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Edited by CrazzySnipe55: 7/5/2013 5:21:15 AM
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America is not the piece of shit you think it is.

No, America is not the shithole that Europeans do constantly depict it to be. It's one of three big* countries in the top fifteen countries organized by GDP per capita, and the highest on the list of the three (the other two being Canada and then Australia). We're the entertainment capital of the world. Lots of the movies and movie stars you Europeans know and love are from America (and sometimes Canada). I don't even have to mention that The majority of the European continent (I.E. the E.U.) only produces 1 trillion dollars more in GDP than the U.S. (16t versus 15t). And, three of our states -- yes, just states -- if they were to secede, would be in the top 15 countries in the world in terms of GDP (California, Texas, and New York). And you say our economy's shit? It's just not as amazing as it used to be. The dollar is still the most widely held currency of any government around the world. America, along with Russia, was the main force that ended the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law]-godwinslaw!-[/url] regime and World War's one and two. Yes, we've caused more than our fair share of international incidence from the butting-in of our military into places it shouldn't be, but I'm pretty sure basically ending both world wars makes up for that at least a little. The Fourth is all about the Declaration of Independence and, by extension, the American Revolution, yeah? Let's think about that for a second. The United States' government -- a representative democratic republic -- has, these days, become the token government of any developed country. How many well-off countries these days don't have a Republican government? Also, the American Revolution was the basis and driving force and spark of all the other great revolutions that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries (the Haitian, the Mexican, and the French). Video Games! Everybody loves Video Games! You know, the things that started in, flourished in, crashed in, recovered in, and, from a game developer's standpoint, are now based mostly in the U.S.? Again, the U.S. is the entertainment capital of the world. Don't shit where you eat, folks. So, any other (well-thought-out) reasons why America isn't as bad as people make it out to be? Here, I'll get a few token ones out of the way: 1. "You hate gay people" 2. "The NSA is invading your lives" 3. "Your military is too big" 4. "You get involved in military conflicts that you should not be involved in" *big is defined, by me, as more than 10,000,000 citizens

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  • 'MURICA where we speak English, have bald eagles deliver McDonalds to our house. and where there is an apple pie on every kitchen counter.

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  • Why do people always have to argue about who is better? Why can't people in Europe and America just accept that neither would be the way that they are today, without the other?

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  • WW1? You and Russia? Russia was taken out by a revolution, so they couldn't have helped end it. Us British and the French ultimately won the war alone, the Americans only joined at the very end, and just sped up the final push, that could have been accomplished without. Although, it is true, that we needed you in WW2.

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  • America isn't a piece of shit, but the people who live in it are far more likely to be full of it than those in European countries, by what I see.

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  • But I do not think America is a piece of shit, so it is not not the piece of shit I think, so it is a piece of shit?

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    • 1. The biggest problem I can see from my point of view is the division of people based on their political beliefs. Rather than being one country, it seems as though the US is two countries in one, with both "countries" actively competing instead of working with each other for the benefit of one another. This is probably the reason why American politics is so often laughed at; it is a joke. But this specific point isn't limited to politicians either. Oftentimes you can see the extreme left and right wingers moaning and bitching about the smallest, shittiest little things and trying to make a political point about it (both ends of the political-spectrum meet full-circle back at the same point of being a tool). It's just that this has happened for so long that it's become somewhat of a norm (read: Fox News). 2. Your patriotism is a tad extreme at times. Like when you wave around your flag and tell us about your so-called "freedom" as if you just got it yesterday and you're the only people in the world who are (hint: you're not). 3. The acceptance of violence (and as a means to an end) is troubling, and I think this was exemplified when it was announced Osama Bin Laden had been assassinated and reports [url=http://matadornetwork.com/change/38-questions-for-those-cheering-osama-bin-ladens-death/]showed people happy and cheering[/url]. 4. The prevalence of your self-preservationist/self-sufficient mentality, but that is likely because of your history. I see it as a problem for a few reasons: your disdain for universal health care, your distrust of minorities, you're admiration for your military (see above), and your perceived need for firearms (see above).

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      • Claps

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      • Edited by Cyberwo1ff: 7/6/2013 12:49:28 PM
        I never known anyone to "hate" the USA in any way. At most (in england anyway) america is seen as a country that makes quick rash decisions and trys to be the hero. But fails and then leaves the rest of the world to clear up its mess while it continually shouts from from the naughty step. This isn't a right view of america in anyway, but I'm sure americans have their streotype of other people from different countries.

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      • Well I live in the Netherlands and I don't know anyone who hate the US. And I personally like America. But I don't like how weapons can be brought. But there will always be people who hate other country's because of there law, religion or lifestyle.

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      • yeah but your beer still sucks

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        • No in their right mind would deny America's economic and military strength. But then again, GDP and past military success has never been an accurate reflection of the standard of living in any country. America isn't a terrible place to live, but it is nowhere near as attractive as it was a half-century ago.

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          • merchant r mi gretest ally

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          • What you've basically just said is "Economy, war & entertainment/video games" Which reads as "Capitalism, industrial military complex, Capitalism" Sure, thanks to the US of A for that.

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          • The NSA thing is not as much of an issue as people make it out to be. The Wall Street Journal had a perfect editorial on it: [quote]'Big Brother' and Big Data [/quote] [quote]Over the last 72 hours Americans have learned more about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, whose quasi-exposure appears to be a bombshell without a bomb. The political reaction is no saner as a result, but perhaps reality and substance will eventually prevail. President Obama emerged to defend the NSA on Friday, noting that his assessment of the programs that originated under his predecessor was "that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing" because "they help us prevent terrorist attacks." He also invited a debate about how we are "striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy, because there are some trade-offs involved." Mr. Obama is conceding too much to the folks who imagine the government is compiling dossiers on citizens and listening to calls a la "The Lives of Others." The NSA is collecting "metadata"—logs of calls received and sent, and other types of data about data for credit card transactions and online communications. Americans now generate a staggering amount of such information—about 161 exabytes per year, equal to the information stored in 37,000 Libraries of Congress. Organizing and making sense of this raw material is now possible given advances in information technology, high-performance computing and storage capacity. The field known as "big data" is revolutionizing everything from retail to traffic patterns to epidemiology. Mr. Obama waved off fears of "Big Brother" but he might have mentioned that the paradox of data-mining is that the more such information the government collects the less of an intrusion it is. These data sets are so large that only algorithms can understand them. The search is for trends, patterns, associations, networks. They are not in that sense invasions of individual privacy at all. If the NSA isn't scrubbing vast amounts of data, then it can't discover who is potentially a threat. The alternative to automated sweeps is more pervasive use of lower-tech methods like wiretaps, tracking and searches—in a word, invasions of persons rather than statistical probabilities. The political attack on data-mining could increase rather than alleviate the risk to individual rights. We also know that this entire process is flyspecked by the special court created by the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which was most recently amended in December with little controversy or even media notice. Our view is that FISA is an encroachment on core executive war powers, but weren't FISA judges supposed to be the check on President Bush and his mad spymasters? Liberals claimed the scandal over "warrantless wiretaps" was about the warrants, not the wiretaps. Now that they have the warrants they're denouncing the wiretaps. We've also learned through some very sketchy reporting about another NSA program code-named Prism. This appears to be an adaptation of the Bush-era program that intercepted foreign-to-foreign calls that happened to pass through U.S. switching networks. Mr. Obama says it is only aimed at foreigners. Prism appears to be designed to retrieve foreign communications like emails and digital files from major technology companies. Though the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper reported otherwise, the NSA says it doesn't have direct access to the servers of these providers and they only turn over information about foreign targets located outside the U.S. when ordered to do so by the FISA court. While some information on Americans is inevitably grabbed, court-approved "minimization" procedures are designed to limit and dispose of that collection—and disseminating it is prohibited. The more coherent critics concede that all of this is legal and constitutional but say it is nonetheless an amorphous infringement of civil liberties. Like any government power, it can be abused. But note that Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old who proudly claims he exposed these surveillance programs, has provided no evidence of their abuse. U.S. officials say NSA's data-mining uncovered the Najibullah Zazi plot to bomb the New York City subway, while critics insinuate that this might be a lie because the details are "classified." We agree too much is classified but in this case that is so terrorists don't know how we might catch them. What our self-styled civil libertarians should really fear is another successful terror attack like 9/11, or one with WMD. Then the political responses could include biometric national ID cards, curfews, surveillance drones over the homeland, and even mass roundups of ethnic or religious groups. Practices like data-mining save lives, and in doing so they protect against far greater intrusions on individual freedom.[/quote]

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            Yeah -blam!- you too Murica!

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          • [i] [/i]

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          • America is a great country. The only people on this forum that say otherwise are my fellow Brits who keep on getting butthurt over the revolution or that one Canadian guy on bnet old who loved justifying 9/11.

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          • New Zealand's still better! (Not saying that America's bad though ;P)

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            • Videogames flourished in Japan.

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              • Oh -blam!- with your bullshit Hitler was doomed regardless of whether or not you helped. Maybe they wouldn't have killed so many people if America wasn't arming them in their years of military build up.

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              • GDP doesn't mean it's spread in a way that results in prosperity. America and many other 1st world countries have HUGE problems right now.

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                • Picture relevant.

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                  • The USA supreme court ruled videogames to be art. Suck it world.

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                  • Entitlement and Gun Control is retarded. Well, lets take guns away from everybody because a couple of people got murdered. Lets also give free handouts to lazy slobs who are a disgrace to society! Lets also go get in a war we don't have money for! Progress!

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                    • I live in the United States. I'm happy. That's about all there is to it.

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                    • Edited by Stark444: 7/5/2013 2:40:09 AM
                      Not to mention those token reasons are still wrong. America, -blam!- YEAH! [quote]1. "You hate gay people"[/quote]But we don't. The majority approves of Gays. Get wrecked Europoors. [quote]2. "The NSA is invading your lives"[/quote]This I'll give to them. I'm disgraced at the number of Americans who don't care about the spying. [quote]3. "Your military is too big"[/quote]LEL, Europoor gets wrecked cause our military could mop the floor with their military and their allied countries military combined, Get wrecked some more Europoor. [quote]4. "You get involved in military conflicts that you should not be involved in"[/quote]I'll agree that Syria is awful, and we should be getting out of there. But it's a terrible thing to lead, only to turn your head and see no one following.

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