Lol @ Shaun King
- Thread starter cookedw
- Start date
Suck it libtards. America is the best nation in the world.
Happy Independence Day guise..
Happy Independence Day guise..
He’s a freaking racist and they need to send all these anarchist and haters to Guantanamo Bay for inciting riots. If you don’t love this country get your ass out. There’s about a million sitting at the border who would love to take your place. Happy 4th to the greatest country in the World and it ain’t even close
He’s a freaking racist and they need to send all these anarchist and haters to Guantanamo Bay for inciting riots. If you don’t love this country get your ass out. There’s about a million sitting at the border who would love to take your place. Happy 4th to the greatest country in the World and it ain’t even close
We’re not the greatest anymore. That title probably belongs to one of the Nordic countries. Maybe Germany. Canada's also doing excellent. The only thing we're the best at is basketball and making billionaires richer.
What is your support for this assertion?
Why isn't the rest of the free (and unfree) world flocking to these bastions of "greatness"?
Only idiot libs who hate this country don’t think this is the greatest country in the world.
You need to defend your own opinion. I’m not going to set the parameters for you.
If you won't agree to parameters, then we'll never arrive at consensus. A failure to agree to a standard perpetuates argument ad infinitum. I'm not asking you a trick question, I'm not even looking to "get" you. I know enough about the world to know that, by any reasonable metric, I'm correct here. I just want you to name some reasonable metrics, so I can prove it.
you said America wasn’t the greatest. I just asked you to defend your assertion. You should tell us what you meant when you said that. Not the greatest based on what? Not the greatest based in our hockey or soccer prowess? I don’t know what you meant. I would have to guess.
Healthcare, upward social mobility, education, environmental protections, income parity, homelessness, affordable housing, mass transit, urban development, economic stability, public health, diplomacy, consumer protections, prescription drug prices, violent crime, crime generally, prisoner rehabilitation and recisivism, racial equality, LGBTQIA rights. I could go on.
I would add whining, virtue signaling, and ignorance. The US is has charged to the forefront in those area’s as well.
Please do!! Go straight on to one of the utopias you have described above. Why are you still in the US complaining when there is such greener grass just beyond the fence? Will they not let you in? Do you lack some LGBTXYZ’ness?
I'd love to go there, but our president mismanaged the COVID crisis so very badly that the EU won't let Americans in because we're a transmission risk. Also, who would let you know how stupid your worldviews are if people like me left the country. Someone has to tell you that basically everything you believe about the world is carefully curated BS fed to you by your oppressors.
lol!! Well played..
A coupe of highlights for your next lecture.. please speak on the predominantly homogeneous genetic and cultural structures of the countries you are highlighting for a potential move. I find it interesting that the ones you named are 75+ % white. Also, please define who you perceive as being my oppressors? The news media? Education/Educators? Politicians? From my perspective more of these “oppressors” speech and actions are more akin to your world view than mine.
TIA.
I'm sorry, but can you explain why the racial makeup of those countries matters? I'm not following you. Also, just going to assume that @AUTaxMan has just waved the white flag (typical Southerner).
Once I realized that you weren't going to post anything of substance in the thread I stopped following it. Maybe I should have realized that from the beginning? I'll chalk this one up as "win" for you.
You asked me the metrics that I'm using to judge America as a country. I gave you 20 metrics. You stayed silent. You can play all disaffected, but we're empirically not the best country on Earth.
We always crow about liberty, but we're not even the freest.
It's just the truth.
Now, we can either have meaningful discussions about how to make us #1, or we can get butthurt and take our ball and go home. We've been doing the latter since about 2000.
I’m not sure if the racial makeup and near cultural monolith matters, that’s why I asked you to expound. You picked the countries. You provided a list of the superiors attributes found in those places. I’m just curious on your take as to wether those attributes are so attractive because of the population and demographics or in spite of them. I am assuming that if asking you the same question about the country you are abandoning you would tell me yes, the racial and cultural makeup are failing you here. I don’t want to put words in your mouth though... just asking.
You failed to answer my other question.... any question really.. but moving on.. Who exactly are my oppressors? You indicated that I was uniformed and unaware. Please fill in the blanks.
Sincerely, I don't understand the point you tried to make re: racial makeup. Could you please rephrase? I'm truly lost.
We’re not the greatest anymore. That title probably belongs to one of the Nordic countries. Maybe Germany. Canada's also doing excellent. The only thing we're the best at is basketball and making billionaires richer.
The countries you selected for your move are in bold. I took a look at the demographics of those countries and see a largely homogeneous group with a fraction of the population of the US. Well, I looked for Germany and the Nordics.. didn’t look at Canada at all. Maybe I should.
I’m not trying to make a point, I am exploring one. I’m genuinely curious as to if there is cultural root or causality to the things that you find attractive. You are not shy about your progressive political stance and point to progressive watermarks in the places you highlighted, including diversity. That’s how we became engaged in the back and forth. I don’t see the diversity in your selections from a demographic stand point, so my assumption is that they arrived at your Utopia without what seems to be an essential element in any political debate here.
This hasn’t been much a lecture. I do all the typing. Still waiting on a response regarding my oppressors.
So, as I understand it, you have two essential questions:
First, is to whether I'm interested in those places because of their racial makeups.
Second, is -- if I am interested in those places because of their racial makeups -- then how does that interest jive with my espoused progressive worldviews, to include an emphasis on diversity?
Is that right? Happy to elaborate, just trying to make sure we're talking apples-to-apples here.
Close enough. I don’t really care one with or another about the specifics/race of the demographics. Just that my observation is that it’s largely homogeneous. I find it interesting that cultural diversity does not, on the surface, seem to be a driving force for achieving the Progressive Watermarks listed, and I am genuinely curious as to your thoughts.
I think I get it now. I think diversity in racially homogenous places just looks different. Like it did in the U.S. in the 1800s and 1900s, when Irish people, Polish people, and Italian people -- although obviously fairer-skinned -- were not considered white. America was overwhelmingly white back then, but we still had diversities of culture and thought. Same goes for Scandinavia.
You could also look to a place like Singapore, which is incredibly ethnically diverse, even though most people there are obviously East Asian.
But, for a closer analog, I'd look at Canada -- it's percentage of white residents is roughly equal to that of the United States and they are doing much better than us by just about every quantifiable metric. They're not perfect by any means, but they're still doing much better than us.
Sincerely, does that answer the question? I really tried to give a thoughtful answer.
No worries!
Answering the "who are my oppressors" is a little tricky, but I'll go most broadly.
Most broadly speaking, your oppressors are twofold: the people who've manipulated the political and legal systems for their own economic benefit (think: billionaires, megacorps, etc.), but then also our legislative representatives that have allowed it to happen. Importantly, Republicans and Democrats have allowed this to happen.
That's where my previous interest in libertarian politics came into play (I voted Johnson in 2012) -- and where, I believe, the Southern interest toward libertarianism found fertile ground. It doesn't matter who we elected, they still screwed us to help themselves and the rich.
People have devised all sorts of names for the people who've most broadly screwed us. Political actors like the terms "the elite" and "the 1%;" political economists often use the term "oligarchs;" Marx broadly referred to these people as the "bourgeoise" and "Capital."
Regardless of the name, the import is the same: this class of people will do everything it can to avoid paying taxes and increased wages to workers because it makes their operations less profitable. In states (nation-states, not U.S. states, although it's true there too) where there is a strong social safety net, workers have all sorts of methods by which they may push back against Capital -- strikes, relying on unemployment, etc. However, in the U.S., the Capital class, over the last 40 years, has destroyed unionized labor and interwoven work requirements into our social safety net. The net result being that the worker class has no real power to push back anymore. If you make waves at work, you'll be fired and you'll lose your healthcare. However, you'll also be forced to try and find work that's just as oppressive and underpaid, lest your social safety net benefits be terminated. It's a vicious cycle.
At the higher income rungs (think: middle class and upper-middle class), Capital has done a great job of slowing wage growth, while extracting more labor and value from your hours worked. That means that, your adjusted $/hr paid for the work you do is significantly less than it was 40 years ago.
Moreover, Capital has shifted more of its tax burden to you. So that you're paying more in taxes, but you're getting less and less because you're subsidizing the non-payment of the 1%. And who wrote the laws to offload the tax burden of the 1% onto you? The 1% did, of course!
So, Capital is oppressing you to the extent that you're making less, paying their taxes, and have less social safety net to rely on.
How do they manage to keep people complicit? Well, they've got a corporate-owned media apparatus that's willing to manufacture your consent to just about anything so long as they frame it as a "conservative vs. liberal" or "culture war" issue. They've used that singular method to make millions of Americans complicit in their own oppression.
So now, we've got people making $150,000/yr who believe they have more in common with the billionaire than with the single mom making $22,000/yr. And, as such, they are the most vocal proponents for tax cuts for billionaires who care nothing for them, while their own communities languish due to the trickery of the 1%.
So, at the broadest level, your oppressors are Capital and the people the politicians who've enabled them.
I actually agree with most of this and share the root libertarian values. We diverge a bit when it comes to Capitalism, capital, and social safety nets as you have described above.
I don’t see Capitalism in its definition or idyllic state as being ‘the’ problem, rather the marriage of money, policy, and regulation to manipulate the markets and the working class is, for lack of better word.. evil. The ‘Free Market’ is not free.
Maybe broader social programs and protections, like the ones you’ve pointed too are a solution. I tend to think not though, as more government and one size fits all, equality if outcome, only further diminish individual liberty and opportunity at the lowest levels of socioeconomic food chain. The social safety nets currently in place are an abysmal failure.. Gov run healthcare such as the VA is tragic. Public Education is a horror show. The welfare system by in large has only perpetuated cycles of poverty.
I don’t have solutions, but I don’t see any either. The two party system that we are currently working with is busted, it results in what is essentially a one party system of ruling class vs everybody else. The 1% throws their support behind whichever political winds are blowing the hardest at the moment with full knowledge that their political contributions exempt them any real consequence.
We agree completely on the state of the media. At all levels any content creator who gains viewers which equals marketing opportunity which equals money will eventually be corrupted/victimized by their own success. Corporate Media Outlets are propaganda machines peddling non-sense to distract.
IMO, as a species, we are in an information crisis. There is too much of it, none of it earned, most of it manipulated, and very, very little of it delivered for the benefit of the consumer.
I’m sure there is more to share, discuss, debate, but I have to go earn a living presently. I appreciate your patience and have enjoyed the back and forth. Your perspective yesterday on demographics was brilliant. I enjoyed it.
Similar threads
