Let's face facts, shall we? America Sucks, Part Deux: An Explanation

First, I thank everyone who took the time to read what I wrote and also to everyone who took the time to post a reply. Part one And it was in those replies that contained the seeds to understanding the entire purpose of the piece. Some had said that I should have mentioned a solution. That would have defeated my entire intention.

I didn't want to influence your solution with one of my own. I wanted to inspire discussion. I was hoping that many of you were open minded enough to recognize the situation and in response determine what the solution is. If you want to know what needs to be done to change, you need only look at your own reply.

From what I can see here, the solutions in the responses were as varied as the number of replies. Some refused to see a problem. Others, saw the problem and felt that the obstacles were insurmountable. And, of course, there were those who lost sight of the entire exercise.

The ones that really made me feel good were the ones who recognized the problems and decided that it was their duty to make a change.

DU is a place where activists gather with free will to make a change for the better in this world we live in. I'm glad that so many of us still remember why we joined in the first place.

Now, an explanation. I believe that this country has always dealt with two competing and mutually exclusive national imperatives:

One being our gradual procession from a small agrarian culture that was founded on the grand ideals of life, liberty and the of happiness. Yet, despite these declarations, initially had limited access to a small number of individuals, but throughout our history those ideals were expanded to give everyone equal standing. By example, we became a model for everyone else on this planet who strives to seek their own liberty. Even in this day and age, we haven't lost that potential.

But, none of this came to be without a struggle.

"…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Frederick Douglass, 1857

We are still in the midst of this struggle. It's easy for some to look at the present and say that this is about as good as it's going to get. But, how can someone look at our present situation and do this?

If you chose to fight and change, you chose correctly.

The second national imperative is our unfortunate penchant for imperialism. It's always been there, in the subtext and at times out in the open. It's something that has always threatened to rip apart every grand ideal that this nation was founded on. In the past, the nation manifested this struggle against this threat with a civil war, the Indian diaspora, Reconstruction, the Black Codes, Jim Crow, sufferage, the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments to our Constitution and Manifest Destiny. Imagine, what direction this country would be going in today, had the Confederacy had defeated the Republic and subsequently pursued it's stated aims of establishing a Confederate Empire in the rest of this hemisphere:

Please review

In our lifetimes, this struggle was seen in how we prosecuted the Cold War and fought against those who resisted our imperial aims. Why else would I post a list of dictators who have done our bidding? I also mentioned Anti-Americanism, which the imperialists do not see as a movement to threaten our lives and nation, but is nothing more than resistance to our imperialist aims. If Nation X decides to look after its own self interests and the welfare of it citizens instead to subjugating them to our political and economic whims, that is the essence of Anti-Americanism.

We're dealing with this penchant today and, though its being manifested in different ways like the Iraq War and our global corporate expansionism. Yes, the struggle still goes on.

Between these two competing imperatives stand those who chose to stand and fight. That's the way it's always been in America. The roll call of names of the men and women who fought and sometimes died in the street is long and hallowed. Those who fought for fair wages, the vote for women, civil rights, against unjust wars and the rights of immigrants have always been at the forefront of forcing America to live up to its ideals. They owned the problem instead of blaming others, and by owning it, they also owned the solution. Those who told us that things are fine just the way they are have always stood in the way of the pursuit of our self-actualization as a great nation of laws and liberty.

If the fight is given up, and change is abandoned the consequences for all of us are dire indeed.

are the usual, "America is da best... duh" crowd.

We have problems that need solutions, and people to fight for them, like everywhere else. That does not; however, mean that we suck. It just means that we have room for improvement.

spying on its own citizens, ignoring global warming, censoring science, quashing dissent, destroying the constitution etc etc etc does suck.

Open your mind, grasshopper.

oh that's right.... Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan are trying to do something, but people like that get chastised when they try. America is sucking....

But we the people allowed all those things to happen.

And yet, here you are with a "wild conspiracy theory" to top them all.

If WE aren't all collectively responsible, then who is?

Oh, it's easy to blame the Bushies, just like it's easy for any people who have given up their freedom and their souls (would it be a conversation between us, my friend, if I didn't bring up the very similar psychology of ourselves and the 1930s Germans?) to blame someone else. Their oppressors, and those other people that let it happen. Not us, oh no, never us.

And that MAY be true...for people who were born into slavery and oppression. But for ourselves, the 60-40 BC Romans, and the 1930s Germans, who had freedom, relatively-speaking, and gave it all away, there can be no excuse.

We gave it all away by being bystanders, by ignoring all the signs, by sleeping away the 80s and 90s while the very foundations of democracy and the Constitution were eroded away beneath our feet ever so slowly.

We may complain that our leaders let us down, and they did... but we let them and ourselves down, too.

We didn't speak up while the chains coiled around our necks, most of our fellow Imperial Subjects wouldn't speak up at all even now. No, we watched TV, enjoyed the spectacle of the suffering of others, from COPS to Jerry Springer and everything in between.

When the corporations took over the Democratic Party and neutered it, maybe a radiant explosion of righteous anger and people-power might have slowed it or even reversed it. might have made the Leadership remember that people and not money are what they represent.

But we were too busy watching TV, and so the Democratic Party, for the most part, is the very wet-dream image of the Watergate Conspirators...weak, cowardly, neutered, and capable of accepting any Bushie crime, no matter how heinous no matter how much evidence and shamelessness exposed.

Edward Burke said, "The only thing require for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."

Thomas Jefferson said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

Well, collectively, we did nothing, not even when they blatantly stole the 2000 election and shoved our powerlessness in our faces. We were not and have not been vigilant, and that function of ourselves is so collectively atrophied we couldn't recognize totalitarian tyranny if it walked up to us and smacked us in the face with a rotten fish, which it has been doing for these past seven years.

I don't know what else to say, guy. If WE are not responsible, all of us, then who is? It's an easy cop out to say the Bushies or the Nazis did it all. We just lived our lives and tried to be left alone. And if that meant scrubbing the greasy soot off our windowsills every day, never wondering what it was and why it kept raining down again every other day, the how are we to blame?

Sure the Bushies and their minions, as the Nazis and their minions, are mostly responsible. But it is the height of arrogant denial to say that those of us who stepped aside and refused to sacrifice to stop it when it still could be stopped...to say that we are blameless.

Sorry, OMC, and it's nothing personal but that is such a cop-out it makes me sick.

The blood of those innocent Iraqi dead is on OUR hands, too. We let it happen. We were supposedly the freest people on Earth, with the greatest (supposed) power to effect change in our self-ruling government.

If, as you like to say, I am being a hyperbolic tinfoiler in suggesting that a new form of totalitarianism has taken over our country, then we are DOUBLY responsible.

How can those two points of view be compatible, OMC. How can everything be a-Ok and the System of Checks and Balances be fully intact, as you like to assert, and We the People who give the "consent of the governed" NOT be responsible.

After all, if I am correct and the System of Checks and balances is nothing but kabuki theater and we live in a de-facto totalitarian state in spite of the pretty window-dressing, then MAYBE your argument that we are not partially responsible might hold water.

But you and I know you don't believe that, so how can you hold those two contradictory thoughts inside your head?

1) The System of Checks and Balances is in fine shape, and the voice of the American people is still fully represented in it's government as it always has been.

and

2) The American people are not responsible for the action done in our name by our representative government.

How can 1) and 2) BOTH be correct? They are 100% diametrically opposed and contradictory.

Denial, OMC. Denial. Shed your blinders, sir. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

What say you?

Me? I'll sit right here continuing to know that those things this government has done in which I do not agree, have been done in no part due to my responsibility.

Let me know how you like the meat patties and coffee when ya get there, ok?

I also notice how eager you are to absolve yourself in the responsibility.

"Me? I'll sit right here continuing to know that those things this government has done in which I do not agree, have been done in no part due to my responsibility."

So the 1930s Germans weren't responsible, then? That is the logic of your position. If it isn't, please explain why the things your government did which you sit there and silently disagree with makes your situation different from the 1930s Germans who also felt no repsonsibility for the things which their government did that they disagreed with, that they sat there and accepted as you do, cleansing themselves of the responsibility.

But why bother, when a smart-assed short declarative comment will do just as well to my lengthy, reasoned question about contradictory thoughts, which you dodged but not artfully.

There's a couple issues I take with you, OMC. One is, you never EVER admit there might be some validity in the positon of another. Say what you want to about me, but people here have made me think, made me reassess my positions or consider it. It's all archived on the DU servers.

And number two is you never EVER (or so seldom as to appear to be never) seem to engage in rational debate, preferring the short declarative smears which so often have pissed me off in the past. Why do I waste time articulating and fleshing out a position with you, when all I get is a flip reply that you whip out in two seconds without thinking?

I have tried to find common ground with you, tried to respect you, but damn it, can't you see that when you do those things it makes it hard? And it seems clear with your flip bullshit answers, taking no time at all to debate properly, you indicate you return that respect not in the least?

(I know, I know...insert flippant OMC comment here...perhaps "I could care less about your respect" or something along those lines)

I felt and feel sympathy for your terrible tragedy. It humanized you to me in a way that you never could from your replies...short, declarative and pretty fucking mean, usually.

I know I haven't been perfect, I'm a hothead sometimes. But I try to give people a chance to debate, and I try not be hotheaded and mean unless provoked. Can't you see how your way does nothing but provoke nor add to the debate?

I asked you a legitimate question. I took the time to speak to you like a mensch, as we Jews say. And for the hundredth time, you blew me off with a flip, mean reply, taking a shot at me as you often do.

So why are you here, OMC? To take shots at idiots you despise? Maybe you should try the website, Something Awful. I hear that's all they do. They love to ruin people and piss them off just for the sake of doing it.

I don't know what else to say to you. I don't know how to get through to you. Maybe if I have a personal tragedy I can become a human being to you, instead of some fucking cardboard cutout of an idiot.

I don't expect an answer. I expect you to take another shot at me. I don't expect you to have a conversation with me.

Don't you know? I'm not a human being here, just a cardboard cutout of an idiot.

Goodnight, OMC.

I think that was a perfectly legitimate reply that would put to test just how responsible you feel you really are. It's called putting your money where your mouth is.

Could I spend a half an hour going point by point and refuting everything you say, and completely decimating your argument in the process? I'd wager I could.

But did it ever for a second occur to you that a 20 second reply is all I have time for at any given time? Have all of you really not figured that out yet?

That doesn't mean I should just avoid having any opinions at all though. I issue them at will. We are not complicit; sorry.

And I was not being mean by writing what I typed to you. I was using your logic against you in a rational way.

Another pointless, circular smear. The same one just repeated over again, in fact. A guy like you WOULD think it was "logic", wouldn't you? Here's some logic for you: If a 20 second reply is all you have time for, then why even waste the 20 seconds, since you can't bring anything but your usual sneering bullshit to the table that adds nothing to the conversation but ill will, which I suspect is what you are aiming for, anyway?

You really should try out Something Awful. I really think it has something there for you. But then you'd be at a website where everyone is like you, and the pickings wouldn't be as easy, would they?

I am truly sorry I ever wasted my sympathies on you. Go Cheney yourself.

Welcome to ignore, rhymes with glass-mole.

Feel free to reply. Waste another 20 seconds of your life. I'll never see it.

allowed this state of affairs to come to pass.

Your own reply is evidence of this, America is it's people and it's people are its government.

This place is turning into a shithole.

When we are no longer allowed to speak out about what's wrong with the U.S., it will well and truly suck.

Are you saying that America - the people - doesn't suck?

If so, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Or are you saying that America - the wealthy and powerful few who rule over us - doesn't suck?

If so, I disagree with you.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2760573&mesg_id=2766780

Wording matters.

and no amount of empty pseudo-intellectual vanity posts by Scorpio can change that inherent problem with his theory.

But humor me here.

My point being that, in our republic, we own the evil that's done our own names, unless we change it.

Of course, my theme was provocative, but the entire reason behind it was for the reader to be self-critical.

And one certainly cannot even come close to self-critical thinking if one doesn't think that their feces emits any offending odor whatsoever!

Now, of course, my vanity and highly suspect intellectual ability may have convoluted my approach... As most people would rather have notions spoon fed to them in a linear fashion.

But, you know me, I have to be "different". I have to ask you to think then go back and look at your thoughts. Naughty me.

Might I point out AGAIN, that your reply dictates what the outcome should be. If you refuse to acknowledge the problem, that there is a problem in itself.

For whatever reason, and I very much think it to be vanity, you think the rest of us aren't aware of the problems you point out. They are nothing new. They have plagued governments for millenia. They were probably not even new then. Now you have the ill-conceived notion that you're going to play prophet or educate all of us rubes about the failings of the nation. What you don't seem to get is that they are apparently only dramatic epiphanies to you. The rest of us are already beyond the "woe is us" bullshit and are interested in solutions. Oh, I know, solutions are so dreary a concept when all you want to do is wax apocalyptic and issue vague proclamations about some ineffable non-suckitude which lies in owning our suckage or some such nonsense. Better to just wallow in it and insulate yourself with meaningless phrases like, "your reply dictates what the outcome should be."

We are not defining what we mean when we say "America" or "us." That renders the discussion unproductive.

Most educated fairly well-off people mean "the wealthy and powerful rulers" when they say "America" and think of that as "we."

I don't understand how we can have an intelligent discussion about this when we don't define "America" and we don't know who "we" are.

One big reason why blue collar working people reject liberalism and the Democratic party is because we are always talking about their oppressors as "we" and calling the everyday people "they." Before we ever get to our arguments, we have established that we consider ourselves more entitled and superior. People pick up on that.

If we identify with the wealthy and powerful, with the rulers, without even realizing that we do, all of our "opposition" is hollow and empty.

This identification with the rulers, pervasive among the activists, disappears most of the people in the country. The same mechanism is the reason why the contributions and struggles of people of color, women, and labor have been airbrushed out of the picture of "America."

It is not possible to be in opposition to the rulers, nor serious about solving any of our social problems, when 90% of our thinking is founded upon a false view of America and American history that is strongly biased to the needs and interests of the wealthy and powerful few.

The American people see the battle between the Republicans and Democrats as a battle between two factions of the aristocracy, each with a different style and methods for neglecting and abandoning and abusing the peasants - one group of pampered and arrogant princes kills us off quickly, the other sweet talks us and prolongs the agony.

Does America suck? No.

Do the people who rise to dominance and power, and who control everything including the narrative about the country suck? Most definitely, be they of the "liberal" or "conservative" persuasion.

While the wealthy and powerful on both sides of the political spectrum ARE the ones who put things into play, WE THE PEOPLE are complicit in them if we don't speak up, and I think that is one of the points MrS was making.

If WE THE PEOPLE do speak out (and many of us do), unfortunately that doesn't mean that the powers that be will stop what they're doing. But if we DON'T speak out, we are complicit in what those powers are doing, and thus "America" and "we" suck.

Now, I'm not saying you, as an individual, are a bad person, or that you suck. And, I'm also not saying that you single-handedly have the power to stop the bad things done in America's name. I'm saying that WE THE PEOPLE have a responsibility to speak up, to speak out, and to keep speaking out until things change.

One of the problems is that so many people think, "Well, this (whatever it is) isn't about ME, so it doesn't matter to me." But it should matter. When a President does something, like it or not, the world sees it as America doing it. Is that acceptable to you, when what is being done is a bad thing? I'd venture to guess it's not, but again, a lot of people do think it's acceptable.

It's difficult to think that we suck, but we do, if we remain silent, if we don't speak up, if we don't point out the things that are wrong here, and then work to make them right.

Now, I don't think America totally sucks; there are a lot of good things we do, and I'm proud of them. But there are other things we do that are NOT good, that I'm NOT proud of, and for anyone who cares about this country, those are things we need to do something about.

As my sig line says, "Silence is consent."

Once again, the "we" in "we the people" is not very well defined. “We the people” - as in people who are not like us— often speak out and are ignored by the activists and politically active and knowledgeable, regardless of whether they are conservative or liberal. Los Angeles had its largest political rally ever in history last year, and it flew under the radar for most.

Those who have the skills and training, as well as the luxury of time and resources to be knowledgeable about and speak out on political issues have a special burden. If we are waiting for everyone to become like us in that regard, and if that is our criteria for membership in "we the people" than that demonstrates my point quite well. The Ron Paul supporters say "we the people" and they have quite a different definition as to what that means. "We the people" always means a selected group. The people who agree with us. Or the people who are active and speaking out in a certain way. Or the people who fit our stereotype as to who "the people" are.

There is nothing that makes the people who speak out on politics better than those who don't. We are complicit, yes, but we are relatively few. We have more influence over the discussion, we have more clout. Those who are struggling just to survive and who do not have the skills or the luxury of time and resources to get up to speed on political issues are not equally complicit. That is most if the people in the country, and we are failing if we are not effectively communication for and to them, and if we are not standing with them but rather are blaming them.

We are the voice for the many, just as they provide so many services to us. Verbal and analytical skills are just one set of skills, and the question is what we do with those skills.

So if you mean “we the people who have verbal and analytical skills and have been afforded the opportunity (or carved out for themselves in some cases, I understand) to use those skills” are complicit, I am in complete agreement.

How often I have heard people say "this is what democracy looks like" when the picture of the event they are referring to consists entirely of upscale educated suburban white folks. Yet millions of brown folks march against the tyranny that rules over all of our lives, and no one says that this is what democracy looks like.

So just who is this "we the people?" It almost always means "we the people who are like us."

What I immediately thought of was a quote by Alexis de Toqueville.



One barrier is the refusal to even consider America may be even slightly evil. Another is the belief that just because America believes it does something from the purest of motives, the recipients should be grateful even if it misfires. J. William Fulbright said something about that 40 years ago:



The rest of the world holds both a schadenfreude and a fear at the dissolution of America's empire, not to mention resentment. There is a schadenfreude because this superpower, which has reminded us of our helplessness for so long, is losing its power, but at the same time it is a fear of which nation will step into the power vacuum - most likely China. And there is where the resentment comes in - the US was good, it was on its way to becoming truly democratic - but they squandered their progress and sold their power for 30 pieces of silver to tyrannies.

A great summary indeed

If there are not two Americas, what is the point of having two political parties? What is it we are struggling for? Why bother with politics at all?

If there are two Americas, then how can we argue about whether or not America is good or bad if we don't define what we mean when we say "America?"

America is but a concept. It's only as good as its people. Say what you want about the founding fathers of this nation, but they could have taken more power for themselves if they wanted to. They could have divided the nations into kingdoms if they so chose, but they didn't. Instead, they created a living document and allowed future generations to decide how they wanted to structure their country.

The Constitution sets up the duality, just as it sets up the checks and balances in the federal system. It's a messy and important dance we need to maintain.

we have to challenge the government on Constitutional grounds, and our historical conflict between the individual and the state. Many of our biggest Supreme Court cases, hence the law of the land, were an individual v. the state.

the people in the US are descendants of fortune seekers, social outcasts, pirates,anti-social types, greedy, self-seeking individualists prone to violence. It would be insane for
people in the rest of the world to try to emulate the US. There is too much negative things, and few positives.

That's what happens when when we allow the riff-raff to attain political power and build up a powerful armed gang of terrorists -- the Congress and the Pentagon. America becomes a threat to the rest of the peaceful world.

three cultural turning points in american life.

the first -- and arguably the most important happend post wwII{well all three do} and that is the G.I. bill of rights that sent many, many thousands of americans that had never been to college and universities and exposed them to a greater view of the world and allwoed them to explode their economic earning power exponentially.

the second is is the free speech and the civil rights movement{i would include feminism here} -- and i would argue that you cannot separate the two -- they are so closely inter-twined. one plays on growing a self confidense in minorities previously excluded -- and the free speech movement -- thanks to the g.i. bill -- brings a whole new set of minds trained and open to the ideas of both civil rights and free speech.

and lastly is The Pill{ a force much greater than any atomic bomb} -- which plays into both economics and entrenched culture.
and frankly, you can't say enough about the effects on our culture and western culture -- of that one development.

i'm not surprised to see some of answers to these threads have been knee jerk --''we aren't bad'' or ''who are you talking about'' -- americans have a very, very difficult time with intimate question regardng our character.

They're fine examples of some of the keys to our own redemption in our past

I might add, that though America is going through a particularly dark time right now, we still have the potential to find that same redeeming spirit in the future.

our modern -- or post, post modern reality.

all of us today filter everything -- including the words of our forefathers, great events like the civil war, etc through those.

even our enemies do -- sort of in the way that we are all of us marxists -- because that's how profound the observations of marx were.

bill kristol or william f buckley are products of those revolutionary and relevatory moments.
they suffer horribly from an anxiety of influence -- to borrow from harold bloom -- the poet scholar.

i commend you on these threads -- because we truly need to have a discussion on the Character of america and americans.

well done.