Even the people in our politics are expressing horror at our politics.
I find anti-US comments in topics from hormones to lasagna. It's only a handful of posters, but their contributions take away from my enjoyment of this site. Thanks for making citizens of the United States feel welcome here.
Worst of all, you know who most of those people are? Right, Americans. It's like the problem with American freedom is that we gave it to Americans who just off and say the darnest things. I've seen only a very few (and not on this site) non-Americans who can critique, criticize, lambaste, condemn, castigate, and disparage the United States like it's own citizens do. Hell, I don't see our own citizens even doing it on the scale that our politicians running for national office do. Which is one of the sources of horror in our politics.
You know, if we can't criticize our government - who then should?
There is a line in Leonard Cohen's Democracy is Coming to the U.S.A. that always makes me pause and think. He says:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. ...
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
And, that ability to do that huge, running: critique, criticize, lambaste, condemn, castigate, and disparage is what powers that machinery for change. Because he's right, that's why things change here first, why America has got to go first - even though it often ends up in last too. We're going to be the about the last place that allows gay marriage, but, in the beginning, way back when - America was also the first place where (and OK, in the beginning it was only a few blocks of a few cities) where it was OK to be gay. When we finish that (still years off) it will be the most cemented legal standing of gays of all of them, but it's just wheel going round and coming home again. It's here we have the machinery for change. And that change (of gays in society) has been profound and was founded on some mighty interesting condemnations of the American system and values, and with some mighty interesting takes on those systems and values also. That's the machinery for change.
You'll also find that some of those same people also do a pretty good job of defending parts of this country too. You know, a lot to like and a lot to dislike too - its' a big place to go.
And if someone is complaining, bitching, attacking, criticizing, laughing at even, our medical system... Hell, we've been doing that solid since the early 90s, and that's not even counting the HUGE fight over JohnsonCare (formally MediCare, it only seems fair with with ObamaCare and all) in the 60s. People running for President bitch about it, Blue sites bitch about it and red sites bitch about it, people I know casually bitch about it, people at work bitch about it, my GF bitches about it, and I bitch about it - exactly who besides those making huge sums of money off of it IS happy with it? Parts of it are golden, and other parts are all but useless. So I'm pretty used to seeing it's problems brought out into the light and compared with other possible methods.
And to be sure the United States has a pretty big footprint around the world, and things that happen here impact people beyond our borders.
