Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Patriotism 25 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • It's a great country to live in if you are a white person. It's a great country to live in if you are middle class (or better).

    It's not such a great country to live in if you're a person of color, though it could be worse (or better). It's not such a great country to live in if you're very poor. Though again, that could be worse and better, depending on where you look.

    And the really fucked up thing about the US has very little to do with how its own citizens are treated, but rather with how the US tre
    • I am not going to argue, but I would like to point out that I know a great many "colored" people in this country who think it is a great country. That includes the many in the inner cities that I've known.

      I'm done with trying to convince people, not that I am right, but that there are other ways to see things, and that I am not stupid or uncaring for my opinions. Let them assume I am ignorant and evil just because I disagree. I'll just ship up; then we can ALL be the proverbial Happy Idiot!
      • First, "colored" is a rather offensive term these days.

        Second, I never said that there aren't people of color who like this country. There are many places that are worse for people of color around the world. For example, most of Africa is pretty bad. Of course, it's well worth remembering why Africa is such a mess right now, largely due to Western influence.

        On the other hand, there are places where certain things are better for people of color. Cuba, for example, has done a much better job of addressi
        • Point taken - I do live a comfortable life and thus find myself not wanting to "rock the boat". I'm a great empathizer, though and take responsibility for the benefits I've received: tithing (sp?) at church in addition to giving to other charities. I plan on doing more, too - just haven't gone that extra step of volunteering my time to worthy causes, such as Habitat for Humanity, Special Olympics, Mentoring ... on my list! :)

          Jason

          • I was not trying to say you are a bad person. I was just trying to put your words into perspective. As middle class white people, we basically live in a bubble of our own making. We don't really see racism (and other problems) because, well, we just don't have to if we don't want to. They don't really affect us.
        • If "colored" is offensive, the NAACP should change its name, and you shouldn't use "persons of color."

          If you didn't mean to say thay America is not such a great place to live in for some people who are poor and non-white, you shouldn't have lumped them all together. I find it offensive that you would lump all "persons of color" together and tell them that this country is not a great place for them to live. That is what you did, and that's my point.

          And no, I wasn't putting anyone's words in your mouth.
          • The NAACP is an organization created by black people for black people. I do not presume to tell black people what to name their organizations. Doing so would be extremely racist, but well in line with a very long history of white people telling black people what they should and should not do.

            My point was not that the US is or is not a great place for poor people of people of color. My point was simply that Purdy's statement that the US is a great place to live is very much a product of his being a middl
            • The NAACP is an organization created by black people for black people.

              This is incorrect. It is for colored people, not black people. This includes any non-white people.

              My point was not that the US is or is not a great place for poor people of people of color.

              Then you shouldn't have said that.

              As to you personally, I do indeed think you don't understand something I do.

              That is arrogant, as well as incorrect.

              FWIW, I used to share many of your opinions, so I think I have a good idea of your thought

    • It's a great country to live in if you are a white person. It's a great country to live in if you are middle class (or better).

      It's also a great country to live in if you're non-white or non-middle class. The US is a large enough place that practically anything you say about it is going to be true to some non-trivial degree.

      I don't want to get into a[nother] heated debate about what's great or horrid about these 50 states. The US has a lot of good points going for it. There are also a lot of thing

      • Well, the American slave trade didn't exactly do any good for Africa. Nor did US support of the South African apartheid regime.

        Russia, yes, had internal problems. The cold war, explicitly designed to destroy the Russian economy, also didn't help.

        But here are a few others:

        - Iran, where we installed a dictator that served our (oil) interests. That dictator's oppression was so severe that he was overthrown by a fundamentalist Islamic regime, which has been making Iran miserable ever since. Remember, at
        • I'm not up on all of these events and all of their degrees of complexity (I'm still trying to get my head around the Milosevic stuff), but I think it unfair to directly associate the deaths of millions of people to the support (or lack thereof) of the US.

          The US is not pulling the trigger in most of those examples, and I would hunch that it was not only the US that supported those governments or parties that led to those atrosities. Additionally, hindsight allows us the luxury to see that they were atrosi

          • The US is not pulling the trigger in most of those examples, and I would hunch that it was not only the US that supported those governments or parties that led to those atrosities.

            In Vietnam (and Cambodia & Laos), the US did indeed pull the trigger.

            In all the others I've mentioned, there was active US involvement (usually via the CIA) to support the brutality. This goes for all the South American countries mentioned as well as Iran, Iraq and other middle eastern countries.

            The others have all recei
            • There are those who see the whole Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos debàcle as a reason for indicting Kissinger on war [guardian.co.uk] crimes [guardian.co.uk] charges. There's other [guardian.co.uk] despicable stuff too mind.

          • The official thread-killer is always a Nazi/Hitler reference ;) - Hitler had the support of the neighboring European countries [suc.org] for his nationalistic endeavours and we all know where that led to. Does that make Italy, Finland and Romania bad countries?

            The US provied the technology and sold the Nazis the computing machines that made their census possible. The US also took no action until Pearl Harbor even though the NYT had front page news of the atrocities of the war. Hitler had a lot of suppo

        • Well, the American slave trade didn't exactly do any good for Africa.
          I have the feeling that the people who benefited most from that particular trade were the merchants of Liverpool and Bristol. Which is why the UK government is not desperately keen on having slavery classified as a crime against humanity 'cos the reparations required would be enormous.
          • Well, I'm not going to fight about who benefitted the most. White Europeans, particularly in England, benefitted a lot. White Americans benefitted a lot. White Americans probably benefitted a lot more than the English after the American Revolution, I would presume. And England abolished slavery in its colonies in the 1830s.
            • I believe that we were still selling slaves to America for quite some time after it was banned in our own colonies, after all there was money (vast amounts of it) to be made.

        • You forgot the Caribbean and Baby Doc Duvalier. Impressive list :)

                  • Don't forget the Monroe Doctrine, helping Egypt recover from the building of the Aswan Dam[*], or brokering the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Or all of the foreign aid that comes out of the US whenever there's a natural disaster somewhere in the world...

                    *: How else did the Temple of Dendur wind up in New York City?

                    • If we're counting unequivocably good things that the US has done over the years, I'd have to mention the IGY - the International Geophysical Year in the 50's. I don't remember much about it, but ISTR the US being a key player in that peacetime endeavor.

                      Similarly, NASA's "Mission to Planet Earth" has provided some serious data on what we're doing here and where we might be headed. In 1976, there were news specials about the impending ice age (because the US had a pretty severe winter). Now, the weather

          • Nicaragua, where US support of the contras led to thousands of murders

            Replace "US" with "Russian" and "contras" with "Sandinistas" and you would have an equally accurate statement.

            No, that's not true. The Sandinastas received basically no foreign aid from Russia. What they did do, because they were cut off from all trade with the US and Europe (by the US), was trade with Russia. Nothing wrong with that. The US did that through the entire cold war too.

            As to Turkey, I know why the US supports them, b
              • Actually, Pinochet was the dictator of Chile, wasn't he?

                Yep, you're right. Brain fart. Same point, different country.

                They *are* part of NATO. You can lump most of Europe (i.e. NATO) in there right with us if we're *evil* for supporting the Turkish government.

                I do lump them in with that. Western Europe has long been a supporting player in US malfeasance abroad, though they often draw the line a bit sooner, though England usually toes the US line the longest.

                It would take direct military support
                • However, I do think that the US, in the post-WWII period, has been the single most malevalent player in world politics.

                  Perhaps. It's also been the single greatest benefactor.
          • True, but then let's keep in mind that we were still Europeans when we were first dealing in the slave trade.

            What you mean "we", Kimosabe?

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.