Acheron
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If I die in Raleigh, at least I will die free.
 is this guy acheron???????? hahaha acheron you big fag
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Reg. Date: Mar 2004
Location: Miami
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Reply 16 of 89 (Originally posted on: 01-24-07 10:33:37 PM)
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Yes, Hoff. We are. America hasn't been invaded or bombed in recent memory, Well, save for 9/11.
But losing 3000 lives certainly doesn't compare to the total destruction of most of your cities. There are still bombed out buildings across europe that serve as a reminder of WWII, not to mention concentration camps. That kind of legacy is very humbling.
In America, we look at 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, and think that "Oh look, we got bombed, lost some people, and then completely destroyed entire nations in response. We kick ass."
While this isn't the opinion of many soldiers or the intelligentsia, it's certainly the view of the unwashed masses. Maybe if we paid attention to teaching things like critical thinking, we'd have less assholes, but you're right that the majority of Americans are assholes.
For example, at Macy's I worked with an Iranian woman named Surir (sur-EAR). An obvious W.A.S.P. attempted to practice spanish on her, thinking she was Cuban or Mexican. This was the rest of the conversation I observed:
Surir: I don't speak spanish.
DumbBitch: Where are you from?
Surir: I am from Iran.
DumbBitch: Are you a muslim?
Surir: Yes.
DumbBitch: Are you a terrorist.
Surir: *Laughter* No.
DumbBitch: Oh... Ok...
The woman then stalked off looking suspiciously at Surir. And this is typical of dumb, uneducated Americans with no talent for critical thinking.
Now certainly, other nations have their idiots too. I'm not going to judge all of say, New Zealand, because I meet one closed minded Kiwi. But there are closed minded Kiwis, I'm assuming, just like there are closed minded Mexicans, Britons, Germans, Russians, Swiss, you name it, there are idiots and ignoramousses from the nation.
It's just that America has the problem of not really educating its people like most western nations at least attempt to do. I think we're ranked just behind Estonia for edcuational excellence. There are several second world african nations that beat us.
One of the reasons that we've grown so strong in the past century is that after WWII the GI bill sent literally millions of people who would have otherwise been unable to persue higher education to college. Science, industry, and technology exploded thanks to WWII vets.
Now we're squandering what we've been given because highschool education is worse than it has been since the ninteenth century. Very few people are able to go to anything but vocational schools, and while voc schools are fine, they don't do much to improve critical thinking and citizenship capabilities like highschool should.
Now, I'm probably wrong about all of this because I have no training in sociology, but this is my take on the problem.
By the way, I've met as many egocentric assholes from western Canada percentage wise as I've met egocentric assholes from the U.S. And I think this has to do with the same lack of a dark, violent, legacy that's constantly in our faces when we think about history and geography.
All the big wars happened "Over There."
"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."
-Mark Twain
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