Now can we PLEASE get the fuck out of there now?

America, fuck yea?

Its still strange that the worlds most powerful military/intelligence apparatus needed almost 10(!) years to find a single man ... just think of all the civilians killed in the process ...

(05-02-2011 11:52 PM)cobrastyle Wrote:  Its still strange that the worlds most powerful military/intelligence apparatus needed almost 10(!) years to find a single man ... just think of all the civilians killed in the process ...

And he was living in a fucking mansion in a big city in Pakistan. Seriously.

The East Village was nuts last night.

The whole War on Terror is a joke... sorry... the more I leave the states the less I want to go back.

(05-03-2011 02:24 AM)Mark Wrote:  The whole War on Terror is a joke... sorry... the more I leave the states the less I want to go back.

.... but Mark...America...fuck yea!

While I share your skeptical (perhaps your is even cynical?) evaluation of the execution of the "war on terror," I found this intersting to say the least:

the more I leave the states the less I want to go back

What is it about this country that is so offensive? (I take no offense at your offense. I'm curious, though.) I must confess that early in the 10 years I lived and worked in France, Germany and Italy (I also lived and worked in South Africa.) I was often disoriented, bemused and sometimes horrified when returning to the USA for a visit.

I like France, Germany, Italy and South Africa. But for every fault I can find with my own country (and there are many), I can find one, or more, for each of the other places I've lived.

It's kind of like that absolutely gorgeous girl having dinner over there with that knucklehead-looking guy. My own date having not bothered to groom for dinner is now nattering on about some damn ministry (!?!?!?) her mother is founding. But eventually I do meet and charm the other girl; and I find she lies easily, has personality issues that at least mimic borderline PD and thinks anyone who cares about books is "stupid."

I heard that Donald Trump is still waiting for the death certificate to confirm this. *rimshot*
At least the face of the terrorists is gone. The group was severely splintered anyway. Now all we need to do is find those pesky WMDs. *rimshot*
Oh my goodness, only the people on twitter can reap such joy from such gruesome events haha.

Lesson here: If you're a top terrorist, don't entrust the Playstation network with your address details...

@Nicholas: Of course every country has their own unique faults, some major, some minor. I think it comes down to finding a place that aligns with your values. But to answer your question, the things that drive me crazy about America:

- An open and almost cavalier anti-intellectualism. People not only repeatedly vote against their own interests, but they almost take pride in it.

- The culture has become more and more status-driven. People go into debt and waste away their savings and pensions to have the new car, or new TV, or new house that they can't really afford. It's a culture that values appearance over substance.

- The fact that it doesn't insure and refuses to insure a large segment of its population's health costs (FYI: I'm not insured).

- The fervent religiosity. I don't mind if people are religious, but keep it out of politics, please.

- The tax system is a joke. If you're a business-owner or wealthy stockholder, getting out of taxes is unbelievably easy. If you're a regular Joe worker or paper-pusher, you get hosed. Just to give you an idea, the tax bracket for the lowest earners in the US is 17%. The top 400 richest Americans recently reported they paid on average 16%. Considering I'm a business-owner and am able to get out of taxes pretty easily, you'd think I'd like this. But as a country and an economy, it's eating us alive. Our middle class is disappearing, and until we bring back some sort of wealth redistribution, we're going to be suffering a lot of these economic meltdowns.

- The feminization of pop culture and the demonization of genuine masculine traits.

- The women/people are fat and unhealthy.

- The blind militarism and blind support for a foreign policy that is not only no longer useful, but grown to a dangerous size... i.e., the military-industrial complex reached the size a long time ago where it's basically too big to fail (or downsize). These wars can't end, because we'd have to pay the economic consequences of downsizing our defense budget.

I don't want to sound like I hate my country. I don't. There are a lot of things I love and respect about my country. And there are a number of things that the US does better than anybody else. But on the whole, its values and the values of its people really don't align with mine. I don't know where I'll end up living permanently. But I'd say right now I'd put it at 50/50 not being the US.