Sunday 1 July 2012

America: An Extrospective

Hi guys, welcome to Orygyn!

In his latest video, junosden wondered what people outside of America thought of the country. The video covers multiple topics, but I'll be focusing on this one. It can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwGCYhrne90

Everything that follows are only my own thoughts. I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone else.

America comes off to me as the big, dumb, and very unfriendly giant. An embarrassing percentage of its citizens reject evolution and global warming, the Republican party and Fox News are taken seriously by many people, and even people like Obama won't think twice about stripping rights away with extreme tenacity and without any expectation of public resistance. The government is prepared to lie in order to go to war, torture its citizens without so much as a trial or warrant, it has a gigantic military which it doesn't need, which is viewed with misplaced and disgusting levels of pride, racism persists let alone homophobia, and patriotism in some cases is at levels where any criticism of the country results in the following response: "if you don't like our country, get out". We have our problems here in Scotland and the UK in general, but I don't think any of those criticisms apply significantly over here.

But all I've done so far is state what sane and rational Americans already know, the ones who understand nuance, and who therefore know that my view doesn't apply to them. America is a laughing stock to me, but a dangerous one. Remember, gigantic military, WITH NUKES! Not only that, but ours and other countries tend to listen to them. We tend to follow you into wars. During the Iraq War, our forces were described in the news as the American-led Coalition. If it were a smaller and less important country, we could just laugh at stuff like that or stuff like SOPA and PIPA, but when it's coming from the country with the most power and influence, laughter takes a back seat to fear.

I want to address the sane and rational Americans directly, which includes junosden, who I will send this blog post to. Know that your government's and your people's stupidity affects us as well. It affected the millions of innocent Iraqis and Afghans who were killed in the wars, sometimes just as a result of being next to the wrong trigger-happy soldier, it's affected quite a few victims of extraordinary rendition, and it will no doubt continue to affect many others. Since you guys have brains, you need to be vocal. Some of you already are, but it needs to continue, and it has to be made clear how profoundly stupid these creationists and GW-denialists really are. I'll be doing my part, but actual results must come from within the country.

8<{D-

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