Is America Dead?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

Corporations, not people or ideas control our lives.

People are being tortured under the guise of America.

Candidates for public office are discredited for wounds received in battle.

The rich control lives like never before.

We are going to foreign countries to gain control of their natural resources.

Our judiciary is being stacked.

Our rights are being usurped in the name of "protection from terror."

The media is owned by the people who want to control us.

"Americans" make excuses for unusual punishment and capital punishments.

We are being led by whores to the corporatacity and people rally behind the whores.

Is America dead?

If I'm the only one who sees this, it is.

[EST]

1. Need You ask?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

10. Guess not. Rhetorical? At least.

We have been sold to the highest bidder,

[PatrioticLeftie]

2. As before, I believe the answer is a firm no

n/t

[joemurphy]

6. Nope. It's alive.

People know what's going on and they're sick of it. The worm will turn in 2006. The Bush pigeons you've enumerated have all come home to roost and their droppings are everywhere. And Americans don't like it.

The Republicans have been on a sustained down ever since the Schiavo affair. Katrina blew them away. They're toast.

[bridgit]

3. i think that America The Beautiful is doing just fine, but her 'leaders'..

they have been whistling her past the graveyard for far too long, 100's of years in fact :cry:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

4. Did the America

we thought we had ever really exist?

The other day I got trounced in a thread for saying some nice things about the Fifties!

We get some things on track (like abortion, some level of gay rights) and the rest goes to hell.

It reminds me of a game my kids use to play at Chuckie Cheese, 25 years ago. These plastic prairie dogs would pop out of holes one at a time. You would hit it with a big rubber mallet and another would pop out of another hole.

[MrModerate]

5. Actually, it's been this bad before.

Check out the 1840s-1860s, and then the 1870s-1900.

Most of what you cite (or the equivalent) was going on then. What makes it seem so different is (primarily) electronic communications and auto/air transportation, so that the tentacles of influence grip tighter (and faster) these days.

Not to make you feel better, or anything -- they didn't have genetic engineering -- as in Bird Flu (TM) -- or The Bomb.

Is America dead? Naah. Could this pack of traitors, turds, and thieves kill it? You bet.

[classof56]

7. I see it, too, as do many others, I've noticed. Does that mean...

that America is not dead? I am frightened beyond all words, but my hope lies in the knowledge that you and hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens see the truth and the truth will make us free. America's death is unacceptable. We must not give up the battle and we must win!

Tired Old Cynic

[acmejack]

8. As we used to know it, it certainly is.

It has passed the point of recovery. The determined enemies of the people have degraded our Country to the point of economic, ecological, civic and spiritual collapse.

I only hope we can build something out of the ruins.

[Greyhound]

9. Not dead yet, but needs resuscitation. n/t

[Olney Blue]

11. America is moribund, but not dead.

It needs life support- an infusion of nourishing ideas and ideals.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. No. But, it's dying a lingering death.

There's a revolution going on but we like to call it "terrorism" or "insurgency". The rest of the world is weary of paying our bills and supplying our bottomless greed.

We like to think that we live in a democracy with 2 parties to choose from. But, the truth is that we have one party with two similar wings controlled by the monied interests that pay their way for their own ends.

Hopefully, the decline and fall will lead to a civilized country, or countries, that will join with the rest of the world instead of trying to dominate it.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

13. Sorry. IMHO. AMERICA'S FUCKING DEAD AND BURIED..

The corporations diguised as the republican party have usurped every vein of power like vampyres on holiday.

We have been dead for years and don't even know it. We are bought and paid for.

[JanMichael]

20. Money owns the Democratic Party too, not just the Repukes.

Just had to add that in case someone forgot:-)

[uppityperson]

14. America? Where God is money?

Where money is power and the powerhungry continue to propagandize that the only way for the minions to achieve happiness is to continue to buy what they produce? That America? No, that one is alive and struggling to continue on. The revolution is coming again.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

17. Spot on.

Carry on. The truth is hard here.

[Marr]

15. The 'ideal past America' you reference never existed.

Our history is one long, brutal struggle between the weak and the powerful. From segregation on back through the days of the robber barons and the labor movements, slavery before that, indian genocides, indentured servitude of poor Irish immigrants and the man-made famines that brought them... back and back. That's human history.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

16. Gawd, I hate the truth...

[Angry Girl]

18. America as we knew it is dead. The global balance of power

has shifted and India and China are where it's at. We haven't been "No. 1" in some time and won't be again for at least the next few centuries.

And, of course, the amazingly wigged out Bush administration has catapulted us with ever-increasing speed into these new Dark Ages, with little help from anyone else.

Here's a great little list of factoids by Michael Ventura, courtesy of CityPages.com (February 2005):

America by the numbers
http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp

[orpupilofnature57]

19. Nope, just being held hostage!!! ShrubCo must GO !!!!

[RagAss]

21. It died in 2000.........

[xray s]

24. actually I believe it died in 1963

November 22 in Dallas, specifically.

[zippy890]

22. america is going through a troubled adolescence

its hard to say at this point whether this country is going to make it to adulthood.

[Arugula Latte]

23. Don't forget: Extremist religious nuts are imposing their agenda

I don't know if we're dead, but we've got one foot in the grave, I'd say.

[xray s]

25. absolutely, and the threat is not being taken seriously

They believe the universe is 6000 years old, dinosaurs lived with humans 5000 years ago, a pair of all species on earth went into an ark and the entire planet was flooded for a year, after which these pairs repopulated the entire earth and that we are now on the threshold of a global conflagration that they will be raptured away from and will watch from God's great sky box in the sky.

Anyone who believe these things will believe anything and can easily be manipulated by political despots that cloak themselves in the rhetoric of religious fundamentalism.

We make chuckle at these ideas, but tens of millions of Americans believe them blindly.

This country had traveled far down a road to ruin.

[Catchawave]

26. I don't think America's *dead*

..but I did tell my repuggy-warhawk-veteran hubster of 36 years, that if there's a civil war, I will be "taking arms against him". However, on the downside, he is not willing to teach me how to shoot.

:banghead:

[Greyhound]

28. Where do yo live? I'll gladly teach you and any others around Phoenix n/t

[IntravenousDemilo]

27. No, no, it's just resting.

It's tired and shagged out after a long squawk.