Do Americans have THIS kind of courage?

[MiddleFingerMom]

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[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Americans are well fed

and have still, circus and bread,

[Atticus]

5. and I-phones and gas-guzzling cars,

football and Dancing with the Stars,

[AndyTiedye]

26. Egypt Has a Lot of Those Things Too

[Gregorian]

8. I don't need to reply now. You just said it for me.

That's why I like this place. Where else can we go to find like-minded people. Yay.

[Hannah Bell]

32. pfft. yes, they're all eating cheetos, unlike your revolutionary self.

[leftstreet]

2. It takes courage and bravery to exist in a society with no safety nets

No matter where that may be

K&R Love that photo

[Earth_First]

3. Haven't you heard the new DU meme...

It's incredibly disingenuous to the Egyptians to compare a revolution in this country to theirs...

[Raine]

4. Yes they do, anyway some do

but they don't have the need ... not yet.

edit: typo

[burrowowl]

6. Americans

are getting poorer, there are not enough jobs, food is going up, our internet is one of the slowest, the big guys are trying to control the flow of information on the internet, etc.

I think Americans should start protesting!

[femmocrat]

10. If they didn't take to the streets in Dec. 2000, nothing will get them off their recliners.

We have become too complacent (says this child of the '60s).

[leftstreet]

12. Or maybe they've long figured out elections don't change much

:shrug:

[RegieRocker]

14. Doing the same thing over and over and over expecting

different results.

[Kievan Rus]

22. If voting actually changed anything, it would be illegal - Emma Goldman

[tridim]

7. I know the teabaggers don't

[treestar]

9. We do not have a dictatorship

We are not living under one.

[MiddleFingerMom]

11. No, I guess we are not, but

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...I also guess that if there ISN'T already a word for "corporatocracy"... there soon will be.
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[Diclotican]

17. treestar

treestar

Not yet! But you do have The Patriot Act, and the MCA.... Just wait, when the president, deside that he want all the power for himself...

And it wil happend, when you have this type of laws on the books.. Sooner or later, just becouse US are a democracy now, it would not be that forever, not when you can "wote" in men like GWB...
,
Diclotican

[WildEyedLiberal]

25. I'd just like to say I appreciate your effort to inject sanity into DU threads

Though I fear it is in vain.

[NYC Liberal]

13. Yes, many do, And many don't...same as everywhere else.

But America sucks I guess.... :shrug:

[Liquorice]

15. Exactly. nt

[cynatnite]

16. Yes...

We're not living in a dictatorship, but I do believe there are Americans who are that brave.

[upi402]

18. Battle in Seattle

Yep, Americans do.
:patriot:

[MiddleFingerMom]

20. I agree, but too few... too far apart...

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...and the powers-that-be and the MSM (NEVER to be confused with
the MFM, please) has the vast majority of America believing that they
are simply immature hot-headed vandals.
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i don't doubt that some of them are... neither do I doubt that there are
agents provocateurs at those protests to make SURE of that perspective.
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[Ozymanithrax]

19. Desperation and misery are better words. n/t

[Kievan Rus]

21. As long as Dancing with the Stars is still on, nope

[LadyHawkAZ]

23. No. They do not. n/t

[AndyTiedye]

24. Would Anybody Notice If We Did?

Most people don't even know that there were huge protests just before the start of the Iraq war
because the Tee Vee ignored or greatly under-reported them.

[cherokeeprogressive]

27. I'm sick of these kinds of questions and comparisons...

Was George Morris brave when he threw his wife Dot to the ground in Tucson and jumped on top of her in an effort to (futile though it may have been) keep her from being shot and wound up taking two rounds himself?? Will he need to be brave to continue on without her after being described by friends as "still on their honeymoon after 50 years of marriage"?

Was the Honorable Judge John Roll brave when he pushed Congresswoman Giffords' staffer Ron Barber down after he had been shot, and covered him with his own body, giving up his own life??

Was Tim McCarthy brave when he turned to face John Hinckley and took a bullet meant for President Ronald Reagan? "After Hinckley began to fire, McCarthy deliberately put himself in the line of fire and spread his body in front of Reagan to make himself a target."

Are members of Volunteer Fire Departments all over this country brave when they answer a pager call in the middle of the night, then run into a burning building or house to save whoever might be inside?

Have you ever seen some stupid, fat, lazy American coward (which is how some who've posted here on this very thread might describe Americans in general) belly out onto the ice in order to save a deer or dog or moose that has fallen through the ice on a frozen river or pond or lake? Are THEY brave?

Ever seen a swift-water rescue on the news where a helicopter pilot holds his craft steady in the wind over some hapless person whose car is caught in in the flood waters and some fat, stupid, lazy American coward hangs from a 3/8" steel cable on their way down to pluck them from their misadventure?

Questions like yours are totally pointless. Not a single one of us (stupid, fat, lazy Americans) knows whether we're brave or not until the moment of truth comes and the fight or flight instinct takes over. Not only that, but what you call bravery takes many shapes and forms, and none of us knows what we're capable of until the chips are on the table. There are thousands of stories over the years where some have died on their knees because they were told to kneel and others where those who were told to kneel fought back for all they were worth.

I would add that questions like yours are meant to do one thing, and one thing only. They serve as an outlet where your disdain for Americans can be proudly displayed.

Here in the United States we don't suffer under the heavy hand of a dictator. We are free to travel, free to aspire to be whatever we want to be, free to associate, free to express criticism of our elected leaders... Here in the United States, we put our bravery on display in different ways.

Your question shows, to me at least, your disdain for Americans in general because your question is nothing more than a generalization of what you think American bravery to be.

With my own eyes, I've seen kids no older than 19 run toward burning a burning airplane on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier while dragging fully charged fire hoses because that was THEIR JOB. Were they brave in the context of what your post says you believe bravery consists of?

Don't mind unrecc'ing this one at all.

[JI7]

29. great post, it should be an OP

i was just thinking about the people during that Tucson shooting. and there are many more like you mentioned.

[Raine]

30. I totally agree

I get really sick of these threads. They are nothing but an excuse to bash the people here over something that is dependant on so many things. People here are brave when they are called on to be so just as people all over the world are. Often from threads like this I can see why we are labeled as "the blame America first" crowd. :mad:

It gets a big :thumbsdown: from me

[Hannah Bell]

33. +100. these kind of posts are stupid. also stupid are the ones

where americans are berated for being lazy slobs who can barely lift the remote.

especially when posted by people who cheered for the bankster bailout.

[polmaven]

45. I'm not at all sure

there is a number large enough to use in recommending this post. That was so very well said. Thank you so much. I have hit the unrec button too.

[jotsy]

46. Can't concurr with all of your assertions.

An excerpt from your post:

"Here in the United States we don't suffer under the heavy hand of a dictator. We are free to travel, free to aspire to be whatever we want to be, free to associate, free to express criticism of our elected leaders... Here in the United States, we put our bravery on display in different ways."

From 2008, RNC
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ&feature=related>
So much for freedom of expressing criticism of elected leaders.

Aspirations? Let's talk higher education, the value of which lately is debatable as compared to the depth of debt vs. lack of demand. Aspirations in this regard are entirely dependent upon depth of pocket and little else. I guess it depends on who's aspiring, it should raise more than an eyebrow that tuition hikes at public universities are rising higher and faster than they are at private colleges.
<http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/28/pf/college/college_tuition/index.htm>

Free to associate...not real high profile, I wanted something recent. Many, many examples, 10 pages of Google responses to 'law enforcement infiltrating activist groups'.
<http://studentactivism.net/2010/07/09/uw-police/>

I don't think I need to go on in great detail about travel, the TSA can do that. "In a van, at the mall, scan the whole fam dam, we can, one and all."

Being brave in a different way is all I would contend the OP was doing. I don't have a good answer for him, I hope so. Courage I think to an extent lies in candor, and when one can find everything from character to competence criticized for asking a straight up question, it makes me wonder if courage is a thing we encourage. I think the time to ask questions is before the slithering python is coiled at our necks and bellies with a grin as it prepares to tighten its grip around the body of us. Our institutions have taken on the walk and the talk of the corporate model and such charters are not suited to govern an independent citizenry. The electoral process is to be the accepted regular remedy of the people to initiate change, yet between money and electronic voting, there is great doubt as to whether results are a genuine reflection of the public will.

A rec for the OP.

[Selatius]

28. Very few of you know the true cost of opposing your own government in such a manner.

When my parents fled Viet Nam following the war, they fled only after the government began disappearing opponents and locking the entire country down. Many people were imprisoned without trial accused of aiding the enemy, and many never survived the "re-education camps" they had established to deal with the opposition.

When you make a conscious decision to fight your own government in that kind of manner, you are not simply taking yourself to war. You are also taking all of your friends and family into that war, too. It isn't a clean war where there are clearly defined fronts but a bloody melee where it is next to impossible to protect all you love in such a fight. People think of war as a distant topic, something that happens far away and where your friends and family are relatively safe. This isn't the case if we're talking about a theoretical attempt at opposing American-style corporatism.

You're talking about a war, a conflict, that will take place among us all. Your own children will witness firsthand the brutality of political struggle and war.

Some will say that we should not even attempt such a conflict, for the sake of our families, that we do not have the luxury of principles in light of our obligations to family and friends. Others will say that they will not hide behind their families as an excuse not to fight for the right cause for everyone. These were, incidentally, topics of discussion in the years before the American Revolution when the people were divided over opposing the British Crown and its arbitrary and rapacious ways.

[Hannah Bell]

34. agreed. it's not about romanticized pictures of a lone protester holding up a sign to a line of

police -- with the eyes of the international media on him & a 1/2 million neighbors behind him.

[Hannah Bell]

31. um, i guess so. Seattle 1999

The error is in thinking "courage" is some cultural or individual property, rather than the product of circumstances.























T

[outerSanctum]

35. If we did, about 15 minutes into it

half of 'em would be grabbing TV sets and jeans from the closest store fronts...

[hippywife]

49. Really?

And which half would that be? Hmmmm? :eyes:

[MiddleFingerMom]

36. My goodness. From a simple question, "Do Americans have this kind of courage?"...

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...those who have WISHED to have interpreted it as "ALL Americans are cowards".
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Nice leap. Nice twist. Interesting... even if WAY off the mark. We usually see that
level of kneejerk nationalistic outrage outrage outrage and CONDEMNATION
coming from...
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...well... from elsewhere.
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:rofl::rofl::rofl:
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[jeff47]

37. Then what was the point of your post?

If that was not your intention, feel free to explain what you really meant.
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Other than to use way too many
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periods at the beginning of lines
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when a 'return' will work just fine.
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Burma-Shave

[MiddleFingerMom]

43. The point was to open up a reasonable discussion about...

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...whether or not, if it came to it... our "culture" would have their courage (and
that "lone protestor" had not only the international media and "about 1/2 million
neighbors behind him"(?), but how many hundreds (thousands) of guns in front
of him?
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When you protest that extremely and bravely (as a very small portion of our
population has done in the recent past), you are facing death (as I think Selatius
said about VietNam).
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My question basically was do we, as a culture, still have that resolve or have they
kept us in that gradually-warming pot of water long enough?
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And it wasn't to offer an opening to those, um... courageous enough to take cheap
shots at my posting style.
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[jeff47]

48. Except there's dozens of counter-examples

Which demonstrate that Americans have ample courage to protest in such dire situations. What we on DU often forget is that things are not that bad yet. Sure, there's all sorts of problems, but generally the people have food. And the middle class still exists, for now.

Claiming we should all take to the streets ignores that things simply aren't bad enough for masses to take to the streets.

So what, exactly, is your idea with your "posting style" then? Is it "I'm gonna make people scroll down to read what I have to say, because I want to maximize the effort required to read my thoughts", or "A long time ago I had to do this because a message board didn't support HTML properly"?

[RegieRocker]

40. Yep the similarities are astounding are they not?

[cherokeeprogressive]

47. Yup, you've figured us out. n/t

[melm00se]

38. the need for this kind of courage

against the government just does not exist here.

You don't have:

- a president for life
- a military with a proven ability to remove the head of government (remember Sadat?)

Many people who are calling for a fundamental (almost a revolutionary) change to this country who have absolutely no clue what it's like to live under a dictator.

Ask anyone from a former Soviet block state, or from a Central or South American country run by "El Presidente" and ask them to compare where they came from and here. Then follow up and say: we really a revolution, the government is just not responsive to the People.

Be prepared for them to breakdown and laugh long and hard at you.

[Better Believe It]

39. Yes we do. When it's required.

[edhopper]

41. We had

a quarter million people in the streets of Washington before the Iraq War.
The country, and especially the Mass Media, just yawned.

[Egnever]

42. What a silly post.

Of course they do.

Or do you discount all the relief workers or other activists that go into dangerous situations for their causes every day?

[LeftishBrit]

44. Martin Luther King and the others who risked their lives for civil rights did...

Which is not dismissing the courage of the protesters in Egypt at all - just saying that courage is not defined by nationality.

In America and Britain, we are *lucky* to be mostly able to express our views without being violently suppressed by powerful dictators. And we owe it to many courageous people in our countries in the past.

[ChazII]

50. +100

and thank you for your common sense.

[Catherina]

51. No. Bush 8 years. Iraq war 10 years. More wars. Need you ask? Rec'd n/t