Its a human instinct, one of the most reliable and dependable of responses, one that has been the salvation of any number of braindead regimes, up to and including our Fearless Misleader. When the drum starts to pound and Johnny goes marching off to war, regardless of how mistaken that war may be, the American people go into patriotic retard mode.
If you can look at American responses to the “war” in Grenada, you will find that a vast majority of Americans, who previously thought Grenada was a revolting liquer, believed without question that elite squads of Cuban commando bulldozer drivers were busily building an airfield for refueling Soviet strategic bombers, hence a desperate and urgent threat to Amercian security.
It is knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal stupidity, but it never, ever fails: just start the ball rolling, and the Americans will fall into lockstep. In all fairness, it should be noted that this reaction is not peculiar to Americans.
I really hate this thread because everytime I see it my brain parses it as ( home of the (free my ass)) and I am wondering what a ‘free my ass’ is and what it’s home would be.
While I agree very strongly with this, it’s important to point out that the aforementioned guaranteed Freedom of Speech only means that the government cannot restrict your speech (except in the usual well-worn exceptions). It doesn’t mean that a private corporate entity is required to broadcast your views on their media (or, indeed, have even a remotely objective editorial viewpoint). It doesn’t mean that the entire rest of your neighborhood can’t say rude things about you (in fact, for the most part it means that they can). It doesn’t mean that those that disagree with you aren’t free to disassociate themselves from you and any enterprise with which you may be connected.
Mind you, them doing these things may well be evidence of their fucktarditude, but hey-- for the moment it’s a free country.
It would require me to cross the Atlantic, which costs money I don’t have.
Of those who even know what the Bill of Rights is (which is not going to be all of them), most will probably sign just because it’s the obviously right thing to do. Of course we support the Bill of Rights. Now excuse me while I go tape this protester’s mouth shut.
I don’t know. In my local paper, there’s at least one person in every letter to the editor column telling protesters that protesting is un-patriotic and un-American. But they’re morons, and that’s it. I haven’t seen any protests up here get silenced yet.
We, here in America, have the right to write and publish any oddball philosophy we happen to by into and will never be thrown in Gulag.
We can petition and redress the government in numberous ways without a single jackbooted thug “disappearing” us.
We can hold idiotic rallies complete with giant puppets and drum beatings for days on end on private property without a single tank showing up to run anyone down (though the police may ask us to keep it down if the neighbors complain).
In short, we have the right to talk about anything we want, think anything we want, and back anyone we want without fear of government reprisal.
Yet we don’t have free speech because people get irritated when others stand in the street and scream?
Maybe, just maybe, its not the messege people are upset about, but the protests. And maybe, just maybe, people will respond to poll, which to the best of my knowlege isn’t legally binding, with a different set of values than they would pending legislation.
But I’m sure as the obviously intellectually superiour beings you are, you realised this, and didn’t just knee-jerk.
Well, yeah, you can also say it invalidated most of your OP.
One in six? Shit man, where have you been in Western Society the last few decades? I’ll bet I can get 1 in 6 people to agree that Ronald Mc Donald is a Mayan demigod, that Daredevil is a documentary, and that Lysol enemas make your whole outlook on the day piney-fresh.
Remember, Priceguy time-binding is one of the hallmarks of sentience*. Try to be brighter than plankton next time, 'k?
Fenris
*“The plants adapt to their environment through their awareness and control of energy. The animals adapt to their environment through their awareness and control of space. And we humans adapt to our environment through our awareness and control of time.” 1921, Alfred Korzybski
What’s a city? If you mean the incredibly fucked-up view of American cities that Europeans receive from our own American media here (which gives one the impression that every American city in a continent-sized country looks like New York, LA, or San Francisco), then you have no idea about the inner 95% of the US cities (which look a lot like Kansas City and Colorado Springs).
Fenris, I’m not at all sure what you’re trying to say. I mentioned shooting deaths because that is a bad thing about the USA. I assume we agree on that. I said I’d kill for free speech, because I would.
And then you say that in America citizens are allowed to own guns. How is that relevant to the discussion? Have I said that I’m opposed to gun control? In favor of gun control? Have I said anything about gun control? I don’t even remember mentioning guns.
You were the one who brought up this in your very OP:
Claiming that you “don’t even remember mentioning guns” is disingenuous enough that I cannot help but wonder how this is no longer “trolling” and expect that the Staff will close your thread here. I suppose you would argue that “shootings” occur from knives, hammers, and biros?
And syringes. Shooting definitely happens with syringes. Just, you know, not with bullets. (But it would be funny to see someone ask for a .38 caliber needle. Somehow that Saturday night ain’t so special anymore.)
