Let me help in whatever small way...The problem begins with referring to our country as America.
It should be called The United States of America, The United States, or The US for brevity.
Referring to our country as America is the beginning of socialism.
How do you figure?
in fact, you startled me, reminding me that i, too, have become a little sloppy in my thinking.
nevertheless, and not intending to take issue in any way with what you say, i do know for a fact that this country, by whatever name, stood for something/meant something/represented something when i was growing up in the fifties and sixties.
take, for example, the civil rights movement during that time. that movement was successful because the majority of people in this country (whites, especially) knew that the treatment and condition of blacks in this country was wrong, and they were unwilling to have government perpetuate it in their name.
(yes, that is theory, and i doubt the movement would have recieved such widespread support had most understood where it all would have led us.
the anti-war movement of the sixties, too, was tolerated because we, either as a nation, or an aggregation of individual states honestly believed in the freedoms guaranteed by the first amendment. ("this is america, and people can say what they want, and all that.")
as any fool knows, those things alone mightily distinguished this country from others. i knew a girl who went and studied in spain when franco still ruled, and i was stunned to hear her say that one was not permitted to criticize him in public.
growing up on a diet of post world war ii television and movies, i thought we had won the war, and the world was safe for democracy, and all that. a bit naive, i now realize, but nevertheless i grew up with those ideals solidly in my heart that i believe people fought and died for during the first couple hundred years of our country's history.
all of a sudden, i find myself wondering whether the nazis didn't win, after all.
it is said that we are a nation of laws, and not of men. well, maybe that's true, and maybe it's not.
but look at who is making those laws: hitlery clintoon, tom-tom dasshole, ruth buzzy ginsburg. ugh. and the current crop of republicans are nothing to be proud of. ugh. ugh.
and look at those laws: laws that celebrate homosexuality, and denigrate normal religious values, especially christianity. laws that allow the lazy and corrupt to live better than our children, and at their expense (and ours). confiscatory taxes. petty government employees with guns who can break down your door in the middle of the night and shoot you dead with impunity, even if you are innocent of any crime. government authorized to snoop on every aspect of your life. an ongoing invasion of this country that government refuses to do anything about.
i don't WANT to speak spanish.
i went to law school about 20 years ago. a decade or so later, when all of a sudden drunk driving checkpoints, seat belt check points, child safety seat check points, etc. were proposed, i laughed - such things were PLAINLY unconstitutional based on the constitution, two hundred years of jurisprudence, and what any fool knew.
huh.
last night, i watched collateral damage (arnie flick). in columbia, there was the obligatory road block scene, shaking down and harrassing the peasants. a couple shot dead just 'cause, etc.
well, yes ... i've always had a flair for the dramatic, but i see what is going on in america's airports (and elsewhere) right now as being a lot more like that, than the america i recall.