9fev2003

First of all, I can take a joke just as much as anyone, and that picture was pretty amusing. I think I saw it on a Something Awful Photoshop Phriday, but I can't remember for sure. After that, however, it gets a bit ridiculous. The United States government sucks ass? We're a Democracy, people. We're the ones who put these people into office; nobody is forcing you to vote for anybody. Also, please take into consideration that the government is currently at the head of one of the largest and most successful--if not THE most successful--countries on the entire planet. If things take a long time to do, and if the government seems slow and ponderous, I would very much like to see you handle it. The reason government officials can take care of things so quickly and effortlessly on TV is because showing the entire process of making choices takes weeks, possibly months, and for dramatic purposes, that's just ridiculous. Unless you're a PoliSci student and watch C-SPAN all the time, but that's beside the point.

I also think it's a bit amusing that people can say the government "sucks ass", when America is one of the only places you can say things like that. Try doing that in China, Cuba, or any other country ruled by a communist/totalitarian government, and you'll be lucky if you walk away with being beaten with a club. Yes, there's plenty of things wrong with the United States, and we definitely have our share of problems. But here's some other information for you: The grass is always greener on somebody else's lawn. Why don't we ever hear about internal government strife in Canada, Ecuador, or Romania? Well, offhand, we're not Canada, Ecuador, or Romania. Every country has its problems. We only have so many because plenty of other countries are gunning for us.

And why is that, you ask? There are many reasons--religious intolerance being near the top, with jealousy being a close second. Victimhood is not just practiced in America anymore. Some religions dictate that the more infidels--that is, people not of your religion--that you kill, the better your chances are of going to Heaven. Now to someone like me, that sounds a bit hypocritical; what kind of benevolent God would make a law like that? But, it's not my stock, and there's thousands of years of culture I don't know about in the background here, so I'm not about to pass judgement on somebody else or his beliefs. What I will do, however, is indulge myself in some basic patriotic elitism.

With all the rights we possess (and abuse), all the ethnicity, and all the freedoms and opportunities we have here, there's not many other places I'd like to live. I account many "the government sucks ass" bull to disillusioned doorknobs who think that the government should simply hand everything to them on a silver platter. The American Dream isn't dead, folks; you just have to work for it. And working is, sadly, something many people aren't up for as much as they were fifty years ago, or even twenty-five years ago. And as for America "sticking its nose where it doesn't belong"...well, imagine what might have happened if we hadn't intervened during the Gulf War. Or even now, during the U.N. weapons inspections. If you think my supporting the United Nations coming into Iraq and looking for chemical and nuclear weapons, poking into every nook and cranny in order to safeguard our very livelyhood from nuclear annihilation is wrong, then I don't suppose I'd like to be right. The USA gets its hands dirty because we're one of the few nations who can afford it. Basically speaking, the freedoms given to us by the founding fathers--our civil rights, free speech, freedom of choice--is something that everybody should be entitled too, and oppression of those basic rights is...well...wrong.

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