Repost from my other blog
I've been slacking. I'm pasting a little tidbit I wrote at http://forced-dumb.blogger.com/.
posted by ghx at 9:06 PM 0 comments
Thursday, February 02, 2006
reply to my mom.
My mom, who happens to believe she is a Republican, sent this to me:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm
I responded with the following:
I finally got a chance to look at this.
Given the figures, what are your thoughts? Why do you think we are so far behind in so many things? Taking into account the exponential rate of decay shown in those figures, at what point do you think we will reach a point of no return... or have we already reached that point?
Look at the murder rate. That figure alone makes my stomach flutter. Why are we so barbaric here? Certainly its not because we are allowed to own guns... Canada is allowed to own guns, but they are only at 1/1000th of our murder rate. Its not the population level, otherwise Europe with its 500+ million people would score much higher.
Do you understand what I mean when I say to you that this country makes me sick? We had the potential to be the greatest in everything we did, but its been wasted. We're not taken seriously in anything we do, but everyone wants to be our friend because we have money. No one believes that we have the world's interest in mind when we embark on any international effort. Nothing we do holds any real water in the eyes of the rest of the world.
I think we took it for granted. We allowed the freedom which we were given... no, the freedom which we WON; a thing we considered our most treasured asset, and turned it into our greatest failure.
When I see political emails from either side blaming one another for the problems, I want to scream. How can anyone really care about such things when they fly in the face of figures such as these? When you hear our President say things like, "people who don't want to fight the war in Iraq are isolationists," do you think he really understands what that sentence means? Even if we weren't in Iraq, we are the farthest thing in this world from being "isolationist." We export our "morals" by building sweat shops in impoverished countries so basketball players can get sponsored by shoe companies and we pay poor natives to strip the rain forests to make grazing land for cattle so fast food companies can turn around and sell hamburgers which end up turning us into overweight beasts.
What makes me even more sad is when I see intelligent people swayed by the rhetoric our media and politicians spout. When I hear people ape the words of their chosen political party simply because it is what they "should do," it makes me want to grab them and shake them until they open their eyes and the cotton falls out of their ears. People need to shut the big hole in the front of their face and open up the two small ones on the side.
I wonder all the time what can be done to fix these things. But then I look at figures like those that you sent me... and my shoulders sag and I wonder if there is a point. Why try? Its a lost cause now. No one hears reason. No one listens to their gut. Too few people are angry for the right reasons. The worst crime of all is that for all of our freedom of speech, not one single word can be heard above the din.
Ten years. We'll be in dire economic straights and we'll still be fighting "the war on terror" having gained nothing but more enemies.
I hope my prediction is wrong.
--
j.k
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm
I responded with the following:
I finally got a chance to look at this.
Given the figures, what are your thoughts? Why do you think we are so far behind in so many things? Taking into account the exponential rate of decay shown in those figures, at what point do you think we will reach a point of no return... or have we already reached that point?
Look at the murder rate. That figure alone makes my stomach flutter. Why are we so barbaric here? Certainly its not because we are allowed to own guns... Canada is allowed to own guns, but they are only at 1/1000th of our murder rate. Its not the population level, otherwise Europe with its 500+ million people would score much higher.
Do you understand what I mean when I say to you that this country makes me sick? We had the potential to be the greatest in everything we did, but its been wasted. We're not taken seriously in anything we do, but everyone wants to be our friend because we have money. No one believes that we have the world's interest in mind when we embark on any international effort. Nothing we do holds any real water in the eyes of the rest of the world.
I think we took it for granted. We allowed the freedom which we were given... no, the freedom which we WON; a thing we considered our most treasured asset, and turned it into our greatest failure.
When I see political emails from either side blaming one another for the problems, I want to scream. How can anyone really care about such things when they fly in the face of figures such as these? When you hear our President say things like, "people who don't want to fight the war in Iraq are isolationists," do you think he really understands what that sentence means? Even if we weren't in Iraq, we are the farthest thing in this world from being "isolationist." We export our "morals" by building sweat shops in impoverished countries so basketball players can get sponsored by shoe companies and we pay poor natives to strip the rain forests to make grazing land for cattle so fast food companies can turn around and sell hamburgers which end up turning us into overweight beasts.
What makes me even more sad is when I see intelligent people swayed by the rhetoric our media and politicians spout. When I hear people ape the words of their chosen political party simply because it is what they "should do," it makes me want to grab them and shake them until they open their eyes and the cotton falls out of their ears. People need to shut the big hole in the front of their face and open up the two small ones on the side.
I wonder all the time what can be done to fix these things. But then I look at figures like those that you sent me... and my shoulders sag and I wonder if there is a point. Why try? Its a lost cause now. No one hears reason. No one listens to their gut. Too few people are angry for the right reasons. The worst crime of all is that for all of our freedom of speech, not one single word can be heard above the din.
Ten years. We'll be in dire economic straights and we'll still be fighting "the war on terror" having gained nothing but more enemies.
I hope my prediction is wrong.
--
j.k
posted by sangandongo at 2:50 PM
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