> On Thu, Jul 20, 2000 at 04:36:22PM -0700, spot wrote:
> It seems to be chic to attack American society these days, when
> in reality, if a society has to be on the top of the pile, I would far
> prefer it to be American over Chinese/Russian Communism. That's not
> Ameri-centricism, thats just me enjoying my human rights and personal
> freedoms.
What an idiotic thing to say, considering that your oh so precious
freedoms and liberties are; a) rather contingent; b) being striped away
piece by piece anyway.
It is not a matter of picking on American society, rather the
government, and why so many Americans take criticism of our political
system or government personally is fucking beyond me, silly group think
methinks.
My country right or wrong is brainwashed unpatriotic bullshit, the fact
is that if you truly love a country then you have an interest in
preventing its injustices and righting its wrongs, if you do not have
this desire then you are no patriot. America is at the top of the heap,
and at that position it can do a whole lot of good, or a whole lot of
evil. If america FUCKS UP its privilege and its position it will
generate enmity in the hearts of those who would be its friends.
No empire can stand surrounded by foes, eventually something will give.
Every empire falls, every civilization winds down, the problem is when,
and how fast, and who the hell it takes with it. America's supremacy
will be increasingly tested in the next decade, who would have thought
in 1910 that the sun would set on Britannia ? But it did. In 1710 who
would have thought that the great Mughals, or the Ottoman Sultans, would
see the end of their empires in 2 centuries ? But they did.
America can lead with honor (which it is not doing, and has not done,
except on a very superficial level, for a couple of decades now) or it
can lead by covert manipulation and coercion.
The latter path will not lead to the establishment and maintenance of
your "human rights and personal freedoms" which you claim to enjoy so
much, because the latter path will inexorably lead to increasingly
coercive wielding of power by our elites (corporate and governmental).
Reign in the abuse and potential of power then your statement has
grounds upon which to stand, ignore this and your "human rights and
personal freedoms" will devolve to nothing more than the freedom to
choose what channel you want to watch, what porn you want to read while
jerking off, what new bourgeois kitchen toy you want to buy on the
shopping channel. The freedom to choose modalities of banality. Fuck
that.
As it is today when most people talk about their "human rights and
personal freedoms" this is what they refer to anyway, the freedom to
advocate a small number, in a small set, of predefined official
political views, the consensus of whom have been manufactured in the
minds of the dull sheep that pose for citizens in this country, and to
express these views while growing increasingly fatter and cancer ridden
off from cheap McDonalds Cheeseburgers while frantically whacking off to
Pamela Anderson Lee pictures. The freedom to be a banal and brainwashed
sheep. Granted I'd take this system ANY DAY to, say, the Chinese or the
Iraqi systems. I am not a total ingrate. it is just that I want more,
I think that my country should deserve more, and even if it does not,
and its people do not, then by God I at least do.
A patriot would fucking say what he dislikes about his country and what
needs improvement because a patriot would care for the long term best
interest of his country, no ?
Am I making sense ?
As for other countries I could come up with at least 3 that would would
be as comfortable to live in with equal standards of "human rights" and
"personal freedoms". America is a nice place to live in but it is by no
means the only nice place in which to live, it has advantages,
considerable ones, as do many other countries, in the west and in the
east.
