that your wrong in most cases when comparing Germany and America. First of all, we're going to find ourselves comparing Apples and Oranges to some extent. The countries of America and Germany are vastly different. First, we spend more money on education (all stats from the fact book), 5.3 to 4.6 %. While anyone smart enough can get a college education, lots of people can't and don't (going off of a foreign exchange student mostly). It's a capitalism vs socialism question here, I'd contend that there are a lot better opportunity with the American 2ndary education system. Germany puts there own unemployment at 10.8%, which is pretty bad.

The claim that 'all other countries work fine,' is somewhat laughable I have to say.

[DJ]

I must say I really, really hate your foreign policy. Toppling regimes and quickly pulling out can only harm America's interest, because it creates unstable regions which are the breeding ground of terrorism.

[Strife26]

Has staying in been any better?

[Muz]

Well, I know Australia works well. Also has crippling unemployment, but you have to note that Australia and Germany's wages are miles in front of the USA's. They can live with satisfaction on minimum wage, but are also expected to have a certain level of competency.

Also, note that almost every country in West Europe works. Japan, despite its overpopulation problem, inflation, and being the only country to get nuked managed to recover from a deep depression into a world power. Canada's fine, despite of what Americans say about it. So is Singapore. They have their flaws, but America?

America fails at a lot of other things, like the amount of people they have in jail. High school teachers in a first world country not being able to spell is ridiculous. Colleges in the USA are also ridiculous.. they have the top in the world, but a huge majority of them are barely more than scams. The drop out rate is ridiculous. Justice system is a sham.. every country has its flaws and corrupt judges. But hell.. Americans have innocent people being accused guilty of murder all the time, frivolous lawsuits, the Patriot act.

It is true, you can't really compare any country to America. The closest would be the Roman Empire.  But the USA is pretty damn screwed up. Every problem they have now, they've brought upon themselves. What you suggested would help, but you'll need a lot more than that to fix the mess the country has brought itself to.

It makes me sad and angry to see what it's gone to. Sad because all you innocent Americans are suffering for it. Angry because Americans still insist on digging a deeper grave for themselves. The whole world hates their foreign policy. Ask anyone (except Israel and South Korea). But they refuse to accept it and insist in being the world police. Great job, America. You've annoyed your best friends for the little countries who've been stuck in a war since the 20th century. And your Middle Eastern puppets don't look very happy either.

[Strife26]

Point by point then.

1) Minimum wage (American min. wage isn't livable), somewhat true. I burned all my student congress research at the end of the school year, but basically, American poverty is much more often linked to few hours worked, not wage. The number of jobs that pay minimum are minimal (heh) and are usually the sort that teenagers (such as myself) are getting as a part time job.

2)America *doesn't* work? Not really accurate. There's problems (trade imbalance, bubbles), but that applies everywhere. Germany is actually projected to lose GDP this year because they're too dependent on exports. Ever looked at Japan's land markets? Thats a bubble waiting to go boom.

3) Incarciration levels- Some statistics'd be nice (I'm a bit to frazzeled to track them down myself).

4) High School Teachers - I remember seeing a CNN report about that. Some random history teacher who 'couldn't read!!!!1!!!11!!!' The media likes to blow things out of proportion. I can't think of a single example (in my three years of high school) of a teacher who couldn't spell. You get funny quirks incidents everywhere, it's going to be wieghted against America becuase we have more people, and a much more active media.

5) Colleges = scam - to some extent, you don't really hear about the ones that quitely do their job though. You can always try to get into college, instead of a country where the man determines it.

6) Judicaial system- Errr, America has more corrupt judges than anywhere else? That's just wrong. It's a horribly big deal when one does pop up, then we get into trail by media Paris Hilton effect territory. Not a sham by any account.

7) Innocent people accused of murder - happens everywhere. Not really an entirely American problem. At least we don't stone people (a la Iran)

8) Frivolous law suits- a problem and one of my peeves. They usually get kicked out in short order, but I'll concede the point.

9) Patriot Act- well within government's power to enact. Gets lots of media flak. We're still much freer than a lot of the world. Did you know that being a Nazi in Germany is a crime? Countries spy on their people all of the time, our media just gets POed about it.

10) We've brought our problems on ourselves - true of everyone, I guess. I guess that I could make a contention that it was saving the world during the Cold War, but I won't.

11) More than my plan system would be needed- Probably. What do you suggest? Maybe I'll send the revised list to Obama in a few weeks.

12) We're suffering for it? Our troops are and that really sucks (especially for guard, reserve, and especially inactive components). America is still doing fine. Some people who couldn't afford their homes lost them. Basic problem with credit systems.

13) Digging ourselves a deeper grave- What else can we do? Isolationism was a cause of both World Wars. We've tipped over into interventionism, true, but I think that that's changing.

14) Whole world hates our foreign policy - we do a hell of a lot of good too. I've never seen a study about people's thoughts on us that I trust. I'll admit that it isn't the best, but we're trying at least.

15) World police - trend is going away (thankfully). We haven't invaded Sudan yet (which if there was a world's police, why aren't they there?).

16) We've annoyed our best friends. I count only a few countries as America's friends. South Korea and the Common Wealth (England, Canada, Barbados, ect) are still our friends. I'd trust them.

17) Pissed of everyone else- pretty much. Disengage, and hopefully it'll get better.

18) Middle Eastern puppets- who exactly? Afghanistan is probably better off. I've admitted that Iraq is a cluster-fuck. Saudi Arabia would stab us in the back at the first opportunity. Kuwait's still thankful though (and we saved their asses, no contention).

It's important to remember that a lot of the world doesn't like us (including a lot of Americans). Finding the United States projected in a positive light is tough. A lot of stuff is fucked up, but it isn't that bad.

[Chutney]

note: You posted something new while I was typing this. I have not had time to read it to see if it covers what I'm saying.

I noticed your foreign policy section had no mention of Afghanistan (well, besides saying that we own it?). Where Iraq *MIGHT* be in a position where we can pull out and all be fine (my brother has told me things are really going well there, and he's coming home in a few months and won't be redeployed to Iraq iirc, so that's saying something), Afghanistan is a hell-hole, still majorly controlled by terrorists and America is doing too little about it. We need to transfer troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and start spending more on it or else that area is going to explode. If we continue to ignore it as we have been, it may very well rise up as a terrorist power again and the civilian loss of life will be tremendous. And they would probably stir up all kinds of problems if left on their own right now.
It's sad that we have to stay in a war (it isn't a war anymore, is it  <-- that smily needs a sad face variaton), but it looks to be necessary for the future.

PS: I do agree with nationalization of those important companies like drugs and oil, but FULL nationalization. I also think we need to un-outsource all of our countries and get jobs back in America.
Also, I hope that Ron Paul thing was a joke...Ron Paul really is a joke and would be hugely bad for America.

EDIT: This caught my eye

Afghanistan is probably better off. I've admitted that Iraq is a cluster-fuck..

Should be

Iraq is probably better off. I've admitted that Afghanistan is a cluster-fuck..

[Muz]

Ick, I stay out of point-to-point, so I'll make this quick...

3: Common fact
4: Based on the experiences of friends in the USA who were whining about their teachers. Not at all from media or my own personal experiences. They could've been exaggerating.
5 & 6: Opinions. But not important, going to be a derail.
9: True. But I'm still not happy with the way they were the loudest to oppose it in other countries, and then do it when it's in their favor.
11: I've just given up on it. That's where the anger comes from. Too much work for a country that's too far away.
13: That's been the big excuse now. It's not like Iran/North Korea/Iraq is becoming the next Nazi Germany. And not like anyone else can't handle a 2nd world country if they did. China and Russia can bomb N.Korea into hell if they ever bothered, Saudi Arabia/Turkey can easily stomp on Iraq or Iran. And I'm sure the Europeans have a military too.
14: Well, there's a saying somewhere that once you do bad things, all the good you do is forgotten.
18: Osama bin Laden. The CIA-trained anti-commie mastermind. All of the puppets now are putting up the same ass-kissing smile, but as soon as you step out, they'll start doing what they like. Which is probably one reason the USA is so reluctant to pull out of Iraq. Can't even trust their own puppets. [But yes, Afghanistan turned out better]

I'll concede/agree with you on everything else.


Yeah, I don't hate Americans. Both of my parents did their degrees and postgrad there. I was raised there. Hence the anger, you don't see me complaining about Zimbabwe or China, because I know nothing about them.