U.S. of A.

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i probably could.

question is - could i be arsed... ?

hahahaha!

hardly a bad day at the office - i'd only been up about an hour when i posted that.

i'm in the UK, remember?

and i do believe your interpretation of "arsed", and mine, might differ, quite considerably...

(i mean "bothered". i do not wish to know what you thought, ta. although i can probably guess, by inference... )

Fundamentalist Christians are not relegated just to politicians. Unfortunately, their stupidity litters America. What bothers me is that they're hypocritical enough to go against their own religious doctrines. That I can't stand. "Save the FETUS but let the poor people already out of the womb DIE!"

gods, i loathe being called "baby"...

and robert is in cambridge, i believe.

easy mistake to make...

American is about two steps away from totalitarianism, I'm not joking.

Theres a whole cult of personality thing around Dubya, coupled with far too much religious fanaticism for a modern technologically advanced nation.

There is the shameless use of the prison system for political ends. The US imprisons more people than China despite having a quarter of the population of that country, and most of the people it imprisons are black and/or poor, and in there for non-violent drug offenses. The war on drugs is actually a war on people-unlikely-to-support-the-republican-party.

American people are, in my experience, callously inhumane with regards to the rest of the world. You called the site of the WTC attack 'ground zero' for a start. The technical definition is the point on the ground directly beneath an aerial nuclear explosion. They have a ground zero shrine at Nagasaki. Using the same name to me says that Americans think 100,000 Japanese lives = 3000 American lives.

Americans have political authority over the largest collection of weapons in history and have criminally neglected that authority.. You have conducted terrorist campaigns in Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and consistent voted the perpetrators of these campaigns back into office at the ends of their terms.

The only problem I have with American citizens is there political negligence.

I think many Americans confuse criticism of the US with criticism of Americans. Personally I tend to think that people are just plain people, but their countries, religions, and whole areas of their social interaction are just about the worst thing I can imagine. Before Katrina struck I was watching as many websites as I could, because the rest of the world knew what the US government would not admit, they didn't give tuppence for that area. I did find the sending of hate mail to some people, who said they were going to pray for residents in affected areas, sickening but the Christian right is GWs power base and in their eyes I suppose praying for "Sin City" is pretty heinous.
In the way that "looting" seemed to be the obsession of the day I think you will have to explain why it is such a crime to seek water, food and clothing in such dire circumstances and why goods that no one was going to be able to use and that were covered by insurance anyway were so sacrosanct. The recent go ahead for Worldcom ( who devastated the stock market, wiped millions from pension funds and caused worldwide panic) to enter a merger having done got off with its past behaviour as compared to 30 odd Policemen, National Guardsmen, etc surrounding a store to get a "looter" taking water fascinates many of us outside the US. The way FEMA was filleted earlier and then set up as fall guy could have been scripted. Ex employees of FEMA have been warning about this sort of natural disaster and seem to have been "let go" because they were a distraction from the "war on terror", even the Army engineers were ignored when they were pressing for money to improve the storm defences. Now with mercenaries roaming the streets and companies with previous convictions for disturbing graves and failing to bury people im charge of burying the dead of New Orleans and the state because they have the connections to get the contracts, with a huge environmental disaster for the swamps and the Gulf of Mexico in the offing, I can't understand the complacency, indeed smugness of many Americans.
That doesn't mean that I automatically lump everyone together, or assume that all Americans have the same point of view.

Personally, its hard for me to hate a group of people that I havent met. Even though I was born in Romanian, I came to America and became naturalized and feel proud of it, even though I do not feel proud of our actions.

Those people who hated our us for our crimes in their past... every nation has its ugly spots. Japan invaded China and systematically raped, murder and oppress every single person there. Do you still hate Japan for that 50 years later? I didnt create the atomic bomb, I didnt have any relatives who owned slaves, and I sure as Hell didnt support killing indians and stealing their lands. Chances are a good number of Americans are also like that since many are also migrants. Even if they werent, they probably also have a good amount of Indian blood in them so it would be kind of weird to hate them or their ancesters...

I also think many people outside Americans misconstrued why so many people voted for Bush. It wasnt out of love or respect for him, it was out of fear. I asked all my relatives why they voted for Bush and they said it was because they thought that Kerry would be a weak foreign policy leader and that he would get more Americans killed. Of course that thinking is wrong, but that didnt stop Bush from capitolizing on it. Many of my friends and family agree that Bush did real poorly on the domestic front (weak economy, lots of jobs lost, rising debt).

Bush is a terrible leader, but he is a master politician. He ran on a campaign of fear and most Americans bought it.

One of the many, many Americans that I think is a really outstanding is Mark Twain.
Here is a link to some of his quotations on Patriotism.
http://www.twainquotes.com/Patriotism.html