Man, how can you think that way JL? We are the greatest nation in the world and will be for the foreseeable future. Problems? Hell, yes. Disagreement and discord? Hell, yes. Anybody else besting us in the long run? Hell, no. We're not falling apart just because somebody that you disagree with is the President. That shit comes and it goes. We'll thrive and survive. We're Americans.
Originally Posted by timpage
Tim, I voted for Obama although he has continually disappointed me. Basically, I thought Romney would be worse. Are we really the greatest country?
I had that thought drilled into my head by my mother as I grew up. It was a part of my DNA and I jumped to defend her at every turn. But, things nagged at me. How many surveys have you seen where we are 23rd in reading, 34th in math? Even in freedom, which we act like we invented, we are at best tenth on paper? Other nations are freer than us. We have more debt than any other nation, though since it is in dollars we can perhaps go a lot higher, but we used to have a considerably lower debt relative to our economy's size.
We squander so much of our strengths as we accentuate our weaknesses. We save the Iraqi's then let others have the oil. We coddle the poor and shiftless and penalize the productive. We give away free defense, spill our blood, and bribe other countries to be our friend.
We let the Romney's of the world emasculate our middle class, perhaps our greatest strength in the past, by hollowing out our once mighty manufacturing industries and transferring those good jobs to low wage countries.
I'm so alienated by the actions of this government, which shoves shit down our throats and tells us to put some barbecue sauce on it and shut up, that I wont lift a finger to help out in any way. Lots of other people feel the same way. I need to have a government that when it disagrees with me, and imposes its rules, doesn't do it like a dictatorship of government thugs, but like a servant leader.
Companies like General Electric, founded by the great man Thomas Edison, must feel the same way. They think so little of their obligations to America that even though they make 20 billion a year in profits, they manage to pay no taxes. They pay nothing in taxes while selling the government billions of dollar worth of stuff.
We could be the greatest country, we once were the greatest country, but we aren't now.