Why Do I Have To Love America?

[NJObamaWoman]

why do people have to love America? Why can't we say god damn America? You know at times I'm proud of America and at times I HATE America. Im just tired of this blind loyalty that some people want others to feel about America. Bill Clinton, the higher ups in the dem party and the right wingers are doing more to offend Americans than anything obama has done. Its this catering to white middle America and the rose color glasses that I feel many Americans wear that sickens me about this country. America is not great. I wish many Americans will travel to other countries out side of their little vacation resorts to see what's going on in the world and how America and some of its companies are exoiting other people.

I went to Haiti a few years ago to work as a missionary at an orphanage. Not only was I shocked by the conditions people live in but to see how many American companies were exploiting these people. Some of the soda pop companies that are in our fridges are down there making money. But I doubt hardly any of that money is going to the people. Water quality is so bad there that for many people they turn to bottle water and sodas. I didnt know why at the time that these use glass bottles instead of plastic but I think I do know. Do average Americans understand how bad the polution is over there? Many people burn there garbage and I suspect that if the went to plastic polution would be even higher. What middle Americans might think is expensive in terms of gas these people think of as cheap. I remember traveling and the person I was staying with only put in a quarter of a tank cause he said gas was expensive. I'm not proud of America when I feel American companies are exploiting other countries. Countries in which people live in ply wood shells with no doors. When it rains children are out side nake because that's their shower. While momma is trying to patch the wood as best she can so the water won't come in and flood them out. I've seen women wash clothes and their children play in water that we wouldn't even think of stepping a toe in. I've nursed children back to life, a life where there mom, dad etc are dead and they are alone. Its frightening to go into a bank that has men standing out side with machine guns. At the end of the day I just don't have the respect for America that others do. This country is to close to America for us to do nothing about it is sickening.

I'm sure that since Haiti probably has no oil and there are many other islands in the Caribbean to vacation on that this country really doesn't to Mr. And Mrs. American Dick and Jane but it pisses people like me off. I was two seconds to giving up my life in America to live down there at the orphanage. The only reason I didn't was because the one American who meant the world to me, a preacher who some people here seem to have little respect for because he believes in religion was growing older and wanted me to stay with him till after he passes away, my grandfather. He was a religious man who experienced racism in America. A man who fought in WW II in a country that told him and his friends who paid taxes that they werent equal to white people. He fought for Mr dick and Mrs Jane even when they spat on him not because he loved America. In fact he wished god would DAMN America in order to change it for the better. Plus he loved FDR and his dog LOL. This is a man who went to the projects to preach and help people that many people don't waste their time talking or going to. A man who sponered child every month and left money to donate to feed the children when he died. He wasn't a proud American. He was proud of his family but not of America. Not of a country that he thought would NEVER elect a black man as president. He past in 06 and I cry to this day because I wish he would have seen BO. I wish he could see BO's kids playing on the white house lawn for Easter. That's something he will never see.

I've said all this to say that I'm not a proud American. What is so damn wrong if you don't think America is the best. I'm 24 and I'm not going to scream about loving America when I seeans hear how America has knocked people down. I'm just sick of people like bill Clinton, right wing and the media who think they represent and know how all Americans feel & think. I have freedom of speech as a citizen and if I wake up and feel like god damn America than so be it. I'm not less if an American. If obama less of an American because he won't deny his former pastor than so is my dead grandfather who fought for this country since his granddaughter feels at time that god should damn America.

[Mooney]

1. I think America sucks.

The Iraq war certainly makes me ashamed to be an American. We also have the worst president imaginable, who was never even elected. And when I pay taxes is goes to pay for things that offend me to the bone, while things that I think are important barely even get starvation rations.

The saving grace is that we have the First Amendment. So while I'm subjected to all these outrages, I at least have the right to say "God Damn America" and not get arrested.

America sucks, and I say it 100 times every morning when I wake up. It keeps my teeth white.

[NJObamaWoman]

3. thanks for your reply

I just hate how so many people pledge blind devotion to this country and act like its superior to others. I'm tired of some Americans who believe this not seeing how corrupt America is.

[Megahurtz]

11. I feel the same way.

That's why we need change!

[eridani]

17. We actually are being very American in thinking we can do something about that n/t

[Scurrilous]

2. Kick

:kick:

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. Thank you NJObamaWoman. Thank you. nt

[Nitrogenica]

5. I like to think America is great because of people like my friends at DU.

It's America's leadership that currently sucks.

We can help fix that problem.

I helped by voting for Amy Klobuchar and Keith Ellison in 2006, for example.

Let's keep our momentum.

[The Night Owl]

6. You can say "God damn America" if you want to, but you are naive if you think that...

You can say "God damn America" if you want to, but you are naive if you think that the Democratic party is helped by one of its potential presidential candidates being closely associated with a man who says "God damn America" and who questions American indignation over the 9/11 attacks.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

8. Yet, associating with those kind of people never seems to hurt GOP candidates.

Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, etc.

It's time our party GREW A SPINE and stopped allowing good Democrats to be slimed.

[The Night Owl]

10. I really don't think we should strive to be more like the Republicans. {EOM}

[NJObamaWoman]

12. oh no I'm not naive. Most americans, yes including dems don't won't dirt on their shoes

they believe if we don't say things like that then its not true or atleast has a possiblilty of being true. These are the same people who vacation in resorts and don't go out side of the resorts to see what's up.

I know its not good for obama to be associated with wright because many Americans want happy sunshine and to forget all the bad. This us why. Nothing will ever get solved in terms of race relations in America.

[Political Heretic]

19. That.... is why we fail.

[NJObamaWoman]

7. Another thing: Washington DC is a hell hole!!!

sorry to the people who live there cause I'm sure it has some nice areas but why hasn't any president fixed DC. I remember going on a class trip there and thinking it was dirty and nasty. Mind you mist of us kids at the time come from the burbs with middle class parents but mist of us thought this. I remember my best friend who was a little white boy at the time got off the bus when we returned home and told his father that he never wanted to go back cause it was the pitts.

That's my problem with America our capital should reflect how great supposedly our nation is and yet it doesn't. If any of our recent presidents were truly for the American people than that area would look tons better

[Megahurtz]

9. Well said! Very well said!

I totally agree! :applause:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. "Patriotism is the most foolish of passions and the passion of fools." - Schopenhauer

"Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their actions only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which the belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it." Mikhail Bakunin

"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." Thomas Paine

[immoderate]

14. K&R Nationalism is stupid.

--IMM

[immoderate]

15. K&R Nationalism is stupid.

--IMM

[Middle finga]

16. Too much greed, selfishness and violence here

[Political Heretic]

18. The world is my country.

I will never, ever love a nation-state.

And I will be disgusted by a nation-states historical and modern violence, aggression and tyranny.

And I will me most critical of the nation-state in which I have a participatory voice.

[joeprogressive]

20. The last time a group of people said "my goddamn country",

The US was born. People that say those words are off limits are hypocritical idiots. People that speak out against America don't hate America, they hate the way we squander our potential to be the greatest nation in the world.

[ima_sinnic]

21. thank you for your work in Haiti. I cry over that place.

I spent a little over a year as a graduate student in Jamaica, mostly in Kingston and then (thankfully) further out in the country, so I can visualize the zinc & plywood shantytowns -- I spent some time in some as I got to know people and felt the deepest compassion for the children, for whom only a thin piece of zinc separated them from the most violent and frightening yelling and carrying on. I also saw the people trudge for water, carrying it on their heads, and laboriously hand washing their clothes, living without furniture or other basic necessities.

Yet I know Haiti is in even worse straits. I always wish I could be wealthy; I would be a philanthropist for Haiti. Haiti is maintained and manipulated only as a colony for U.S. agribusiness interests. For Haitians, it is a fact of life that someone in the family will get to "go to Miami" to work backbreakingly as an agricultural laborer so as to send money home. Haitians are very dependent on money sent from the U.S. All their good land was long ago robbed from them by the likes of United Fruit. They are needed by agribusiness as laborers here as well as there, yet their passage here is like going through the gates of hell--first, the crap they have to go through to get a visa, then the atrocities they face here as unwelcome guests.

I also despise the meddlesome goddam U.S. for its death squads, rigging of elections, wars, plunder of resources, black ops, assassination plots, and torture and atrocities in other countries. Jamaica now has a right-wing government, after renouncing the U.S.-backed party for about 20 or 25 years, and it is well known there that this new government was not elected, not by any fair means (ballots were found scattered in the bushes, for one thing--but also, after the screwing over they got by the last U.S. administration, they have been consistently voting against them for years--there is just not the support for the Labor party). I could go on and on about this, about the U.S. complicit atrocities in Africa, their death squads and mass murder in Central America, but it would make me throw up.