Dhamma Wheel Buddhist Forum

Don't worry, they won't let it be shut down for long. Else, people might start to realize how useless the majority of government is.

Kim OHara wrote:

shut-down.jpg

Free healthcare and everyone not packing heat? How will our for-profit medical cabal make billions, yet deny cancer treatments to a young mother? ? How we will shoot each other over an argument over a parking space? Next thing you know you Aussies will make us import these lousy critters http://carlaspeaks.files.wordpress.com/ ... ngaroo.jpg

Kim, it's sad but true. The US has jumped the shark...just this week in Illinois, they announced a backlog of permit applications for concealed carry (handguns). That means thousands of people want permission to carry guns wherever they go. The US has completely lost its collective mind, and I'm thinking of exporting my children to Australia or Ireland just so they don't have to live in a country where people carry guns, waiting for an opportunity to start shooting. Crazy, crazy, crazy country, we are, in some ways.

Even so, you have wallabies running loose everywhere....

BuddhaSoup wrote:

Kim OHara wrote:

shut-down.jpg

Free healthcare and everyone not packing heat? How will our for-profit medical cabal make billions, yet deny cancer treatments to a young mother? ? How we will shoot each other over an argument over a parking space? Next thing you know you Aussies will make us import these lousy critters http://carlaspeaks.files.wordpress.com/ ... ngaroo.jpg

Kim, it's sad but true. The US has jumped the shark...just this week in Illinois, they announced a backlog of permit applications for concealed carry (handguns). That means thousands of people want permission to carry guns wherever they go. The US has completely lost its collective mind, and I'm thinking of exporting my children to Australia or Ireland just so they don't have to live in a country where people carry guns, waiting for an opportunity to start shooting. Crazy, crazy, crazy country, we are, in some ways.

Even so, you have wallabies running loose everywhere....

Hi, BuddhaSoup,
You and your children would be very welcome here so come on over any time - no need to be scared of the wallabies.
I have been thinking for years that most of the Americans I meet are nice but that American society and its political system are not. I don't know what went wrong but I'm sure the first step to fixing it is for Americans to see America as outsiders see it, because it's painfully obvious that the view from the inside is like the view from inside the asylum: it looks "normal".
Good luck!


Kim

Sadly, what is being seen with this "shut down" are the paroxysms of racial fear as the country comes to grips with the inevitable browning of America. The "Tea Party," the "Birthers," those ossified old white male politicians who vowed to make Obama a one term president, those talking heads who insist that Obama does not share American values are all symptomatic of this fear -- a fear driven home by the fact that we now have an uppity black man White House. At great possibility of seriously damaging the US, the fearful ones strive for Obama's failure as if this will hold back the inevitable changes in culture this country is experiencing, moving from a white protestant majority to something quite different.

Kim OHara wrote:I have been thinking for years that most of the Americans I meet are nice but that American society and its political system are not. I don't know what went wrong but I'm sure the first step to fixing it is for Americans to see America as outsiders see it, because it's painfully obvious that the view from the inside is like the view from inside the asylum: it looks "normal".
Good luck!

Wow. Thanks, Kim.

Out of curiosity, have you spent any time here?

Living in America, I could ask you the same question SDC, Kim seems to be spot on........

32 years

I never said kim wasn't, but I'm sure he/she appreciates the enthusiastic backup. You seem soooo eager for me to say something you don't agree with.

lyndon taylor wrote:Living in America, I could ask you the same question SDC, Kim seems to be spot on........

Not spot on, not without a great more commentary.

Kim is spot on. And an example of that is the gun debate. I definitely don't want to have that debate, especialy in the context of DW. It's just to point out that you (the average american, I mean) are so deep in it that you don't realise that you're seen, by foreigners, as like being in a cult. And this applies to war, healthcare, education, barbarian capitalism, religious fundamentalism _ just to name the main ones.

45 years

Coming from Australia, one of the biggest problems I see in America, and in most Americans opinion one of the greatest things about America, is their 235 year old constitution and form of government, half the problems we have relate to the constitution and government no longer being relevent or appropriate to the modern age. For instance the constitutional right to bear arms, was the right to own single muzzle loading rifles or shotguns, not handguns with 20 clips, or semi automatic machine guns. The rules of congress and how congress decides the laws were all developed many years before the parlimentary governments many other countries have today, so it would seem a lot of the problems in the pre existing American system had the kinks worked out of them by countries that developed their laws and or constitutions later. Hence for people from these countries, the American government seems somewhat nonsensical and irrational, and for good reason, its 235 years out of date.......