a lot of you guys are zeroing in on the gub (which is pretty right on) but the people here suck too. could just be people everywhere suck (this is my suspicion), but by and large americans are rude, noisy, conceited, egotistical (previously mentioned), greedy, and probably the worst of all: self entitled but as i say this could be a human condition, not just american.
Why ? This post... Self praise is no praise dude.. But as has already being pointed out by other blades its the American government and its foreign policies that is hated not the average Joe American.
Where in the world do you live, where only feral pigs get shot? I can damn near guarantee people in your country/city get shot by other people. unless of course, you don't live in a city. I won't bother addressing the rest of your generalizations.
I don't live in a city, hence the FARMERS owning the guns - not too many farms or farmers near the cities man, only vinyards, cheesemakers and other pleasantries so far as I've seen. People DO get shot in the city, but I'd be willing to bet the figure would be under a hundred a year, and the city holds 2 million people or so. I'm not joking or exaggerating either, it's largely unheard of for people to get shot over here... people just find other ways, like glassing people with beer bottles or whipping out a knife. If you know much about Australia's gun history, you'd see the reason why - guns were fairly well available to everybody with little question asked, until shootings started to go up and up from the 70's onwards, culminating in the Port Arthur massacre sometime around the late 90's methinks. The massacre killed something like 30 unarmed people, most of which had never even seen a gun, being city-folk - and the politicians went ballistic, demanding guns be strictly monitored and regulated so that so many innocent people never died in such a way again. People largely got behind it though, it really shook the country up, especially in the wake of all of the shootings everyone'd been hearing about in America. To this day the massacre has a heavy bearing on popular culture here, for anyone older than 18 or so who could remember it anyhow. They've been relatively successful, so far as I can see... there's certainly been nothing like another Port Arthur massacre, and you only hear of the occasional bikie-gang shooting, because it's largely only bikies and other 'undesirables' who (illegitimately) own guns. For this reason, I have no support for the measure and don't believe in the prohibition of guns... I'd like to believe in it, because I despise guns and those who lay in bed having wet dreams about how great/powerful/deadly their gun is, but it simply isn't a sustainable answer to the problem of gun violence. Anyhow, I digress - shootings here are VERY rare, you might hear of one (in the big capital cities, we've NEVER had a shooting that I can remember in the little country town where I live...) every two weeks or even every month, but that's it. People don't carry guns or own guns, and thus no one really gets shot here. EDIT: Hate to give anecdotal evidence over the internet, but my older sisters boyfriends Mum is around at the moment and I pitched her the question "How many people can you recall who have been shot in this town, ever?" She's lived here all of her 53 years, and she reckons that in that time she can recall NOT ONE PERSON being shot here. To me, that sounds too good to be true - SOMEONE must have been shot at some point in time in the last half-century, surely... - but she's pretty adament that no one, to her knowledge, has ever been shot in my town.
If i'm not mistaken australia has some of the harshest gun laws in the world. This probably contributes.
Doesn't help that Australia was founded as a penal colony for the worst criminals in the world. No wonder they have harsh gun laws.
I addressed this in a message on your profile, but it's occured to me that I didn't really explain it quite well enough... so, here goes If I saw Africans/Muslims/whoever else often enough to pick up something general in the culture that I found to be peculiar/annoying/mockable/whatever else, I'd probably pounce on it. Not to attack and certainly not to be 'bigoted' - which is funny, by the way, that you should call me that, as a bigot is someone who extols their own superiority and I've never said that Australians are better than anyone else. I could just as easily compile 12 (hopefully humourous) satirical anti-Australian points and take a dig at myself, but the opportunity never arises. And here's where my point is - the opportunity frequently arises with Americans because I see/hear them every goddam day. Almost every TV show here is narrated/produced/somehow influenced by bloody Americans (even nature shows about OUR OWN wildlife!), practically every song has a carbon-copy Californian accent takked onto it (even if it's an Australian singing the fucking song!), all of our products bought in supermarkets use American spelling, our kids are more familiar with your national anthem than our own... basically, we seem to have been OVER-RUN by Americans and you can't go a single bloody day without being rudely reminded of that fact. Hence, I've got both ample exposure to Americans to pick up things about the culture that I find peculiar/annoying/mockable, and ample reason to want to mock it. Contrast this to Africans or whoever else you listed. I never see them or hear them, so I have no right to make fun of them because I can't - not in the least because I have no real life experience with them and thus no BASIS to make fun of them, let alone no motivation to want to. Americans are just the opposite, they're freely observed everywhere and have a lot that I find peculiar/annoying/mockable about the culture, so I do - in light-hearted, good-natured (hopefully) fun. Like I say, I'd make a similar 'bigoted' post about anyone else I see frequently enough... Hope this explains things a bit. And stigs... about the Cherokee grandmother thing, I have no problem at all with someone having an Indian grandmother/grandfather etc. It's when it's SPECIFICALLY Cherokee, even though the person lives nowhere near the Cherokee homeland or other Cherokees, that makes me laugh. It's like me claiming some ancestor among the Aboriginals thousands of kilometers away on the east coast - it's theoretically possible, but Christ, it's quite extraordinary as compared to having an Aboriginal ancestor near where you live. I think it's the word - 'Cherokee', it rings nicely off the tongue and is probably the word most people associate Indians with. Certainly easier than saying Atsuwegi or Paugusett... EDIT: 'Worst criminals in the world' is a bit of an overstretch to describe most of the convicts, who were usually sent over for stealing a loaf of bread, shoelaces, trivial things of that nature. I think the whole 'convict' thing was really more of a guise to send away the lower-classes, a bit like a sort of class based eugenics program, if that makes sense and the word eugenics may be stretched to fit the context I put it in. That, and as well as culling out the poor folks it meant that Australia could be more rapidly invaded, thus securing it as British territory and expanding the good ol'e British imperial empire. But serioulsy, as said most of these convicts were sent over for next-to-no reason at all, petty theft was the most usual cause. And, of course, Australia what stopped the whole convict business in the mid 1800's...
that's as intelligent as saying that 'merica was founded by religious zealots thats why....ummm....uhhh...oh yeah!
Sadly yes Yes. We should hate the thing that made our country, and kept us from a nazi government. You are probably so proud...
I hate using this uote because it's becoming to cliche but, "I love the place I live, but I hate the people in charge" - Immortal Technique
Sorry OP but your perception of history is extremely naive. would also like to add that we are not a democracy and never really have been. in reality we are closer to being a plutocracy.
Certainly, you'd be mad to deny it... though probably not rural to the extent that we are, we're ridiculously, uber-rural - as in, from here you'd have to travel 500km to find the nearest city, 1500km to get to the next nearest. Literally in the middle of nowhere
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kshqj1rIyEo&feature=related]YouTube - King Missle - America Kicks Ass[/ame] Fuck YEAH!
I'm sorry but I don't think anyone should posses a firearm. To protect oneself from someone else that might own a gun does not count as a valid reason yes, quite. as an "American" I can clearly see why many people throughout the world hate us, or our government policies to be more precise. Living in the U.S., its hard to see the world from the perspective of citizens in other nations much less priviliged than we are, thus why people like the OP ask these silly questions. As far as people disliking our government our occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq should speak for itself. Not only that but there are American corporations throughout the world that exploit the people of these lands in search for more profit. This is especially common in Latin American countries, but few Americans hear about this. Our media can be blamed for this lack of exposure.