IMHO... America's fucking insane.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

I'm 53 years old and this country is the demon Ike warned about.

The greed and power mongering have won.

It's time to move.

[Ripley]

1. I hear You.

I'm *ahem* not quite in Your age bracket yet, snickers rudely, but I must agree.

It's hard. Not many other countries "want" us. Got to have skills they need. Oh, and THEY HATE US.

Thanks, lord prissy pants.

[steely]

2. 49 here, and I still remember the dreams painted back then (IGY)

and the social warnings we were given in the 60's, and the ecological warnings of the early 70's.
It got worse every year thereafter. Even the music set the standard.

[Seabiscuit]

14. And then the music died.

It hasn't been the same since. On a downward spiral until 2000. Flushing straight down fast ever since.

I'd go to France if I could.

[colorado thinker]

3. But where?

I'd go to France if I could figure out how to do it, and how to hide my American accent. Oh, and how to speak French.

I'd go to Ireland, but they limit immigration, can't afford Canada, don't have the cash required or the skills or education they want. So, where to go?

[darkmaestro019]

6. Hi there. I see we're in the same boat. ; ) nt

[colorado thinker]

12. That's it!

A boat! Just float around in international waters till it's all over . . .

[bananarepublican]

20. If you can't go to France... why not learn grow from...

...the French Revolution?

[newspeak]

40. friends and I talked about going in together

and buying a boat--sail around the Caribbean for as long as it takes to get away from the nightmare. Okay, so it's just a dream right now--but hey, I can still dream.

[treestar]

29. Are you sure? The Irish economy is booming and you might have

a skill or easily be able to acquire one.

India could start booming eventually and ironically, they will need a lot of people with any type of professional background.

[Erika]

4. Our country left us

It's a corporatist USA now. Workers are non valued peons and seen only as an evil expense to corporate profits.

I've been working on getting a sponsor to go to Canada. So many countries no longer want us, wer'e seen as the Ugly American.

[DianeG5385]

5. America needs a helping hand back to sanity and quickly!!!

We are America and we are not crazy, out current leaders are. They appear to understand that their reign is of limited tenure so they must DESTROY as much as possible of the civilized infrastructure so as to hold on tho their ill gained wealth done by siphoning off war profits from OUR tax dollars. These guys never made an HONEST buck in thier lives!!! A dysfunctional populace can't fight these cats. Get it together folks, the sooner the NEOCONS are EJECTED, the sooner the world will regain sanity. and we must NEVER FORGET the damage they intended to inflict on democracy!!!

[Erika]

8. W changed the world thru his greed and cowboyism

Bring it on, etc. He made the U.S. the bully of the world, and dares to do so in the name of Christ.

He's turned the rest of the world against us, and many American citizens can no longer tolerate him.

[timontheleft]

7. Yes, it is sad

The country I was taught to love and feel patriotism for no longer exists.

[I_Make_Mistakes]

10. Yep, posted this in another thread

I think the RW/neo-cons will do anything to stay in power. My mom and I have for the first time had really deep conversations about Authoritarianism this week. She told me about the electric shocking experiments done (I knew from here), we never got that deep before, she's a tough cookie on the outside.

We both expressed that we may be in 1930's Germany times. I told her about escapeartist.com again and she actually went there. We have to remember, there may come a time when we have to get out before we can't!

I told her Canada, and she checked into it, but now, I think France or England might be safer, because those in charge of the US are really scarring both of us.

[12string]

22. The country we were taught to love.....

never existed except in our brainwashed minds.They started the
propaganda by brainwashing our parents and grandparents so
they can indoctrinate you and have you ready for the
accelerated program that begins with the "Pledge of
Allegiance" when you start grammar school.Then of course
we get to learn the Official version of world and U.S.history
that doesn't begin to bother with the real story,just the
talking points we are supposed to believe.If you think I'm
wrong thats OK,but show me when there has ever been
"Liberty and Justice for All.BTW I am 51 years old so we
come from same era.

[never_get_over_it]

34. I agree with you mostly

but you have to admit it is worse now than it has been in our life times - "they" don't even try to hide this crap any more....

[Jara sang]

42. Yes, exactly and it started with Ike.

They were fighting the so called Cold War on every front. This included social programs that projected the US standard of living abroad. Programs like "People to People", "Atoms for Peace", etc. were meant to propagate US capitalist culture abroad. The sad thing is that they were also propagandizing this crap inwardly to it's own citizens.

[MarkDevin]

9. Yeah, but move where?

America's tentacles spread all over the globe. How the hell do you escape it?

[bluesbassman]

11. Your frustration is loud and clear Tom.

After living through 8 years of St. Ron and his merry band of thieves, I was ready to move on myself when Poppy was elected. But you know, it did turn around when a legally elected Democrat took the reins, as it always does.

Everything goes in cycles, this is no different. It's just a particularly ugly and destructive cycle. But that's the thing about Americans, we've proven we can endure this.

Past generations have triumphed over their challenges; do we want to be remembered as the generation that did not?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

13. i like where you come from.

[Ilsa]

15. Oh God, TYJ, I saw it so clearly these last three days.

I am a long time member of another board that is generally nonpolitical, but we discuss some current events. I tend to post alot of news items there. Naturally, the news lately hasn't been supportive of bush policies with hindsight.

So I accidentally drew a troll in. It took three days to get rid of him; for him to want to leave, even though we had to threaten him with notification to EZBoard. This man was fucking nuts, I tell you.

He is a writer and hates "ragheads". I was patient, and sure enough, he finally invoked that slur. He swears that hte Islamo-fascists are coming for us, and we need to each be ready to deal with them and their violence. He insists it must be militarily at first, then individually if need be. He was paranoid and certifiable and a narcissistic liar. You can't get through to people like that, so eventually you have to aggravate them into revealing how fucked up they are with their rants, then they get embarrassed and leave. (We don't take banning or censorship lightly.) It amazes me that people who have so much to be thankful for have that extreme level of hatred for 20% of the Earth's population.

He's also a snob and calls people "losers" because they aren't rich. He thinks volunteer work is about throwing money at stuff, vs giving of oneself.

IT's a scary world out there with American fascists.

[dweller]

17. ya know, Lee Raymond has now retired

and has alot of time and money on his hands.

jus' saying.

dp

[CJCRANE]

25. The easiest way to shut them up

is to ask why the B*sh administration just sold a billion dollars of weaponry to Saudi Arabia and tried to sell US ports to Dubai.

There are only two possible answers: either the threat of islamic fundamentalism is being hyped or Bushco are complicit with the islamic fundamentalists...(in fact it could be both).

[Breeze54]

16. Blame the yuppies!

http://www.rossbishop.com/Articles/Monthly0408_Paradox.htm

"The Yuppie Paradox"
by Ross Bishop - August 2004

"Materialism surged during the 1970s and 1980s.
The proportion of entering collegians considering it "very important or essential"
that they become "very well-off financially" skyrocketed from 40 to 74 percent."

From 40 to 74 percent in a decade! All I can say is "Wow!" :wow:

In 1975, asked by Roper pollsters to identify what makes "the good life,"
38 percent of Americans said "a lot of money."
That number grew to 63 percent by 1996.

Materialism was up, spirituality was down.

If you want to find the sinkhole we fell into, there it is."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's NOT time to move! It's time to FIX it!!
:grr:

[KT2000]

19. I believe you are right

there is nothing so obnoxious as the generation (mine) of people who feel they are entitled to everything because of their specialness. :puke:

[KT2000]

18. 55 here and

what makes this so difficult is that we lived through a time that we were living and breathing change and hope was plentiful.
People were actually striving to become better people and rid themselves of prejudices of all sorts.
I thought that it would always be like that, that there would always be killer music, that there would always be Bob Dylans and Joan Baez's, that the nation was so sickened by a war that every alternative possible would have been tried before going into another one.

My dear children let me tell you about the days when...................

[cherokeeprogressive]

21. SEE YA n/t

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

28. Bye!

[Buns_of_Fire]

23. "The Age of Aquarius" came and went and I missed it!

On the other hand, Y2K was every bit the disaster some were fearing -- only it manifested itself in the ascendancy of Boobus Maximus to the presidency instead of all the clocks turning on us at midnight and impurifying our Precious Bodily Fluids.

But we lived through "My Mother the Car" -- we'll get through this, too. I hope.

[bikebloke]

24. I'm too old to move legally.

The big 5 - 0. But I saw the way things were going back in my twenties. And I certainly tried to immigrate to Europe. Very difficult. The boats were full then. I guess I should have taken up one of those offers of marriage so I could stay. I'd probably be miserable in another way right now. I missed out for New Zealand for one lousy point. Merde.

Right now, I'm gathering a few basic books on agriculture. Should things get too bad, I can try growing my own food. My new flat is a couple blocks way from a community garden, so I can practice.

[peekaloo]

26. The ruptured Rapture. The Insane have risen!

[mmonk]

27. America has jumped the shark I'm afraid.

[Mr_Spock]

30. It's time for THEM to move.

I'll die fighting, thank you very much.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

39. I can sure appreciate that in the morning.

[treestar]

31. I have hope for when the Greatest Generation dies off

Not to be unpleasant, but time will just naturally do that.

For the most part, these leftover policies are based on the paradigms they created. Nostalgic about war (we're all nostalgic about the times we were young and theirs was WWII and they survived it obviously). They were the ones with the cold war and now you have the war against Islam framed similarly.

So I am thinking that when baby boomers are the oldest people living, things will take a big turn.

[onethatcares]

35. trying to understand your post

my thoughts go more toward the greatest generation looking for no more war. They survived the depression, many, many fought in WW2 and saw their friends, neighbors and family suffer tragic loss. They returned to the states and began building what is quite literally the "American Dream". Decent jobs, education to allow their kids to go one step beyond where they began, and lives that mattered to them. As they die off, we have people that never suffered for their beliefs, neo-cons, wealthy by inheritance, schooled at the public expense, that believe it's all theirs' for the taking, screw the rest of us. I apologize if what I'm trying to say doesn't make sense, but I think my fathers generation did try to make the United States of America a better place for all of us.

[treestar]

38. But they find it easy to go along with the either-or black-white

view of good and evil. They may try to make it a better place, but they see enemies and oversimplify. Good won out over evil in WWII. Then the communists were there to threaten them. When that fell, the Muslims start to look that way. And war is an answer to them - war will solve the problem, because good wins out over evil in wars, or so they see it. Thus the sale of the "war on terror." They think it can be "won" and that the terrorists can be defeated as the Nazis were.

The Cold War ended to their minds because Reagan outspent the Soviets and that proved to the Soviets that the "good" side would win so they gave it up.

Now that sounds like overgeneralizing, and of course there are individual exceptions, but I see the unthinking first response of the average Joe of that generation is that a war will assure the winning of good over evil and the tendency also to buy whatever the government line is - they grew up pre-Watergate and have way more trust in authority - those of average intelligence, not those on DU :-) Thus buying into the oversimplification that the communists could be defeated in Vietnam or that the terrorists can be defeated in Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran/Syria, etc.

[DemonFighterLives]

32. It is getting bad

There are still places in boondocks, America where the neocons and their terrorist friends have little interest.
We can ride out the storm. :hide:

[lonestarnot]

33. Not letting the motherfuckers run me out. Nope.

[DemonFighterLives]

36. YouGo er I mean Not Go!

:pals:

[Joe Fields]

37. I'm your age. This country DOESN'T EVEN RESEMBLE the America

I grew up in. Completely unrecognizable. I would love to move, also. But still stay in the U.S. Just find a nice little, out of the way piece of America and zone out there. Buy a few acres, tend a garden, do a little community work.

[shadowknows69]

41. TYJ, I refuse to believe that you would "cut and run" so to speak

I think if you were 103 we'd see you on the front lines of the struggle to take this country back. Besides, if you really believe the beast has run amok, then where are you going to hide where it won't eventuallly trample you?