The American people have become so uptight their asses pucker.

[shockey80]

The American people freak out over things that don't matter and ignore things that wreck their lives. The examples are endless.

America hasn't changed, the American people have, that's the truth. I have watched it happen over my lifetime.

To each their own, live and let live, mind your own business. These are things I grew up with. They are gone.

[Nitram]

1. That's quite a generalization. Where do you live?

[Empowerer]

2. You mean like claiming govt workers are treated like slaves and should strike/take to the streets?

Or are you talking about something else?

[likesmountains 52]

3. You took the words right out of my mouth...

[Empowerer]

10. Funny how it always seems the "stop overreacting" brigade only rides in

when certain people of a certain hue raise an objection?

[cwydro]

5. Yeah, this OP usually has the answer to everything.

I await enlightenment.

[shockey80]

9. You again, my own personnel DU stalker.

I am right more than I am wrong and you can't handle it.

[shockey80]

7. Now that you brought it up.

At the end of the shutdown the government workers were starting to do what I called for. Refuse to go to work any way you can. The airports were starting to shut down. If the shutdown continued they would have shut this country down.

[Empowerer]

8. LOL

[shockey80]

12. Why are you laughing?

That's what happened, the airports were starting to shutdown because people stopped showing up for work.

[lunatica]

4. You must have missed the

systematic erosion of civil right, women’s rights, voters rights and just plain human rights that the Republicans and Trump have been fighting for a few decades.

Would that minding their own business were a fact. That would mean the Republicans wouldn’t have passed legislation transferring the national wealth to the richest top tier and leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. It would mean that money’s free speech didn’t trump my free speech.

I could go on of course, but I won’t.

[walkingman]

6. No doubt. I think it is all about the huge number of media channels we have these days.

In the old days when a story broke it would be on the TV network evening news, newspapers and then pretty much dropped unless it was something that was catastrophic. These days the story is perpetual - all day long for the most trivial of circumstances, on internet in perpetuity, and on twitter feed endlessly. What would have been a simple story is blown totally out of proportion. I do think there are good and bad sides to the issue.

I do think people have changed and IMO for the good. I am 68 and was in the middle of the civil rights movement where I lived, saw the death of JFK, RFK, MLK, and John Lennon to name just a few. Those occurrences changed my life forever. These days though it seems we have lost our way. I don't think read nearly as much and also only sound bites or short messages ever get much attention. We seem to have short attention spans and are much easier persuaded than in the past.

Civility is gone, religious morality seems to be a joke, and nastiness is standard procedure. Also music sucks to me comparatively speaking. I stil listen to 60's and 70's rock, it just doesn't get any better.

I am in wonder about the technology and where it will lead us. I love the internet - it seems that we have the entirety of knowledge at our fingertips.

There....I've confirmed that I guess I am just experiencing just getting old.

[shockey80]

11. Good post.

[GitRDun]

13. The biggest thing I've noticed is a lack of perspective

A couple quick examples:

Oceans to the east and west of us. To the north, a largely passive ally. To the south, countries who have virtually no military capability. We have the greatest geographical advantage on the planet, yet we behave as if we live in the middle of a war zone. There's no imminent invasion that should provoke our paranoia and monstrous military spending, yet we do it anyway.

The public seems to gravitate toward arguing against or for the Republican delusion of "climate change is not real" instead of promoting a pragmatic view of conserving our natural resources thru the use of renewables. You don't need to believe in climate change to know it's stupid to waste finite natural resources.

As a society, we fight the health care battle mostly in emotional terms when during Reagan's Presidency we decided as a nation that everyone gets treatment, regardless of their insurance status. What this means is that all that is left to argue is a financing mechanism...how do we pay for it?

We can talk about all these things in ways that can get buy in from folks in other political parties.

Yet we choose not to.

Until the public wises up to these realizations, we are stuck in this endless food fight.

[walkingman]

15. I think it is pretty obvious that

a large percentage of Americans have fallen into the Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Charles Black, Karl Rove, and Alex Jones philosophy of "HATE IS A MORE POWERFUL MOTIVATOR THAN LOVE". Whether we can recover from this philosophy is yet to be seen but it is very troubling.

[roamer65]

14. In Dumps Amerika, empathy, cilivity and forgiveness are nearly gone.

That will be his legacy. Along with the dissolution of the American republic.

[Codeine]

16. Those things were never part of the American character.

Anti-gay laws, anti-miscegenation laws, restrictive covenants, HUAC, etc.

We’re at a greater level of live and let live right now than at any point in our history.