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Its odd how hyper energized people are when speaking of this country's political future and moral soul.
Social issues have become hot button subjects whereas before people were ridiculed for even thinking about this country as a political unit.
In the 1990s the idea that people lived in a unified landmass called the USA was impossibly difficult to decipher.
Most people thought their independent lives were a larger signifier of who they were than the country they lived in.
No more, today the wave of hold outs have gone adrift and now most everyone has their own opinion about Kamala, Biden, Trump, the history of this country, and its future.
Most of the discussions are relatively shallow but they are happening which is significant.
My Question is why? What about this country makes you interested in its history or its future?
Your personal lives, homes, and jobs can be engaging but what about the landscape of this country makes you dedicated to its well being?
Don't you get depressed walking into a walmart or another generic big boxmart or commuting to and from your home in a stuffy vehicle with an endless expanse of road and concrete? The strip malls are dull and spiritless, work spaces are cookie cutter repeats of one another, there are no religious, spiritual, or political structures in site, only empty realestate blocs.
Most of the places in this country are unwalkable, and going to the countryside leaves you with vast swaths of drug dens, ruined farm mills, roadside garbage, and overweight people who survive off of 7/11 hotdogs.
The cities are also not walkable, the buildings are the same (nashville, Atlanta, Dallas, or Los Angeles, look at the buildings downtown and tell me what unique identifiable trait they have).
People are all the same wherever you go, they dress and talk the same, the food is the same. Occasionally you would come upon a disneyland theme park like time square which is packed with foreigners who have no interest or care in this country, nor do they speak you're own language.
Blacks and whites keep away from each other, and latinos are used for manual labor. Asians have usurped the white professional class while middle easterners have started gas stations, car washers, and other filler business models.
Don't you get depressed walking into a walmart or another generic big boxmart or commuting to and from your home in a stuffy vehicle with an endless expanse of road and concrete? The strip malls are dull and spiritless, work spaces are cookie cutter repeats of one another, there are no religious, spiritual, or political structures in site, only empty realestate blocs.
People are all the same wherever you go, they dress and talk the same, the food is the same. Occasionally you would come upon a disneyland theme park like time square which is packed with foreigners who have no interest or care in this country, nor do they speak you're own language.
Blacks and whites keep away from each other, and latinos are used for manual labor. Asians have usurped the white professional class while middle easterners have started gas stations, car washers, and other filler business models.
Why do you care?
no, I get depressed when I walk anywhere and the language I hear most is anything but English.
I'm not sure where you're from but here in the NYC metro area (which includes NJ/CT/LI/westchester), I feel I have very little in common with the average "american". we no longer share the same culture, language, ideals and goals. we're no longer neighborly with each other. people keep to themselves or their ethnic enclaves.
we're all pitted against each other whether it's black vs white, christian vs muslim, male vs female, left vs right.
we're really not the United States anymore... we're just States.
maybe this is different in other parts of the country.
What's changed is the education industry complex is producing malcontents by design !!!
Even as they are standing in line to be fed into the woodchipper they will think they are about to become the best they can be !!! Soylent Green, the final solution to save the planet !!!
America is wonderful. From a very young age I recognized how special it is. A place of incredible beauty, modern cities, warm and friendly people, prosperity for those willing to work hard to achieve it, and the freedom to choose the life you wish to live. I feel very fortunate to be a native-born American, living a great life here.
It sounds like a lot of generalities which may or may not apply to any one person but do not apply to everyone. You are comparing present day realities to some hypothetical perfect utopia which has never existed. Anything you can say negative was probably much worse in the past. And you are skipping all the positives, like Social Security, Medicare, cable TV, computers, cars, decent housing, enough to eat, free public education through high school and affordable public colleges, and the fact that most people can and will take advantage of them. You can look at the glass as half full or half empty. Your outlook, much more than circumstances, controls your happiness in life. Life has always been hard, and it's always taken a lot of work and time to carve out your own niche. But nobody will do it for you unless you are born rich, and maybe not even then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
Its odd how hyper energized people are when speaking of this country's political future and moral soul.
Social issues have become hot button subjects whereas before people were ridiculed for even thinking about this country as a political unit.
In the 1990s the idea that people lived in a unified landmass called the USA was impossibly difficult to decipher.
Most people thought their independent lives were a larger signifier of who they were than the country they lived in.
No more, today the wave of hold outs have gone adrift and now most everyone has their own opinion about Kamala, Biden, Trump, the history of this country, and its future.
Most of the discussions are relatively shallow but they are happening which is significant.
My Question is why? What about this country makes you interested in its history or its future?
Your personal lives, homes, and jobs can be engaging but what about the landscape of this country makes you dedicated to its well being?
Don't you get depressed walking into a walmart or another generic big boxmart or commuting to and from your home in a stuffy vehicle with an endless expanse of road and concrete? The strip malls are dull and spiritless, work spaces are cookie cutter repeats of one another, there are no religious, spiritual, or political structures in site, only empty realestate blocs.
Most of the places in this country are unwalkable, and going to the countryside leaves you with vast swaths of drug dens, ruined farm mills, roadside garbage, and overweight people who survive off of 7/11 hotdogs.
The cities are also not walkable, the buildings are the same (nashville, Atlanta, Dallas, or Los Angeles, look at the buildings downtown and tell me what unique identifiable trait they have).
People are all the same wherever you go, they dress and talk the same, the food is the same. Occasionally you would come upon a disneyland theme park like time square which is packed with foreigners who have no interest or care in this country, nor do they speak you're own language.
Blacks and whites keep away from each other, and latinos are used for manual labor. Asians have usurped the white professional class while middle easterners have started gas stations, car washers, and other filler business models.
America is wonderful. From a very young age I recognized how special it is. A place of incredible beauty, modern cities, warm and friendly people, prosperity for those willing to work hard to achieve it, and the freedom to choose the life you wish to live. I feel very fortunate to be a native-born American, living a great life here.
Well I count Austin as one of the most depressing places in the country, concrete roads and buildings filled with hyper professional individuals who care more about their personal image than their place and duty to society.
I'm not depressed, but when I drive to a bookstore or grocery store, everything around me feels empty. People don't smile or share the same interests, and everything around you has no significance to the country as a whole.
I just stop thinking about the country to the point that I don't care. However I'd much rather live here than in the Favela in Rio de janeiro.
Still, I just can't muster up the energy to care about much else, I don't feel we live in a cohesive society with a shared culture and purpose.
Well I count Austin as one of the most depressing places in the country, concrete roads and buildings filled with hyper professional individuals who care more about their personal image than their place and duty to society.
I'm not depressed, but when I drive to a bookstore or grocery store, everything around me feels empty. People don't smile or share the same interests, and everything around you has no significance to the country as a whole.
I just stop thinking about the country to the point that I don't care. However I'd much rather live here than in the Favela in Rio de janeiro.
Still, I just can't muster up the energy to care about much else, I don't feel we live in a cohesive society with a shared culture and purpose.
You’re not depressed? You consistently sound downtrodden and miserable to me. That’s a shame.
It sounds like a lot of generalities which may or may not apply to any one person but do not apply to everyone. You are comparing present day realities to some hypothetical perfect utopia which has never existed. Anything you can say negative was probably much worse in the past. And you are skipping all the positives, like Social Security, Medicare, cable TV, computers, cars, decent housing, enough to eat, and the fact that most people can and will take advantage of them.
I'm more asking because I've found people online very dedicated to this country, something I can't muster up the energy to do.
I like the material comfort of living here, but I also feel distant from society as a whole.
Usually a society would place importance on the duty and purpose of the different classes and workers, the monuments and buildings would be dedicated to a regional culture, political, or religious symbol the people share.
Having the country filled with concrete roads, copied strip malls and drive-by stores, massive cultural dissonance with people speaking different languages and different morals, and run down rural areas is disheartening.
I love being here because there’s perhaps no nation on earth with such a diverse collection of climates and landscapes, nor one with such a different collection of how things are run on the ground. It’s pretty cool. I can’t name another place with the collection of values such as personal freedom and individual vs collective rights as here. You might opine that suburbia kinda looks and feels the same, I feel like every city has a distinct look and feel, everything from shrubbery to whether the parking lots connect with each other, to street planning and architecture, topography, and climate. Regions still have their distinctive flairs, and it was still culture shock for me to move from Silicon Valley to East Texas.
Fundamentally, I think a few things are happening.
I think a lot of people are seeing the cracks in our system, and they’re dividing into two camps. One, of which I am a member, wishes to acknowledge the cracks and get a good comprehensive fix. The other seems to want to tear everything down and build a new structure.
The advent of the internet and social media has complicated things vastly. Where once we got the news from one of three channels where everyone more or less agreed on the facts, it’s now splintered and profit sources have turned formerly reputable media sources into news-themed entertainment, cutting expensive deep investigative journalism in favor of getting buddy-buddy with politicians in exchange for access - and capture.
The internet has also allowed a lot of rather weird information to flourish, allowing folks to pull ever smaller holes in a narrative together to weave fairly intricate tin foil theories together.
So, now we don’t even agree on basic facts or language (nazi and racist have almost entirely lost their meanings, and people don’t even use the word liberal properly).
We are entrenching ourselves on these sides and fortifying, riding on hyperbolic nonsense to defend our sides against what looks like an ever more ominous enemy - while ignoring the fact that the two major political parties are both getting ever more like Nero or Marie Antoinette.
We don’t need to tear things down. America is a beautiful melting pot of different people, places and ideas. Look inside of yourselves as humans, and you’ll see those around you as humans, not Democrats or Republicans. This is a beautiful place. Please stop burning it down.
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