Thursday, March 07, 2013

It's a strange country ...

See disclaimer at bottom
  • ... when smoking Pot is legal and widely accepted, but smoking tobacco is treated like a criminal offense;
  • when you can get arrested for expired tags on your car but not for being in the country illegally;
  • your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money;
  • the Supreme Court of the United States can rule that lower courts cannot display the 10 Commandments in their courtrooms, while sitting in front of a display of the 10 Commandments;
  • children are forcibly removed from parents who appropriately discipline them while children of "underprivileged" drug addicts are left to rot in filth-infested cesspools;
  • working class Americans pay for their own health care (and health care for everyone else), while unmarried women are free to have child after child on the "State's" dime while never being held responsible for their own choices;
  • hard work and success are rewarded with higher taxes and government intrusion, while slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, and subsidized housing, and free cell phones;
  • the government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work);
  • being self-sufficient is considered a threat to the government;
  • politicians think that stripping away the Amendments of the Constitution is really protecting the rights of the people;
  • the rights of the government come before the rights of the individual;
  • parents believe the state is responsible for providing for their children;
  • you can write a post like this just by reading the news headlines;
  • being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you "safe";
  • you have to have your parents' signature to go on a school field trip but not to get an abortion;
  • an 80-year-old woman can be strip-searched by the TSA, but a Muslim woman in a burka is only subject to having her neck and head searched;
  • Using the "N" word is considered "hate speech," but writing and singing songs about raping women and killing cops is considered "art."
Disclaimer -- I do not know where this list originated. I received it in an email. Some of the points obviously require caveats and conditions. For example, it's far from true that everyone receiving federal aid (including every single mother) is slothful or lazy. Yet due to widescale abuse, it is likely the case that there are many cases where there is some truth to the points asserted. The overall tone intended doubtless comes with the following quotation that headed the list in my receiving:
"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused!" - Author Unknown

4 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

America is no longer the courageous, self-confident, and innocently romantic country she one was.

No more are there to be found the great men of courage, like Kit Carson, who set out alone into the wilderness of the West: no more are there to be found the self-confident souls like The Wright Brothers who dared defy gravity in their imaginative invention; no more are there to be found innocent romantics like the young Mr. and Mrs. Fields who named their Daughter, Totie.

No, America has changed; and not for the better

Pertinacious Papist said...

I sometimes tell my students that it was the Vietnam war that was essentially the watershed event in 20th-century American history. To see this, I point out, all they have to do is to compare war movies before or at the beginning of that war (like "The Longest Day" or "Green Berets") with movies following the war (like "Platoon," "Apocalypse Now," or "Full Metal Jacket").

America lost whatever 'innocence' she had and became hardened, cynical, and relativist, like her European neighbours.

Greg said...

Strange country indeed. So many ways, too. Crazy what we're witnessing these days.

tramtrist said...

The Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate put a large iron nail in that coffin...