how long have you been pissed off living in America? (boycott, rating)
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I have been vaguely dissatisfied with the US for my entire life, for different reasons at different times. I think that's mostly because I know its ins and outs better than any other country, so I can spot the warts.
That said in the past decade or so I was finally able to realize why America is flawed. It's flawed because classical liberalism is flawed. And classical liberalism was the framework for American culture.
There are two major thrusts in classical liberalism.
1) Equality. All men are created equal. The left likes this.
2) Liberty. Give me liberty or give me death. The right likes this.
Both are fallacious concepts.
All people aren't created equal. People are born with differing abilities and proclivities. True enough, the liberal would say, but we mean equality before the law. First off, that's kind of a cop out. Way to move the goalposts. Secondly, if people are indeed born with differing abilities, how could we treat them equally before the law? I mean, most judges are fairly intelligent people. You can't become a judge if you have a 90 IQ. So right off the bat, the legal system is biased towards intelligent people. A lot of criminals have mental issues. The laws as they are basically outlaw a certain type of personality which some fraction of every generation is born with. How does that square with equality before the law? Then there is the larger problem of when liberals read "all men are created equal" and take the words at face value. That leads to demands for equality of outcome and lots of craziness ensues.
Why can't we accept that human societies are hierarchical?
Moving on...
There's very little liberty in life. Most people are fated to live the way they do. You don't choose your parents, you don't choose your sex, you don't choose where or when you are born. You are born a certain way and the genetics of your parents have a huge impact on your life. Not to mention various non-genetic inheritances like class and wealth. Probably the biggest lie the liberty-lovers tell is when they misclassify needs as choices. For example, everyone needs to eat. They will die if they don't. There are other needs, but eating is the most basic. That means until very recently, and even now it's spotty, working was not a choice because you needed to work to pay for food. Every employer knows their workers need to work, and they avail themselves fully of that knowledge. A startling number of economists, however, classify working as a choice. The next biggest lie is when they tell someone to do something impossible for that person and confuse inability with refusal. Say you are in a wheelchair. It's impossible for you to do a lot of jobs. Combined with other factors that might make employment impossible to procure. Now let's go with a less visible and therefore less sympathetic hindrance - low intelligence. It will be impossible for you to do most jobs. That's just how you were born. For this, you are berated as lazy when in fact you never had a shot.
Why can't we accept that most people are born behind the 8 ball and scramble for a lifetime to keep their heads above water, rather than insulting them by telling them they are free?
At best the American Creed is a noble lie. That still means it's a lie.
I have been vaguely dissatisfied with the US for my entire life, for different reasons at different times. I think that's mostly because I know its ins and outs better than any other country, so I can spot the warts.
That said in the past decade or so I was finally able to realize why America is flawed. It's flawed because classical liberalism is flawed. And classical liberalism was the framework for American culture.
There are two major thrusts in classical liberalism.
1) Equality. All men are created equal. The left likes this.
2) Liberty. Give me liberty or give me death. The right likes this.
Both are fallacious concepts.
All people aren't created equal. People are born with differing abilities and proclivities. True enough, the liberal would say, but we mean equality before the law. First off, that's kind of a cop out. Way to move the goalposts. Secondly, if people are indeed born with differing abilities, how could we treat them equally before the law? I mean, most judges are fairly intelligent people. You can't become a judge if you have a 90 IQ. So right off the bat, the legal system is biased towards intelligent people. A lot of criminals have mental issues. The laws as they are basically outlaw a certain type of personality which some fraction of every generation is born with. How does that square with equality before the law? Then there is the larger problem of when liberals read "all men are created equal" and take the words at face value. That leads to demands for equality of outcome and lots of craziness ensues.
Why can't we accept that human societies are hierarchical?
Moving on...
There's very little liberty in life. Most people are fated to live the way they do. You don't choose your parents, you don't choose your sex, you don't choose where or when you are born. You are born a certain way and the genetics of your parents have a huge impact on your life. Not to mention various non-genetic inheritances like class and wealth. Probably the biggest lie the liberty-lovers tell is when they misclassify needs as choices. For example, everyone needs to eat. They will die if they don't. There are other needs, but eating is the most basic. That means until very recently, and even now it's spotty, working was not a choice because you needed to work to pay for food. Every employer knows their workers need to work, and they avail themselves fully of that knowledge. A startling number of economists, however, classify working as a choice. The next biggest lie is when they tell someone to do something impossible for that person and confuse inability with refusal. Say you are in a wheelchair. It's impossible for you to do a lot of jobs. Combined with other factors that might make employment impossible to procure. Now let's go with a less visible and therefore less sympathetic hindrance - low intelligence. It will be impossible for you to do most jobs. That's just how you were born. For this, you are berated as lazy when in fact you never had a shot.
Why can't we accept that most people are born behind the 8 ball and scramble for a lifetime to keep their heads above water, rather than insulting them by telling them they are free?
At best the American Creed is a noble lie. That still means it's a lie.
'Equality before the law' is not a cop out. 'Equality before the law' is the original intent. People can be of different races, classes, abilities, etc. Regardless, all are to be treated equally before the law.
Liberty is the freedom to pursue your own happiness with the resources nature/nature’s God gave you (without harming others).
Equal outcomes are unnatural. Americans were never promised equal outcomes.
The problem isn't with the country itself, it's with the idiots that are running it. The only thing we as citizens can do is vote these incompetent biased morons out of office.
I love this country. It hurts me to see us allow us to be censored through big tech, and to see so many Americans supporting it. They cannot see the big picture, that without free speech things begin to go dark, and how lies become truth. The truth is what your government says it is.
I sure do miss g'ol USSR. Early 1970s. Was good life. Not everything is about air conditioned cars and supermarkets.
But to OP - last 2 years were devastating on me. I have highly developed sense of righteousness, unfortunately.
You're right, last 2 years have been devastating to us too, but I'm beyond thankful we left California and moved to the Carolinas years ago. No way would we have survived those business shutdowns in CA.
So OP, I'm not PO'd about living in America, lots of different places we can move to and find our sweet spot.
Not a firm hard date for me but I'd say it began to snowball in 2009 / 2010 when it began to be clear that Obama was working hard at dividing the country. Voting for him in 2008 is one of my greatest regrets.
I was somewhat encouraged from 2016-2019 that our country was pulling out of the tailspin it was in but the events of 2020: The Plandemic, The Left's Summer Of Love and the rigged election put paid to that.
When the installation of an unwanted and not rightfully elected 'leader' to the White House on 1/20/21 was allowed to pass the United States of America ceased to exist as it had for the previous 244 years. On that day I suppose I went from sorrowful, disgusted, and angry to 'p!ssed,'
Imagine if the Founding Fathers of America had just decided to be nice, wait it out, not 'revolt' against England, or keep trying the diplomatic approach, Where would we be today?
Every July 4th, Americans honor and celebrate what a relatively small group of colonists did...which was to revolt against their own govt and kick them to the curb!
It seems like our modern govt would ban the July 4th holiday...after all, what the colonists did was essentially 'domestic terrorism'.
I stopped celebrating July 4th a couple years ago though, in my opinion, todays citizens (myself anyway), should not have that privilege.(for those of us who see whats going on in the country today and simply refuse to do anything about it), but hey Im like anyone else, I like my freedom and quality of life. 'patriotism' is not worth ending up getting arrested or sentenced to 25 yrs in prison. LOL
I'd put my finger at the same period of time - by the mid 90ies, it became obvious that the country was changing, and not for the best, with that Wal-Mart economy.
A lot of small businesses were closing down, the huge ugly Wall-Mart boxes were going up, and with them - more and more garbage quality merchandise pouring in.
Then came the turn of the shopping malls that started dying one after another - the domino effect.
Next came "political correctness," "virtue signalling" - you name it.
So it was all downhill from the nineties on - yep.
didn't that whole Walmart thing happen well before the 90's?
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