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originally posted by: AnonyMason
a reply to: iWontGiveUP
Here's a couple examples.
Your OP is pretty vague but what constitutes being brainwashed? Accepting that we are stuck with an endless amount of terrible leaders who fancy themselves above the law? Watching the country fall to pieces at the hands of a few while the many just want to live a peaceful life, work, and feed their families?
When are we allowed to stand up and say enough of the BS? How are we supposed to go about replacing all of these ass hats with people who genuinely have our best interests at heart?
The news corporations aren't the ones who need to die. Big pharma, defense contractors, Monsanto, corrupt bankers, Wall Street.... Those should be the top of the target list. Then we can kill the lawyers.
Kill all the leaders. Kill the shadowy elite. Return the country to it's true owners, the people. Let the Populist issues facing our country be worked out and corrected by them. Start over.
originally posted by: AboveBoard
a reply to: iWontGiveUP
Amen.
My American roots go back to before the Revolution and my blood was part of that fight. My relations were also part of some of the best and worst history we have seen.
Some of my family probably owned slaves, which makes me feel horrible - unclean in a way that makes me angry. How could anyone think they could own another person??? Abuse them??? It makes me
Sick. Those folks - their blood is in me and their history - but I refuse to carry forward the racism and cultural pogrom of making black people somehow lesser. Heck, I have some 7x grandparent that was black African! 2% of their blood is in me too.
I am. Patriot. I am a Daughter of the Revolution whose Grandfather was killed in action in WWII. He was a hero cut down in his prime. He lives in my veins too. All those past heroes beat in my heart.
I became disillusioned with government as a very young child, barely old enough to understand the images of horror from Vietnam and the tension over some mysterious thing called Watergate. This shaped my whole life. I am never surprised by
Corruption.
I grew up taking family vacations to National Parks and Monuments, soaking in the depth of wild beauty that is America. My Dad took us on a trip to all the Revolutionary war memorials, then to D.C. and all the way up to NY City to see the Statue of Liberty. I want to protect that heritage for generations to come.
I am an American.
I am also left of center. That does not make me less of an American and I'm sick of people on the right thinking they have the corner on Patriotism, that they are the only ones who have jobs and sacrifice for their families, that my disagreement over how government can and should function somehow makes me less American.
I know folks on the left can be downright prickish about some things, and arrogant to a fault. We are not the only educated ones, or the only ones who care what happens to our fellow man, nor do we have a corner on righteousness.
Truth is, we all need to step off our high horses and channel our better selves. We need to listen just as much as we need to be heard. We need to let go of our judgements and the need to be right. We need to allow for a measure of compromise or we will get nothing at all.
We've already built a wall in America but it's an invisible one made up of code-words like right and left and what religion we are. We suss each other out, see if the other knows our secret handshakes and passwords so they can be on our side of
The wall.
We cannot tolerate intolerance nor be complicit in the demise of democracy yet we cannot be so self righteous that we become the same as
That we wish to purge.
Winning isn't winning if we are rigging the game and disenfranchising voices and cutting off our noses to spite our own face.
There are problems in our country that need fixing and we need to take them on while we can still do something about them. There is work to be done.
This really isn't a game. It is our very lives at stake.
/rant over
(Sorry to get all preachy in your thread...)
originally posted by: iWontGiveUP
We cannot tolerate intolerance nor be complicit in the demise of democracy yet we cannot be so self righteous that we become the same as
That we wish to purge.
originally posted by: AboveBoard
I am an American.
I am also left of center. That does not make me less of an American and I'm sick of people on the right thinking they have the corner on Patriotism, that they are the only ones who have jobs and sacrifice for their families, that my disagreement over how government can and should function somehow makes me less American.
Truth is, we all need to step off our high horses and channel our better selves. We need to listen just as much as we need to be heard. We need to let go of our judgements and the need to be right. We need to allow for a measure of compromise or we will get nothing at all.