I need help clearing out misconceptions about the U.S.A.

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*DISCLAIMER: The following thread is made purely for educational purposes. If this offends you then please turn away now. The author DOT NOT create this thread for the sole purpose of insulting the North American community in any form shape or way. You have been warned.*

I'm going to mention my misconceptions in the form of ironic, if not sarcastic slogans.

I want you to correct these misconceptions of mine in hopes of having a better understanding of how the U.S.A. really is.

Here I go:

"The U.S.A. - A place where no one is welcome!"

"The U.S.A - The embodiment of everything that is wrong with capitalism!"

"The U.S.A. - country of extremism, murder and terrorism!"

"The U.S.A. - The only country in the world whose living conditions guarantees you a serious mental illness!"

"The U.S.A. - The Country of the back-stabbing conspirators!"

"The U.S.A. - Country of the Nazis in denial!"

"The U.S.A. - The country where it's population is easily manipulable!"

"The U.S.A. - Country of the gun-wielding sadists!"

"The U.S.A. - A country that, like Nazi Germany, secretly wants to take over the world!"

Good luck! And you don't have to correct all of them.

So do you see yourself as American first or Puerto Rican?

Why are you asking that?

Well Puerto Rico is a territorial possession of the United States as it is right now and you're asking a lot of questions as if you don't feel you are part of this country. There is this big debate about whether or not we should bail out Puerto Rico and if we should let them become a state, my opinion is if you see yourself as a distinct people and nation instead of Americans then maybe you should be an independent country like your much closer neighbors in the Caribbean. How did you vote on those status referendums? That last one was kind of a joke by the looks of it.

Alright, the main misconception to be cleared, The United States is NOT a COUNTRY.
This entity is actually a CORPORATION. You can see this on Dun & Bradstreet Listings.

Americans are also not the same thing as United States Citizens.
Nor is The United States of America the same thing as THE UNITED STATES (all-caps because of Legalese).
Let me put it this way. Walt Disney (the man who founded the corporation) is NOT the same thing as WALT DISNEY (the corporation founded by the man). MCDONALDS (the corporation) is NOT the same thing as Ronald McDonald (not sure if this guy even exists or if it was a created corporate-personality like Santa Cause and Tooth-Fairies are corporate-created creations).

Otherwise your descriptions are not really that far off from the reality of the U.S. CORPORATION.

Unless you have money, or sweet IP.



"The simpler the better."



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Coming up next, MORE MURRICAN RASSLIN FROM THE DUBBYA DUBBYA E! WOOH!

Also "The simpler the better".



AKA the LAPD.



Secretly? We won the motherloving culture war decades ago! OOH RAH!

How did I do?

if only we could be more like the workers paradises in Cuba and Venezuela

1. Actually, most people ARE welcome. Caveat: If you don't have a ton of money or high-demand skills, getting here legally is going to take a while. That's the case for just about every developed country on the planet (believe me, I've looked into leaving). Use the time to learn the language. You don't have to give up yours, by any means-- but if I was moving to "X," I would expect to need to learn "Xese". Same applies for English. You don't need perfect grammar or unaccented speech. Just a basic command of the fundamentals. Don't expect every welcome to be warm. Some will be. Many will be. We do have our xenophobic bastards. We always have, we always will, and so does everyplace else.

2. Can't argue with that one. It's my opinion too. But it is JUST my opinion... And it's also the embodiment of everything that's RIGHT with capitalism.

3. Nope-- that title is currently held by Syria, I think. However, do be aware of your surroundings in major metropolitan areas. Hey-- there are parts of Paris I wouldn't go to, too. And don't get me started on London or Toronto.

4. Not the only one, and not the worst. Most of Subsaharan Africa, large swaths of the Middle East, and quite a bit of Southern Asia will be happy to give you pretty good odds on catastrophic PTSD. A lot of people seem pretty keen to get out of South and Central America (and trade that in for our circle of Hell). Is there something profoundly sick about the American Material Fantasy?? YES. Can you drive yourself crazy trying to be who and live how an ad-based culture says you should?? Emphatically and unequivocally, YES. But here, that's a CHOICE-- even if you do have to remind yourself of that because you're being constantly bombarded with what amounts to propaganda telling you what choice you should make. Rockets, mortars, ISIS, Boko Haram, drug cartels, and starvation aren't exactly giving you options.

5. Only some of us. Not all, and not the majority. I don't think. The politicians, the famous ones, and the rotten social climbers, yeah, probably. But that leaves a rather large swath of the population just trying to live and let live.

6. Wellllll... There's only so much I can say about that one. Eugenics certainly did find fertile soil here, long before Hitler took it and ran with it. We aren't all like that. And Europe helped.

7. That one's probably true. We're soft. Not all of us, but a lot of us. We've had it too easy for too long.

8. Gun-wielding doesn't bother me. I know a lot of people who carry guns. I don't know anyone who walks around brandishing them to show off, and I don't know any sadists.

9. Well, OK, yeah. We did that. We're still doing that. It's called cultural imperialism, and it's the vestigial tail of colonialism, and it's wrong and it sucks. Trust me-- we take over our own subcultures too. Americanism hasn't been particularly kind to my native culture either-- Midland Scot and Alpine Italian, also known as Hillbilly. My people were Americans before America was America; the ONLY older culture on this continent is Native American. Which was treated in pretty much the same way.

I hope we're learning that Empire is expensive and unsustainable.

the list sounds like left-wing propaganda

-The USA, per year, allows in more immigrants than any other country on the planet.

-Capitalism is why people flee their failing nations and come here (e.g. Cubans fleeing Socialism).

-Capitalism is why America is said to "brain drain" the world of talent, because they can make the most money here, and Capitalism offers them the most opportunity.

-The USA is considered among the least racist nations on the planet, according to the World's value survey.

-Americans are the most charitable people in the world, according to the Almanac of American Philanthropy (which may explain why we has so many "starving African kid" solicitations on tv).

-Americans value freedom first, so they favor gun ownership rights.

-America is taking over the world, as we see countries becoming Westernized.

"The U.S.A. - A place where no one is welcome!"
The U.S. takes in over a million legal immigrant each year. There are those who oppose people immigrating to the country without the legal approval, and there are those who believe immigration should be limited to those who hold a certain level of skill and education. But actual pure nativists are a small minority.

"The U.S.A - The embodiment of everything that is wrong with capitalism!"
The U.S. holds a significant number of social welfare programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Public Education systems, various economic welfare programs to aid the young, old, poor, and 'disabled'. The U.S. economically is one of the wealthiest countries on earth and has in many aspects one of the highest standards of living.

"The U.S.A. - The only country in the world whose living conditions guarantees you a serious mental illness!"
I do not know where you would get that idea from. Are there aspects of society and culture in the us that encourage insane thinking and can lead to mental disturbances? yes and it does effect some. But there are elements of virtually every country's society and culture which encourage insane thinking and pressure people into mental disturbances. The survivors of cartel violence in Mexico and child sweatshop workers in Bangladesh can be presumed to have some people with psychological trauma.


"The U.S.A. - The Country of the back-stabbing conspirators!"
Context please. If you are speaking of the habit of the U.S. intelligence, military, and government to aid in the attempted or effective overthrow of foreign governments for its own strategic purposes- yes that has happened dozens to possibly a couple hundred times. Though most of those instances occurred without most of the population even knowing of it, and those big publically known instances usually attracted opposition elements.

"The U.S.A. - Country of the Nazis in denial!"
Only a small minority of Americans actually subscribe to the ideologies of National Socialism and Neo-Nazism. There is a significant nationalist element in the country, but most are not extreme nationalists. There are numerous people who support significant government involvement in one or more matters. But these people tend to differ significantly as to their issues and often end up fighting each other.

"The U.S.A. - The country where it's population is easily manipulable!"
If the America population was easy to manipulate why would the parties have to spend billions in the presidential election to convince enough of the population to elect their candidate?


"The U.S.A. - A country that, like Nazi Germany, secretly wants to take over the world!"
If the U.S. wanted to actually imperialize the world, a lot countries in the Americas would have already been annexed.
The U.S. tends to be more interested in just having the other countries of the world to let America get its way and do what it wants.

Building a straw man and asking others to knock it down isn't exactly rocket science...