I Am A Bad American

[Manhattan]

What does "believing" in American products even mean?

I believe this is the appreciation shown to products that are made in America and are therefore providing Americans with more jobs. Nothing wrong with hoping the "hometown" product does well.

 

Yeah, there is a difference between supporting your local crops or national brand (which I am for) and blindly buying things that have, for example, the Ford logo stamped on them when half the vehicle might be from overseas while the Hyundai was made in Alabama. Then there are the people who bought the more expensive but far inferior American vehicles of the 90s because they were "American" and no other reason, yet this really only inflated the inferiority of our auto industry instead of forcing our companies to adapt earlier to the changes in the market and be more competitive instead of... having to be bailed out like GM and entire brands discontinued. So, in this case, the American/capitalist thing to do would be to buy the best product at the lowest price and stimulate the marketplace.

 

Americans who don't own guns aren't smart? Or maybe it isn't practical or feasible in all communities, or did the hick who wrote this never wander out of his one-stoplight town?

I've said it before and I stick to it. It's not the people who have guns legally that you need to worry about. There's nothing wrong with having a gun, but there is also nothing wrong with not having one, it's a personal choice IMO. I keep a shotgun under my bed, but that doesn't make me smarter than anyone.

 

Right. That's what I'm saying. People who own guns aren't any smarter than those that don't, which makes this laundry list stupid.

 

"I think cops have the right to pull you over if you broke the law". Well no sh#t. I think the issue is what law enforcement is being allowed to do people who have no broken any laws.

I think this was alluding more to the people who cry racist if they are pulled over by anyone not in the same race as them.

 

Then why did the author phrase it like that? If it is what your saying, then it is a really racist connection from what your saying to then assuming that all cases of racial profiling then automatically mean that the person involved broke the law. The way the author phrased it makes it seem like if you are a minority, then you broke the law, even if he didn't intend that, it is clearly wandering around in his sub-conscience.

[M I K E]

I was waiting for a punch-line at the end of this saying it was a joke. This piece is full of broad generalizations.

 

I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything. Get over it!

I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you!

 

So, shut up already.

 

True, but how can one not see the effects of slavery that still occur today? Why do you think there are so many poor blacks and Native Americans? Oh yeah, it must be because they arn't as patriotic and intelligent as the white man. It couldn't possibly be because Native Americans and black people have had their head underneath the foot of the white-controlled economy. I don't think that minorities choose to live in ghettos and in poverty because they're victimized/noble. Maybe it's all they've been able to know for the last 100 years...

 

I don't necessarily agree with affirmative action or anything, but the things that are said in this poem or whatever are downright ignorant and borderline racist.

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

I was waiting for a punch-line at the end of this saying it was a joke. This piece is full of broad generalizations.

 

I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything. Get over it!

I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you!

 

So, shut up already.

 

True, but how can one not see the effects of slavery that still occur today? Why do you think there are so many poor blacks and Native Americans? Oh yeah, it must be because they arn't as patriotic and intelligent as the white man. It couldn't possibly be because Native Americans and black people have had their head underneath the foot of the white-controlled economy. I don't think that minorities choose to live in ghettos and in poverty because they're victimized/noble. Maybe it's all they've been able to know for the last 100 years...

 

I don't necessarily agree with affirmative action or anything, but the things that are said in this poem or whatever are downright ignorant and borderline racist.

Or maybe it's because people who live below the poverty level feel thee need to decry "pity me and while you're at it, give me my free money". People who live in poverty (no matter the race) have a choice to make: do something about your situation or wallow in your own pity. Either way, it's a choice. No one is telling someone they can't go to school and receive an education.

 

I help the ones who help themselves...if you don't, you're f'd in my opinion.

[MCAT800]

After reading these comments now I understand how Obama got elected.......

[knapplc]

After reading these comments now I understand how Obama got elected.......

Can you explain it to me, then? Because I don't know how he got elected. Or how Bush got elected. Or Clinton, or Bush the First. Reagan was a good president, but before him Carter was crap, and Ford, and Nixon.... The problem is that none of these guys are truly the best available, or even the Right Man at the Right Time (which Reagan was).

 

We've had crap to vote for in most of the past 20 elections, yet there are still partisan nitwits running around calling "the other side" out for their stance, when the fact of the matter is that we're all Americans, and damned good Americans, and we don't have to have the same political ideology or the same background or the same ancestors or the same religious beliefs or the same color skin or the same mode of immigration or the same anything to be great Americans. It's our diversity that makes us great, and our unified vision despite whatever minimal differences we have.

 

If people would just stop getting their political views from the TV or emailed fearmongering we'd be in a hell of a lot better position today than we are. Unfortunately people are being sold a belief that we have to worry more about our differences than our similarities, and instead of thinking critically about those differences, we're just buying into the fear (and buying into the ads, and TV share, and Q Rating, and all the other crap that goes along with keeping these talking heads on the air), and these superficial differences are becoming "real" to people.

 

And I'm concerned about that, because I like my neighbors, even though they're different from me. I like those differences. Knowing them and learning about them broadens and deepens me as a person.

 

Hangman

by Maurice Ogden

 

1.

Into our town the Hangman came,

Smelling of gold and blood and flame.

And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,

And built his frame in the courthouse square.

 

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,

Only as wide as the door was wide;

A frame as tall, or little more,

Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

 

And we wondered, whenever we had the time,

Who the criminal, what the crime

That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist

of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

 

And innocent though we were, with dread,

We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --

Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he

For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"

 

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,

And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:

"He who serves me best," said he,

"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."

 

And he stepped down, and laid his hand

On a man who came from another land.

And we breathed again, for another's grief

At the Hangman's hand was our relief

 

And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn

By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.

So we gave him way, and no one spoke,

Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.

 

2.

The next day's sun looked mildly down

On roof and street in our quiet town,

And stark and black in the morning air

Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.

 

And the Hangman stood at his usual stand

With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;

With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike

And his air so knowing and business-like.

 

And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done

Yesterday, with the foreign one?"

Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,

"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."

 

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:

"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss

To hang one man? That's a thing I do

To stretch a rope when the rope is new."

 

Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"

And into our midst the Hangman came

To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,

"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"

 

And he laid his hand on that one's arm.

And we shrank back in quick alarm!

And we gave him way, and no one spoke

Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.

 

That night we saw with dread surprise

The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.

Fed by the blood beneath the chute,

The gallows-tree had taken root;

 

Now as wide, or a little more,

Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,

As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,

Halfway up on the courthouse wall.

 

3.

The third he took -- we had all heard tell --

Was a usurer, and an infidel.

"What," said the Hangman "have you to do

With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"

 

And we cried out, "Is this one he

Who has served you well and faithfully?"

The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme

to try the strength of the gallows-beam."

 

The fourth man's dark, accusing song

Had scratched our comfort hard and long;

"And what concern," he gave us back.

"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"

 

The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,

"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"

"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know

For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."

 

And so we ceased, and asked no more,

As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.

And sun by sun, and night by night,

The gallows grew to monstrous height.

 

The wings of the scaffold opened wide

Till they covered the square from side to side;

And the monster cross-beam, looking down,

Cast its shadow across the town.

 

4.

Then through the town the Hangman came,

Through the empty streets, and called my name --

And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,

And thought, "There is no one left at all

 

For hanging, and so he calls to me

To help pull down the gallows-tree."

So I went out with right good hope

To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.

 

He smiled at me as I came down

To the courthouse square through the silent town.

And supple and stretched in his busy hand

Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.

 

And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,

And it sprang down with a ready snap --

And then with a smile of awful command

He laid his hand upon my hand.

 

"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,

"That your scaffold was built for other men...

And I no henchman of yours," I cried,

"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"

 

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,

"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.

For I answered straight and I told you true --

The scaffold was raised for none but you.

 

For who has served me more faithfully

Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,

"And where are the others who might have stood

Side by your side in the common good?"

 

"Dead," I whispered. And amiably

"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:

"First the foreigner, then the Jew...

I did no more than you let me do."

 

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky

None had stood so alone as I.

The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there

Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

[Landlord]

After reading these comments now I understand how Obama got elected.......

Can you explain it to me, then? Because I don't know how he got elected.

 

 

 

This is a pretty simple answer, really. When the election was going on, the black community at my school was in a frenzy, making t-shirts and hats and posters and meeting up in the dorm lobbies to watch things. They were completely overwhelmed and intoxicated with the idea of a black president, not because of his policies or ideals, but because he was, well, black. A bit ironic, such a large percentage of the black community voting for a candidate, fueled by the same racially-focused mindset that fueled African-American slavery for so long.

 

 

Obama won because he was the most popular, and being black had a lot to do with that.

[knapplc]

You might want to check the batteries on your Rhetorical Question Detector.

[carlfense]

Murica, where the language is Amurican. We dun fly murican flags and eat Big Macs. HURR DURR

 

 

I couldn't help but +1 that. Funny stuff. The chain email would be funny too if I didn't suspect that the author was serious.

[holvy83]

Murica, where the language is Amurican. We dun fly murican flags and eat Big Macs. HURR DURR

 

 

I couldn't help but +1 that. Funny stuff. The chain email would be funny too if I didn't suspect that the author was serious.

 

serious or not, the context of it was funny! they should have an email filter for these kind of emails, i get them all the time...

[74Hunter]

I was waiting for a punch-line at the end of this saying it was a joke. This piece is full of broad generalizations.

 

I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything. Get over it!

I've never owned a slave, or was a slave, I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you!

 

So, shut up already.

 

True, but how can one not see the effects of slavery that still occur today? Why do you think there are so many poor blacks and Native Americans? Oh yeah, it must be because they arn't as patriotic and intelligent as the white man. It couldn't possibly be because Native Americans and black people have had their head underneath the foot of the white-controlled economy. I don't think that minorities choose to live in ghettos and in poverty because they're victimized/noble. Maybe it's all they've been able to know for the last 100 years...

 

I don't necessarily agree with affirmative action or anything, but the things that are said in this poem or whatever are downright ignorant and borderline racist.

Or maybe it's because people who live below the poverty level feel thee need to decry "pity me and while you're at it, give me my free money". People who live in poverty (no matter the race) have a choice to make: do something about your situation or wallow in your own pity. Either way, it's a choice. No one is telling someone they can't go to school and receive an education.

 

I help the ones who help themselves...if you don't, you're f'd in my opinion.

I've met many people of a minority status that have worked hard and been as successful or moreso than many white people.

[74Hunter]

 

Typical right-wing sensationalist nonsense.

 

What does "believing" in American products even mean?

 

Americans who don't own guns aren't smart? Or maybe it isn't practical or feasible in all communities, or did the hick who wrote this never wander out of his one-stoplight town?

 

"We" like it the way it is? Who are "we"? There are many who don't like it the "way it is". There are may problems in this country that still need to be resolved. "We" probably just means bitter and uneducated racists.

 

"I'M A BAD AMERICAN!" - Well, aren't you tough?

 

"I'm proud that 'God' is written on my money" - Why? What does this have to do with anything?

 

 

It is just nauseating reading this.

Sweet irony.

[knapplc]

 

I'll play along.

 

 

 

Pssst - what are we hiding from?

[dizzturbedNUfan]

What exactly does the original post say that makes it racist?

From a couple of the post it would seem that saying "people that want to live in this country should speak english" makes you a racist. Really?

I went into a Fantasy's gas station the other day and I actually had to search for something to eat and drink that had an English label on it. I find it really sad that this is acceptable. So your neighbors are from a different culture and it's really neat and fun to learn from them, that's great, I have no problem with that. But there is no reason why I should have to learn a second language to do my grocery shopping.

Holy hell, just open your mouth anymore these days and your a racist. This country needs to grow back a spine.