American Values

[Ripley]

There is only One American Value and it is Money. I get so tired of hearing about how *good* Americans are at heart and how they value hard work and helping their neighbor. What utter bullshit for the most part. Perhaps each and everyone one of us can identify one good person who lived their lives based on that credo, but that is a testimony to Good People, not American People. And Good People existed before America and since America and especially now, they seem to be more easily found Outside of America.

I’m sure the usual suspects will pounce upon me as being a *Blame America Firster* while they offer nothing but platitudes about constitutional democracy and freedom of speech (which btw, are both in question as to whether they really exist or not in the USA today).

Of course a lot of the blame lies at the feet of the NeoFeudalistic Corporate Entities that have taken over American Media, Education, and most importantly Government. But frankly I can’t give a pass to all You enabling men and women who WATCH and BUY and PARTICIPATE in the charades of celebrity worship, scare tactics and scapegoating that goes on like clock work. Blame a Group and Feel Good ‘cause You ain’t in that Group!

The aftermath of Katrina revealed some very ugly sides of America, including some from my own family members. I found it very strange that my friend in Canada was more upset and concerned about the poor folks displaced from New Orleans than so many of my fellow Americans.

If Americans were such Good Hearted Folks who helped other people, why do we See the Rich sliming Richer at an alarming rate while the poor are sinking faster and harder?

America values What? People who will whore themselves in the News business by looking Porn-good, but having Zero journalistic capabilities? People who will humiliate themselves and eat bugs on national TV? People who are already filthy rich but choose to massage their own Ego’s by having their Magic Mirror Shows?

America Today is not known for Accepting:

Art for Arts Sake.
Science for the Pure Endeavor.
Open Discussion and Interpretation of Anything that does not raise a dollar.

The Only True American Value that ever was and is increasing day by day is:

Dog Eat Dog.

[butterfly77]

1. You said it better than I...

my sentiments exactly.

[Ripley]

2. Okay..

Thanks for agreeing, oh hidden one.

[orpupilofnature57]

3. Metaphysics ,thats what he's robbed us of ,learning for it's own sake

Image has replaced imagination.

[Ripley]

7. Exactly

Imagination is defined in America as: Disneyshit. Or retro-recycling.

Where shun should be, there is embrace. And it is all about chasing green.

[sweetheart]

4. parallel in the waves

Born of the social stresses of Europe, the United States is not divorced, nor exceptional, now since the bush coup of 2000, the republic is replaced with a shadow monarchy. Then for intelligent peoples, begs inquiry as to why the consensus of hegemony still stands, and what we are really supporting with the vote of complicity.

So are you telling me that the people struggled for centuries to wind up unconscionably contained in a totalitarian system where political choice is reduced to consumer choices over rival brands in a political economy monoculture?

Are you tonguetied?

Do you sometimes just feel the complex utter frustration of this, and no words can possibly convey, really the hopeless malaise of this cynical bush/bliar world. In a few fell acts, a constitution and a liberal society have fallen to another napoleon. And as his army rampages across Asia in the name of the greater good, the monopolists pop the champagne at their ability to defy all forms of regulation.

But the army is removed from the conformity that empowers its single edge. The society of the militarist army hive-mind conforms to retain its hardness, to pack 100 men in to a submarine and have them run like part of the machine… to meld men into the very machine that most religion disdains as mammon, or some secular fallen aspect to sensual defection, robotically enhanced, society is utterly conformed to its system of state authoritarianism and socialism for the military elites that they can rule like dukes and not be dissatisfied to rebel subtly in the greater command of things.

And so we all are to be ‘conformed’ to the brainwashing of the day, that we all learn to repeat the convenient truths the gatekeepers are testing with, and through such a semantic delusion, the new militarist society is planned to spread around the world as the new economy walls in every person in to a mideival hut, beholden to their company bosses for the priviledge of work, and for that, conformity to the 9-5 complicity of ‘Yes. Whatever you say, Bossman.’

We are not able to be stupid anymore, ignorant at all, people are so busy pretending to be smart and expert to the tune of the bossman, and the smartest are fearful of being knocked off the top of the hill, as if knowledge is a competition of violence to make the most money for your bigger and better capabilities. Being ignorant, is to be ridiculed, to be declared a fundamentalist, as by our culture we are all rigidly conformed to a set of social narratives with fundamentalist precision. One where likely as an individual, like unreflected has not exposed how much what seems to be special about you, is as common as plastic, preprogrammed in every movie, and now that nothing is unique, and there are clones of everything you say, do, fuck, or think somewhere else on the planet, then who made bush god?

[Ripley]

8. Oh, sweetheart.

Thanks.

You have lots of words that ring and rhyme and I don't have such a gift of words, I make pictures. Here's one for You:

[sweetheart]

9. it was a very lovely image

I did see it!! :-)

Thank you.

[Ripley]

10. Dayum

You saw this when it was way big. Maybe now smaller. Title: The Near Loss Of Blue.

[sweetheart]

11. fewer spiders

I'm glad you don't have spiders on the red part, as it already hints to the
regurgatory instinct, the red puke and an island of such pure blue, and
a thousand canvasses of the total victory of blue.

... in another exhibit, in another country.

[Ripley]

12. Never

enough Moon. SHITSKY.

[patrice]

5. I don't know. Really, what do "they" say about why we are better

than other countries? I really would like to know.

If it's devotion to Freedom, I have to say that our economic system requires Everything you've got to keep up. Most of us don't know the first thing about Freedom, because we're slaves to making a living, just barely.

Are we more courageous? I suppose there is something called courage, but I'm not sure about the difference between dying for something in Iraq and dying when you fly a plane into a sky scraper.

Are we more honest? I see too many Hummers and SUVs on the road to believe that.

Do we Love more completely? The divorce rate in this country is at least bad as it is in other countries and love appears often to be more need than anything else. Even for children, it is often the need for them to prove to us that our sacrifices weren't for "nothing".

Are we more spiritual? Spirituality appears to be more quid pro quo than anything else.

Do we work harder? Not if there's any way possible to avoid it.

Are we stronger? How many of us would survive without air-conditioners and cars?

Are we more intelligent? Invasion and Occupation of Iraq - 'nuf said?

What else is there? Why EXACTLY are we better than other countries?

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Money, which leads to greed

which leaads to screw others over... yep, you are very right...

Welcome to America, the land of the screw you over, as many times as possible

[TheWatcher]

13. American Values

At least those I've seen from the Right-Wingers:

Greed, Arrogance, Ignorance, Intolerance, Selfishness, "I Got Mine, Fuck Everyone Else", Apathy, Vanity, Underhandedness, Dishonesty, Belligerence, Hate, Pre-Emptive Violence, Pre-Emptive War,
Groupthink.....

Did I miss anything?

[Odin2005]

14. The US doesn't have the ages-old social bonds that stabilize Europe.

Everyone in this country (except for Native Americans) are decended from immigrants that left the old country to come here, breaking ages-old social bonds in the process. Those immigrants would had to have had a bit of a "libertarian" streak to have decided to break those social bonds and come here as well, so prehaps there is something genetic to it. The self-centered, selfish, "Libertarian" mentality that permiates American society is directly the result of that.

[kdpeters]

15. There is merit in what you say my friend, but frankly ...

But frankly I can’t give a pass to all You enabling men and women who WATCH and BUY and PARTICIPATE in the charades of celebrity worship, scare tactics and scapegoating that goes on like clock work. Blame a Group and Feel Good ‘cause You ain’t in that Group!

I can't give you a pass either. Have you given up on your countrymen? Do you let them win? Do you cede ownership of America and American Values to be defined by the amoral, moneyed, hedonists who pit the people against each other the way you attack fellow Americans exactly as they planned? You don't even know how you've been manipulated to PARTICIPATE in division so we remain powerless and subservient and blaming each other.

Read your post again and ask yourself if you really have the right to criticize others for offering nothing.