Americans live in a constant state of fear.

Down here in Texas we don't live in fear, we arm ourselves! As comedian and philosopher Ron White once said, "if you kill someone in Texas,... we'll kill ya' back"!!!

 

That, too, is simply an opinion - and your member name tells a lot about where you are coming from.

 

spanking a child in Sweden is a crime, whereas even using a slipper, paddle or belt in the usa to discipline a child is okay ...then there sex crimes, some societies have more reported sex assaults because women are less embarrassed to report it, martial rape is a crime in some and not in others... in some countries women don't even report rape as there is little on no chance of charges ever being laid let alone getting a conviction, so what statistically appears to be a sexually passive country is anything but safe....and some countries count every single aspect of an assault and others lump all the separate parts of the crime a single charge.....so ya just comparing crime stats is very stupid as what constitutes a crime in one country is not a crime in another and statistics are recorded differently...

 

The actual saying is "if you give up your liberties for security, you will have neither" and it is very true. We have become a society that depends on "Big Brother" to protect us from the boogy man when in fact the boogy man was created by the very thing that we're looking to for help! Problem - reaction - solution. The government creates a problem, waits for the reaction (public out-cry) and then offers the solution to the problem that they created. This formula has been used for centuries. Nero burned Rome and Hitler burned the Reichstag to blame someone else and further their agendas. Hmm! Could government mind control subjects be shooting up schools and other public places so that there will be public outrage and a push for tougher gun control or even confiscation?!? Problem - reaction - solution. They can't fully control you unless they first disarm you, so what else are they gonna' do?

 

I agree with practically everything you wrote, particularly in relation to generalising about an entire nation - all I was trying to do was put the case that someone who is perhaps not all that familiar with another society, could be forgiven for gaining a not-necessarily-correct impression from the information made available by the various media, and by discussion boards such as this.

You are correct to assume that I am not anti-American - quite the reverse, in fact - but I think situations like this need a modicum of defusing before it gets to the 'we are the greatest - you suck!' stage.

As I have said many times before, I have spent a little time in your beautiful country, and I found the Americans I met to be amongst the friendliest and most generous people I have met anywhere on the earth.

I began posting on internet fora at around the age of 12, and the nature of the beast is such that I had a totally skewed mental picture of Americans until, two years later, I was fortunate enough to travel around both coasts of the USA, and across Canada. The people I encountered in the USA were almost totally different from perhaps most of those with whom I had spirited exchanges of opinion on discussion boards. Perhaps it was the way I approached people, or perhaps it was just that I was only 14 (and not seen as a threat to anyone,) but I never met an American who was boastful, loud, arrogant, or anything other than well mannered, kind and considerate. The 'ugly American' of popular myth was nowhere to be seen.

But I am aware that US citizens are perhaps a touch more overtly patriotic than most Europeans, and are subject to a certain societal message which says than anything American is ipso facto, likely to be superior to anything from another society. In view of which, I think anyone possessed of any sensitivity and concern for the feelings of others needs to tread carefully when discussing things touching upon national characteristics. I am not being condescending, or anything like that, but we are all complex beings, each with his own value system and sensitivities - these need to be respected if we are to communicate effectively with each other.

I believe that Cdnpoli was simply giving his impressions of the situation as he sees it in your society, and those impressions were informed by what he has seen and read in the media. I would not presume to speak for him, but I do not think his intent was 'USA bashing'. But, LOL, at the same time, I do detect a certain reservation in Canadians where the USA is concerned (and vice versa,) which is not unlike the situation between we British and our immediate neighbours across the channel.

 

How right you are - excellent post.

And now after 8 long years of Bush/Cheney doing this, our MSNBC/Liberal Talk Radio
******* hosts are trying to keep the subject off of Obama, doing exactly the same thing by changing the subject to CONSTANT FEAR: of Global Warming, God, Religion, the Tea Party, so as to keep their mass audience oppressed, dumbed down and subservient to their FALSE DOGMA.

They don't care about human rights as they claimed under Bush, they only want their pound of flesh against the GOP, even if it means covering up Obama war crimes on a daily basis!






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Not all of us live in the miasma of east coast cities.

 

As long as the rest of the world looks upon us with hate and envy, we will have a threat. The real problem is in the response. We pander to the crazies and the left has neutered us as a nation through political correctness and regulation. We have tried to reduce threat past the point of the possible but have created the side effect of the silly law and mindless rule.

I would most assuredly face the 1-1000000 chance of being a terror victim than the 99% certainty of being watched and abused by government and the politically correct.

 

Have you noticed that silly law and mindless rule continues regardless of what party is in the White House or has control of Congress? I don't believe that there is a left or right, I think that it's all a fake paradigm. The powers that be are all on the same page of the same script and they created the left and right as a diversion for us as a divide and conquer tactic. While we are being side-tracked with being liberals or conservatives they are hard at work taking away our liberties with legislation such as the Patriot Act or the latest gun control bill to "protect us" from mass shootings or their media manufactured terrorism threats. The fear level is kept up by all of the alphabet network news programs so that we are reminded daily that we NEED our government to protect us and we need MORE government in order for big brother to protect us. We also have to take one in the arm for the team by giving up some of our rights such as free speech and the bearing of arms. After all your government LOOOOOOOves you and wants to keep you safe! LOL! We are bombarded with Duck Dynasty, the Kardashians, the latest politically incorrect sound bite by a celebrity and supposed terrorist plots while our government incrementally does whatever it wants to for it's own gain and at our expense! You start the frog in cold water and then slowly turn up the heat until he's boiling to death without even knowing it. We the people are the frog and we're almost cooked!

 

I agree that for every politician who is a good steward of our rights there are a host who use the same language but are actually in it for themselves as evidenced by their actions.

 

Not just that everything is a big advertisement like the latest McDonalds and Duck Dynasty "controversy" - but that whether the government uses a PR vehicle to divide the herd -Ed Snowden, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, etc. If the government wanted to censor
such "revelations" of Snowden they'd descend on the Wasington Post and take every last shred of the PRISM powerpoint. Instead, the White House vetted the documents and let release whatever they wanted to intimidate their enemies, allies and to hope activists change their behavior and outspokenness (like when faced with a internet spy program first released in 2002 news articles written about Project Eschelon.) The Snowden thing is all about fear, like the Bradley Manning story became all about solitary confinement and abuse in order to intimidate people from speaking the truth, rather than about war crimes committed in your name, with your tax dollars, on innocents like Obama has done in Syria.Mr. President you cannot do that. You cannot start an illegal war. Exterminate whole Syrian towns and villages. On a people who did nothing. And by using Al Queda by arming them our sons and daughters died to defeat.Why isn't Michael Moore saying this? Because Jon Stewart would rather joke about Bradley Manning in a dress, or do some corp. media advertising or government propaganda "leaks" which are old news. Every holiday America is targeted with some massive campaign to trap your attention, this year it was Duck Dynasty hillbillys with guns. Years ago it was the Detroit Underwear Bomber plot which was exposed as fake, never having had a real bomb. It was just another holiday U.S. Government stunt to keep the herd in line, doing their crappy jobs for low wages, and to keep giving the war machine half their payroll taxes. Plus, the corp. media can control the message and make the "Ducks" go viral, so as not to let the American people reflect on why their Peace Prize President Obama has been mass murdering Syrian civillians the last 2 years, because of oil and gas pipelines, just like the much maligned Dubya.

 

I suspect that is unlikely. That type of awareness was always there; it need not move at the speed of light, in order to be a real component of this society.

 

Maybe you live without a TV or radio on at your house. But if you do you have those on at any kind of regular intervals, you would see the patterns of cheap fear gimmicks esp. on
local news, or on political "hot button" issues used to generate an audience for radio.

Even those pathetic TV doctors "Oz", or these health nutritionists selling billions of dollars in vitamins every year or other precriptions drugs base their marketing on fear. Gary Null has made a forty year career on clogged arteries and vitmamin E.

Now every government world wide wants you to fear fat, fried food, aging, last years fashion, as if being uncool or not having the latest electronic gadget, cell or iphone is some kind of disease. I know chicks who freak out and have a nervous break down if they can't text message or phone call from every location 24-7, because we've been conditioned to fear being unavailable for 20 minutes, as if they were going to die without their gizmo, or are condition to fear being alone for an hour. Poor girls brainwashed by media so young, its really sad how empty comsumerism has made Americans lives.



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What you have written above is quite interesting, and no doubt accurate, but I am a little puzzled. What has it to do with the post you quoted?

I take your point about marketing by means of fear and insecurity, but my post concerned itself with the allegation that the OP was factually incorrect and was 'over-egging the pudding' because of his anti-Americanism. I was attempting to demonstrate why someone who was not familiar with US society might hold the opinion that it was an overly violent one, if the bulk of his information came from the media and from discussion groups such as this. It was fear of violence (particularly gun-violence) to which I suspect the OP was referring, and I did not consider his post to represent obvious anti-Americanism.

 

Well, it has a lot to do with the media being so dumbed down in this country.

I was listening to a podcast of Gary Null with former FBI Coleen Rowley dated
October 28, 2013. They spent so much time repeating "There was no WMD on Iraq."

Its like - Yeah, no (*)(*)(*)(*) Sherlock.

But isn't that like 10 years old?

Get some new material Nimrod.


Jesus H.

 

Again, the dumbed down media and shoot em up movies condition Americans to solve problems with war and violence. Look at how many John Wayne war propaganda movies there are. Movies and TV actually market and glamorize guns to be specific. I categorically disagree that America is overly violent. I'm sure you would agree that the police unnecessarily shoot to death too many unarmed people. Mass media conglomerates that churn out war propaganda movies for the government (with Pentagon contracts) seem to be intentionally culling the herd of the world populations by justifying the War on Terror. Millions die in the Middle East, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia (remember Waynes "Green Berets" Veitnam promotion trash?) and it business as ususual for Hillary and Bill Clinton. I read an article that stated America secretly planned the Rawanda genocide in an American embassy in Africa. The Congo and Rawanda is where the West gets all its minerals for computer, video game and cell phone chips. Enter the age of the internet, the .com bubble, and the genocide of 8 million people, after Clintons second inuauration in 1996 by arming proxy soldiers loyal to Kagame. You talk about Dubya being a war criminal. Ye Gods.

Police State: Americans More Deaths At Hands Of Police
Than In Iraq War

Welcome to the police state the ‘conspiracy theorists’ tried to warn you about.

Since 9/11, Cops have killed well over 5,000 Americans in the line of duty. Many of these killings have occurred during no-knock raids, which have risen by 4000%.

Iraqi insurgents have killed around 3,500 Americans in Iraq since 9/11 during Operation Iraqi “Freedom.”

Afghan insurgents have killed around 2,000 Americans in Afghanistan since 9/11 during Operation Enduring “Freedom.”

The police are said to be here to serve and protect you, but it seems they’re getting paid from tax dollars to kill, threaten and bully you, the person they’re supposed to be protecting. The American government dubs anyone who opposes their agenda, “terrorist” while employing actual terrorists by definition, on it’s own citizens. Police now kill more Americans than the “terrorists” from whom they “protect” us. You are eight times more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist. The badge and authority is way scarier than any criminal, as the cop is protected by governmental law.

If officer involved killings were prosecuted as murder the murder rate for law enforcement officers would exceed the general population murder rate by at least 472%. And these are only the reported incidents. Who knows what the actual total is. 700%? 1000%? Furthermore, over a quarter of a billion human beings were killed by government last century alone, making government the leading cause of unnatural death in the 20th century. This do not include casualties from all the wars that governments also started to “protect” us. Without the government, who would be here to kill us for our safety?

It’s only natural, that the trigger happy government employees in costumes are keeping up with the trend on our streets. They have a status quo of killing to keep up with, trying to compete with the politicians of DC to see who can kill the most innocent people in the name of protecting you. The number of Americans in US prisons now exceeds the number of high school teachers and engineers. There are about 7.3 million Americans locked in captivity or under federal control, the majority of whom are non-violent (Marijuana is one of the biggest examples of the prison system run amuck, a plant from nature is deemed “illegal” as the government is scared beyond words of legalizing hemp and loosing a lot of money for their crony friends). About one in 25 Americans were arrested as of 2011. As more laws are established for our “protection”, those numbers are bound to grow."

Whenever people defend police, they’ll say “not all cops are bad”, well i beg to differ. If you are following orders, upholding corrupt laws simply designed as money grabs, and harming the people you are sworn to protecting then you are all bad. If the police are here to protect us from the criminals, who is here to protect us from the police when they are the criminals?"

http://universalfreepress.com/polic...e-deaths-at-hands-of-police-than-in-iraq-war/

 

So you don't think there is a problem with too many people whacked out on anti-depressants (notice the suicide label) with easy access to guns?

Don't you see a pattern with the mass shootings?

 

Doesn't it seem like the Right Wing/GOP appear to be always exploiting the FEAR of you losing your gun rights when very few actual gun restrictions are being passed?

I mean, no one is actually taking your gun rights away like alarmists always claim, correct?




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One should never underestimate the grabbers....

 

Thank god for our Constitution and checks & balances.

I realize you liberal Marxists hate both.

 

Johnny, me lad, Germany sound just like the place for you and REMEMBER Germany was one of the first countries to totally ban citizens owning firearms.

 

Say what????? Our gun rights have deteriorated almost down to nothing since the passing of the Bill of Right. Please prove otherwise if you don't believe it.

 

See, there you go with the ,"easy access to guns", bit. Yes, I do believe if you gun grabbers had a chance you would outlaw the common citizens from having firearms.

 

Let's see, if a criminal points a weapon, any weapon at you with intent to use it, as a police officer your just suppose to stand there and get killed??? Hey, Zero, your living in a dream world. And by the way, John Wayne is dead. Just thought I would bring that little fact up. And while you want to run off at the mouth about people being killed, how many people does America have killed in car wrecks a year??? How many of those drivers are drunk or stoned??? How many murders were committed in the U.S. since 9-11??? No clue??? Not counting 2013 over 180,000, I would say the police needed to kill a few more criminals out there. What do you think??? But not only should the police have knocked of more of them but also the law abiding citizens should take a more active roll in defending themselves and their homes. I know that if anyone tried to hurt or attack someone in my home they would be taken out feet first. I'll bet you have a lot to say on that subject, right??? Right.

 

Yes indeed, when Bush wrote blank 'checks' and left America trillions in negative 'balances,' I hate it. And I just love that progressive Constitution and liberal 's rights to redistribute.