I used to want to be American so bad, I wished I could live there and experience what it is like, and honestly, the only thing that got me through that is accepting that I will never live there and I will never experience these things. I will never have Starbucks or ChikFillA or whatever other fast food Americans consume on a daily basis. I will never experience Christmas in winter huddled up under blankets watching Home Alone with hot chocolate and the fireplace sizzling beneath the TV. I will never watch an American football game 3with my friends eating hotdogs and drinking beer.
I kind of just accepted that it would never happen, and learnt to embrace my own culture instead. I might not live in America but that doesn't mean that my life is over and I have no importance in this world. I am apart of other diverse and interesting cultures that I love. Instead of complaining about not living the American dream, I grew up and worked with what I actually have.
One day I might move to America, who knows? But for now I am staying right here, and I wouldn't change it for the world.
There is a lot to be said in favor of staying where you live so long as its peaceful and you have a way to survive and thrive. The American model of excessive consumption isn't one to emulate or aspire to even though the media wants us to consume as much as we can. Buy the biggest Ford truck with a tiny bed you never use to haul anything. Buy a McMansion and live in it with your wife and fill it with junk.
There is a lot of value in enjoying your own culture and America has a big facade of wealth and prosperity but like a Potemkin village it hides the fact that Americans cant afford these homes and go into 30 year mortgages and that most are just one mishap away from ending up homeless or in severe medical debt. With that said, there are also tremendous upsides but looking to switch places to solve problems is just going to leave you dissatisfied when you find out your new place comes with a new set of problems.
Idk might be 6-7th grade when I realised (b.99 and went year later than peers to school, starting (t.f.) at 8, 2007) in my early teens, than not only American but all dreams are fake and that future they promised me was gone because no one believed anything anymore, I didn't and reality had no basis on anything anymore. Anything could happen and no one would care, world might be fake but only thing to do is to ... *vaguely throwing hands* for what, specifically?!
I had depression until grade 2 (ES ending with. 9th, 1, 2) on "middle school/college"(?)...
Aren't dreams supposed to be fake though? Thats why they are dreams, because they represent an idealized situation free of the constraints of reality. And thats why we try to reach them, because we want to reach the state of being free of the constraints of reality.
still alive.
i'm livin' it every time i wake up. roll over. rip my 7 ft bong. morning wood throbbing. i salute the eagle, and hop on my dirt bike for my morning cig run.
You sir are why this country was founded. Rogue, Independent, Flag raising, Eagle Saluting, Dirt bike riders.
here are a series of events that made me want utter destruction against the United States government:
-THE GENOCIDE AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE NORTH AMERICA
en.wikipedia.org
When European settlers arrived in the Americas, historians estimate there were over 10 million Native Americans living there. By 1900, their estimated
hmh.org
-WAR CRIMES IN IRAQ
en.wikipedia.org
We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.
www.amnesty.org.uk
Abu Ghraib prison, large prison complex in Abū Ghurayb, Baghdad governorate, Iraq. During the presidency of Saddam Hussein (1979–2003), it became notorious for the detention of a massive number of political prisoners and the use of torture. It was reopened by the U.S. military in August 2003 after
www.britannica.com
The United States government has apparently failed to provide compensation or other redress to Iraqis who suffered torture and other abuse two decades after evidence emerged of US forces mistreating detainees at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prisons in Iraq.
www.hrw.org
-WAR CRIMES IN AFGHANISTAN
en.wikipedia.org
As U.S. forces continue their withdrawal from Afghanistan, postmortems on the 20-year U.S.-led military intervention are underway.
www.hrw.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
BBC News looks at what is known about the massacre of villagers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, by a US soldier, believed to have been acting alone.
www.bbc.co.uk
-OPERATION GLADIO
en.wikipedia.org
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHXjO8wHsA
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7Z-bQSd7dQ
-COINTELPRO:
en.wikipedia.org
COINTELPRO, counterintelligence program conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1956 to 1971 to discredit and neutralize organizations considered subversive to U.S. political stability. It was covert and often used extralegal means to criminalize various forms of political
www.britannica.com
-SYSTEMATIC MISTREATMENT OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY
Redlining, illegal discriminatory practice in which a mortgage lender denies loans or an insurance provider restricts services to certain areas of a community, often because of the racial characteristics of the applicant's neighbourhood. Redlining practices also include unfair and abusive loan
www.britannica.com
Jim Crow law, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the U.S. South from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-20th century. The segregation principle was codified on local and state levels and most famously with the Supreme Court's 'separate but equal' decision in Plessy v. Ferguson...
www.britannica.com
and many more...
Oof, bro brought up the receipts. Sadly these are a small portion of the LOOOOOONG list of misdeeds that now weigh heavily on the nation. Each one of these national sins will continue to weigh on the country until they are either resolved or the nation finishes crashing and burning. Just treat people nicely and fairly, is that too much to ask for the so-called richest nation in the world.
For me it was a slow, gradual realization that everything I was told was all narrative and propaganda. The 9/11 Truth movement is a very good example as others pointed out - as well as the fact that so many people even today still believe the narrative sold to them that it was a foreign attack by "radical Muslims." Add on to this that the economy, social conditions, and the quality of life itself has gotten so bad that I see no sign of recovery. I think the final nail in the coffin moment for me was seeing Donald Trump - who said all of the right things in 2016 - end up becoming Reagan/W. Bush 2.0. Both of them were absolutely disastrous for the American people, with Reagan starting the drug wars that got us into this immigration crisis, cutting social programs like welfare and social security (ensuring we'll be wage slaves for the rest of our lives), and Bush continuing American imperialism through the endless wars in the Middle East. And yet these men are "Conservative heroes." But it's okay because Trump doesn't want trannies in the military (heckin' based, amiright?) We're all being sold shit on plate and that we should be grateful that at least it's not dog shit.
It's why I have zero faith in any "mass awakening" of the American people, because all of us are heavily propagandized and will make convenient excuses to ignore that which we don't want to hear. The "American Dream" is so enticing because it attracts those kinds of people who think that all it takes in life is "hard work" to get ahead in life. Too many Americans (especially Conservatives/MAGAtards) believe themselves to be temporarily-embarrassed millionaires - that if they just put in those 60 hour work-weeks long enough, and go above and beyond at their job - maybe, just maybe - they could be the next Elon Musk. Forget the plethora of variables like genetics, likeability, looks, location, education level, perception, networking, mental and physical disabilities, etc. If you're broke its your own fault because you're lazy! I would know because Dave Ramsey and Aaron Clarey said so!
And so for decades we've had Conservatives "solving" collective issues with an individualistic approach and Democrats solving individual problems with a collective approach (it's White men's fault, all of them). Both parties have done an outstanding job distracting all of us with the "culture war" of bathrooms and fake genders that we forgot that Covid was the greatest upwards transfer of wealth in history, how wages have been stagnate for 30+ years, and that Gen Z (my generation) will not have kids or work if we continue down this trajectory. No amount of shaming or a false sense of patriotism will get me to change my mind about this, I'm speaking from years and years of experiences and political reevaluations and I'm not going to suddenly turn around and rejoice because Trump is president.
Fuckin based, stole all the words I was going to post. Damn.
Contrary to most people's expectations of me. I think the American dream is alive and well for me and at the same time it feels like its further away than ever before and not only that the destruction of the currency through inflation means that every day it gets just slightly further out of reach like I'm on a treadmill trying to reach it and its like well at least I'm on the track trying to chase it. I have a great job so I can afford things like houses and healthcare and even to join the capital owning class through the stock market depending on how well I can manage to save money to invest it. But at the same time, the harsh truth is that this great job won't last forever and its a race against time to complete all the tasks before time is up.
Yeah I can go buy all the chik-fil-a and go to the baseball game with friends with beer and hotdogs, but thats not the real america. At least I don't feel it to be, the real America is supposed to be a land of opportunity where anyone and I mean anyone through hard work and grit can make it in life and provide for their young and become successful, but sadly that is not the reality on the ground as much as people want it to be. Due to the relentless pumping of fresh new dollars into the economy to stop it from stalling out and contracting the purchasing power of the average American has eroded to where most can't scrape together $1,000 for an emergency fund. They really are just one small disaster from being in fiscal trouble. Houses continue to inflate in price both because of fiscal inflation more dollars chasing the same amount of goods, and your wages remain the same so you technically get paid less. But because houses are seen as a stable investment and if you didn't buy one in 1956 too bad for you sign for this 30 year mortgage for a $300,000-$400,000 house built from plywood, cardboard, drywall, and new growth wood all of which will start to decay almost immediately after the first rain. This also means that most people's wealth is tied in up the house and not in productive things like the stock market and the government is less likely to want to build massive supply of housing which would kill housing values.
Like yeah I have a new paid off car, but things don't make you happy for any longer than the first month at best one week on average. This is why people here have shopping habits, they want to fire up the pleasure centers of the brain by continuously acquiring things they don't really need on credit cards that they only pay the minimum on. Its not a lifestyle worth envying because you and they know that there is no happy ending to the story. You can't buy your way to happiness. Look at Musk, richest man in the world and friendless wifeless and subject of ridicule the world over. If I had his level of wealth you'd never hear of me. I'd be off inventing cures to disease, solving real issues, and hiring the best and brightest to solve world problems. Maybe that's why I am not an ultra-rich money lover, I want to actually help others than to gain pointless levels of wealth.
The government is abysmally bad and run by the elderly in the legislature. People ages 60+ who have barely any conception of the world post internet are the ones doing all the laws and decisions because it turns out the youth don't bother to vote but they LOOOVE to complain about the country. These elders gave out a stimulus check for $1,200 and thought that it would help people live a few weeks like its 1960s of their youth. Rent swallowed up my stimulus check, others bought random dumb bullshit. You have Trump in the white house, a person so unqualified and unfit to lead the country with his easily bruised pride at the front and his lack of personal intelligence he captured the hearts of minds of the public by finally speaking their way and at a level they could understand. Spoilers: there are a lot of dumb people in America and they are part of the problem. The American government is dysfunctional and maybe this is by design, but the process of a bill becoming national law is incredibly arduous. Bills have to be created in committee and then they have to be approved to exit the committee and then the leader of the lower or upper chamber has to approve of them to be voted on and each chamber has its own committees. Your issue didn't get brought up? Too bad go wait more idiot.
Okay so if your issue made it out of committee and into the docket, and the leader of the chamber approves it for voting then it can try to meet a simple majority. Except, in the upper chamber it has to meet an 60 vote threshold because they love extra rules and a sixty vote threshold is for ending debate so voting can start, but unfortunately the upper chamber almost never has a solid 60 vote margin and its always so razor thin. Also both sides have to bring up this issue and vote on it, and pass it in both chambers. And the chambers are almost never aligned by political party and then they have to reconcile the differences and then the president can just veto the whole thing and they probably will if they are from the other party so then you need an even higher margin to override their veto. And right when you think its at the end, the supreme court can decide that the law was unconstitutional try again bozo. With this convoluted system barely anything gets done, either via intentional obstruction, or procedural. Things will remain the same. So instead they have a few must pass bills and this is where the majority of action happens. Defense bill, and the national budget bill, so the fight becomes finding a way to attach what you want as an amendment to those bills and hope others vote for it. its all so tiresome and so convoluted but this is the way they pass laws.
Suburbia, dear god where do I begin. I hate suburbia, there is nothing to do where you don't need a car. To do anything you need to get into a car. Car car car. Groceries? Car. School? Car or bus for children. and then you need to find parking but theres never enough supply because people drive cars that are meant to hold 4 people and only 1 person is inside all the time. Especially with these bloated Yukons, Denalis, Sierras. And now you need to pay for parking or find on street parking and somehow manage to fit in the on street parking. And then you have to drive past massive neighborhoods of single family housing in over consumption of land and resources its like the loading screen of life. Downtowns are somehow worse because everyone commutes from their suburb to the inner core and then drives back out so theres no food shops, no anything, after 5pm. And going shopping to a shopping district is a exercise in pain. I will never visit other shops in the shopping district because all the shops take like 15-30 minutes of walking to get to so instead I just go to the walmart and then leave. In a proper shopping district I should be able to visit more than one shop without feeling "far". Malls are the supposed fix to this, but all the malls are dying because again nobody wants to go when they just go to one shop and then leave. Personally, I avoid the mall like the plague. Annoying teenagers, actually they banned teenagers from the mall because too many started fights and destroying things, so the malls have even less clientele and also all their prices are high.
Almost all of these issues are surmountable. They really are, but unfortunately your average American is basically illiterate, uneducated despite having degrees, and generally happy to stay ignorant of the world blissfully enveloped in the stupor of football, drugs, or other hedonism. They country is/was too easy for the idiot to survive in and thus they have now replicated and outnumber anyone with a brain. You see these mouth breathers on the road all the time taking bad choices and making them the problem of everyone else.
Smart choices like:
driving like an F1 racer in a shopping parking lot
driving like a jackass with excessive acceleration, turning, and breaking on a 35MPH road in traffic
driving on the furthest most lane and not moving to the right. Keep right except to pass bozo.
running reds
You wonder why it is that people who are muslim vote for a Trump a person that did a muslim ban and you realize they are stupid. Why would hispanics want to vote for trump a person who flooded the street with immigration enforcement agents causing them to go through humiliating immigration inspections repeatedly. Taco-bozo you are illegal immigrant between inspections. Papers please. Or why people would vote FOR tariffs believing the lie that other countries would pay the tariff. These bozos voted in the largest tax hike in history fully believing that other nations would pay for it. They were sold this idea that if they just have high traiffs on other nations that manufacturing would onshore again, but oops, American labor is the most expensive in the world and its cheaper to make things literally everywhere else. The cherry on top of this is they failed to realize Trump negotiated the USMCA agreement creating a free trade zone with Canada and Mexico so to evade tariffs they can just import and manufacture in Mexico and ship it northward. But don't worry Trump will decide tomorrow between breakfast and dinner to remove the tariffs, or he might not, or he will add more. Who knows? This is toxic for business. Business needs stability.
Student loans are another symptom of stupidity. Midwits 18-19 years old taking out massive government backed student loans just because societal expectations led them to believe that it was a mandatory requirement. They did zero research on their courses of study and unsurprisingly cannot afford to repay their loans. Bad debt for bad degrees and now they want loan forgiveness. Full availability of the internet on those smart telephones they are always face deep in, yet they don't know what an APR is and don't know how to google "What is an APR" and these are your so called college educated students. Entire internet in their hands and they know nothing about anything with these worthless degrees.
Cars are another symptom of how stupid the average person has become. Massive car loans at 20-35% APR this is nearly highway robbery all for very small down payments. All because they are too stupid to find a loan calculator online and figure out their total after-loan payment and focus on a small monthly payment. "If I can pay it every month then I can pay for it all" and this is where the auto dealers take advantage of them by giving them small monthly payments for very long terms. One I saw was 248 months. Usually, they end up underwater on the loan and instead get a new vehicle and roll over the bad debt into a new loan. Roll roll roll. And all for an SUV or over sized truck priced at $80,000-120,000 with no more mechanical reliability than the warranty period at best.
So America has the potential to return/be a great nation but several factors continue to prevent the appearance/return of the American dream and ultimately I don't really see way out of this mess. Evil you can reason with and it usually implodes on itself, but stupid believes itself to be righteous and above correction and refuses to listen to reason just like these MAGA fools who tried shooting at FEMA during the previous disaster and then wondered why FEMA wasn't coming over. All because on facebook they saw an unverified post that FEMA was going to take their land. No, your land is worthless because it got washed out in a storm. Or the other fools who thought that two hurricanes hitting Florida was 1,000% proof that the government has a super special laser to guide the storm and they guided the storm to hit Florida as punishment for voting red. Even human nukes can't do much to a hurricane. Their proof for this laser was some ancient post about how the government controls the weather and then extrapolating because "technology gets better over time." Nobody controls the weather, if they did, the western half of the country would be rainy and hydrated instead of in a near-devastating drought every few years.
But there is a silver lining here, the country will eventually finish imploding. So the story does have a happy ending. Lol.
