JCC Ender Sigh rags on 'Murica

Bowen

America is emphatically and objectively not the greatest country on earth. Your purchase of a plastic car does not change this.

 

Sure it is. When you define greatness as fascist nationalism, glorification of war, anti-intellectualism, boorish incivility, and persecution of minorities...yeah, we're pretty great.

 

I'm glad this is continuing in the appropriate thread.

 

I watched season 19 of South Park over the holidays. It was pretty poor, frankly, but it shone a light on a lot of the bizarre stuff posted here that seems to be somehow understood among 'Muricans. Your intellectual insularity really is astonishing.

I think my new year's resolution is going to be trying to remember that you're all tucked up in your padded cell and that the contents thereof are your only points of reference; that however highly you function, you're basically five year olds when it comes to awareness of the world.

Not, you understand, to be in any way nicer to you. Purely to be less ****ing baffled by the **** that you type.

 

k

 

What about immigrants living in the US?

 

and what about meeeeeeeee

 

You have a 'stache. Normal rules don't apply. They're like a tin foil hat, except they work.

 

How unqualified a President would 'Muricans have to elect in order for the electoral college to fulfill it's purpose and elect someone else? Hitler?

 

Americans; plural of American [uh-mer-i-kuh n],
adjective:
1. An offshoot of Brits who in the most insidious and wily of ways decided to call themselves by a different name in order to semantically explain away their killing of their fellow British compatriots, for the purposes of getting out of taxes, as not being treason.












In this way, Americans are really the ultimate version of Brits.


















You thought I was with you there for a second, but it turns out I actually think you are both ****s!

 

Violent Violet Menace I don't entirely disagree, although I think it's due - in no small part - to US cultural hegemony.

The British education system has pretty much gone down the toilet over the last 20 years or so; our free health service is failing due to huge levels of depression, anxiety and type 2 diabetes thanks to the adoption of an American diet and lifestyle; we're becoming increasingly isolated from Europe; culture and entertainment have become Americanised, catering to idiots with a marked hostility towards anything remotely intelligent or playful (things like Monty Python, Cook & Moore, Fry & Laurie, Blackadder etc. couldn't happen now - we're left with dross like 'two pints of lager and a packet of crisps') - Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and their ilk are a product of this, btw; our foreign policy is pretty much written for us by Washington; the gap between rich and poor has been steadily widening for the last 30 years... I could go on.

For some reason we're emulating the US and that makes us a bunch of repugnant cretins. Still not nearly as bad as the US population itself, but trying pretty damn hard.

 

It's not really funding that's the issue.

Our per-capita spend on health has always been close to that of France or Germany and still is. Their absolute spend is a little higher, but adjusted for population it's about the same. Part of the problem is hopeless mismanagement (always has been - back office functions at the NHS have always been both incompetent and horribly wasteful) but lately (post Thatcher) the combination of the pharma lobby having direct influence over NHS policy and the burgeoning problem of lifestyle diseases (due to our adoption of all things 'Murican). About 10% of the NHS budget goes toward treating type 2 diabetes, for example. In 99% of cases, a disease that could be avoided by getting 7 hours sleep, going for a 30 minute walk and eating less sugar and fewer cardboard carbs (and - in most cases - entirely reversible by following the same prescription). The spend on depression is slightly less but not that far off. A similar proportion of the population are on a long-term prescription for anti-depressants.

France and Germany don't have this problem because they've not adopted the US lifestyle to the same extent. More people eat actual food, work-life balance is better and the culture is generally more civilised (in most ways).

Thatcher was a double-edged sword. In the mid 70s, the UK was pretty much wrecked by union activity. We adopted a 3 day working week to conserve electricity due to strikes, refuse piled up in the streets and we ended up having to beg the IMF for a bail out loan in '76. We were basically a third world country. Thatcher turned that around but at considerable human cost.

 

yeurgh, do you also die a little inside when you hear an American pronounce "buoy" as "booee"?

I mean, their language is basically what would happen if we never advanced verbally from a 3 year old's vocab, but this is a new kind of special.

 

I've never encountered this but learning of it has, indeed, killed a little part of me. I'm starting to think the worldwide increase in cancer rates is directly caused by increased exposure to American culture. Our immune systems - faced with things like this - are simply giving up.

 

Is there a point to this thread anymore? President Trump was sworn in today. Making fun of the US is liking pushing over someone with no legs or arms.

 

Yes.

"Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite."

The saying has been misattributed in history to a number of people, but comes from Joseph de Maistre.

Trump is the leader America deserves; the embodiment of every American value unchained. For the so-called 'left', whose job it mostly seems to be to split evenly between supporting a hugely qualified Thatcherite and pushing back insanely hard on any observations that place them on the right of the spectrum, are content to share social media anecdotes among their echo chamber, avoid doing anything to actually affect change, and complaining about everyone but themselves.

Their inactivity gave rise to increasingly centre-right leaders until they had become the very establishment that disenfranchised the vulnerable people they otherwise swore were their constituents.

The right? There is no more petty minded, angry, anti-intellectual and proudly stupid force in this world than the American right. In simple terms, if you're a conservative American and you get angry at liberals often, then you're an imbecile. In complex terms.... well, this election proved somewhat that you don't like complexity.

And whilst Mr Trump's victory has given a new boldness to our fringe right, more often than not we have mechanisms to keep those people at bay.

So, I mean, really what we do now is laugh at America some more, mostly because nothing will change. The gift of a catalyst like Mr Bush wasn't enough, so a more concentrated catalysing force like Mr Trump ought be no different.

(Also, there are people who will defend America as "worth saving", like starting a new is a bad idea. These people will self-define as progressives too, despite their reaction against a radical realignment of the mechanisms of state in a more people friendly manner).

 

@Mods I propose that we 'sticky' this thread for the next four years, right above 'ZOMG discussing star wars in the JCC...'

 

Look, we can no more control the rabid Republican base any more than we can control rabid Russians who support Putin. What do you expect us to do, grab an AK-47 and storm Washington?

 

Well here's the thing; your history is littered with examples where, if they were true and not just you guys believing your own lies/mythology/hype, then yes. Yes you would.

"We are so repressed by Britain, and betwixt our legs at full mast stands the Stiffy of Freedom. It shall be denied no longer; all of us throb to be free, so we shall fight for this ideal!"

Translation: It's economic, really. Taxes. Revenue. And French goading/support.

And so on, and so forth. Every conflict is tied to ideals; preserving liberty and freedom (lol), defending democracy (double lol), resisting tyranny (mega triple lol).

Well, sorry - in public discourse around them, there's an ideal. The actual imperative is pretty much "because we literally had no choice" or "because we'll get resources/cash monay y'all"

And notwithstanding how very You Guys it is to allow a Trump to happen then protest it later, basically it boils down to - inaction just proves conclusively your history is a lie.

 

What, there's never been over-the-top rhetoric used to justify war in the history of the British Commonwealth, or other countries? Pretty sure this isn't a uniquely American thing.

 

It kind of is a uniquely American thing.

I mean, sure, before and during a war there will always be propaganda. There may also be jingoism. The thing is, after a war, any normal nation looks back and takes stock. Hindsight allows us to see things more objectively and changes perspective. Much of the rhetoric will seem foolish on reflection but is understood in terms of the circumstances at the time and the motivations of the key players involved.

America seems to skip that and hold on tight to the propaganda and jingoism; viewing all her wars through a rose-tinted lens of truth, justice and the 'murican way... even when looking back a few hundred years.