I am going to give a little bit of perspective on this post before continuing to the actual substance.
In some ways it is going to seem that I am "anti-American" or that I choose to be negative about America when many people think there are an endless amount of positive qualities that can be attributed to the US. While I may not be addressing the positive qualities, that does not mean that I ignore any positive qualities the US may have, simply that I feel it is rather fruitless when discussing what needs to be improved to bring up things that seem to work.
Beyond this, I think describing anybody as "anti-anycountry" is a fairly useless exercise as a country in itself is a fairly meaningless entity, rather the true character of a country is the people and the leadership that it is composed of. To be against a specific set of ideologies or political philosophies is not the same as holding 300 million people in contempt. That being said, I will continue.
There has been a tremendous amount of debate and fervor since around January 20th over an enormous range of topics but it seems as if they can all be summed up in phrase; "don't mess with the best."
It seems the more conservative elements within the United States have taken a position which is now directly opposed to the current government, something they hadn't been doing much of for the previous eight years. This inherently is not a bad thing as in many ways it is representative of the ideals that the United States and most free states were founded on, that you should never have to keep your political ideals to yourself. The caveat, however, of the thought that seems to be prevailing within the United States is that Barack Obama and Democrats are trying to fix a system that isn't broken. This is true of trying to get out of Iraq (quips about terrorists), healthcare (nobama death care), and the economy (bailouts). I don't intend to express my personal beliefs on this wide range of subjects nor do I think I am remotely qualified to do so, never the less I think it is worth putting into perspective where the United States sits in the world.
It doesn't take much looking to get a general idea where the United States stands in the world. For a country that values itself so highly I think it would be important to truly examine the very framework of the modern day United States and assess what is really working and what actually needs to be fixed. The dialogue within the Unites States needs to be entirely open and most importantly intellectually honest. Name calling (which spans all political spectrums) and labeling will do absolutely nothing to make the United States a better country, something that both sides and everything in between want. That is all.
You are absolutely correct in your assessment of political discourse within the United States at the current time. I had hoped that when Obama was elected into office is was a call to action on intellectual honest and progressive dialogue within our Political system. Now we have former candidates making false claims of "death camps." Maybe it is just me, but that seems to be far worse for the country then an open honest debate on how to make us #1 on all of those list.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that some people would rather pretend that the U.S. is the best instead of putting forth the efforts necessary to identify, diagnose, and repair the problems that do exist. It's simply lazy people not being too lazy to avoid dispensing their uninformed opinion as expert analysis.
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