Posted on 04/19/2006 5:32:55 PM PDT by Uncledave
You are missing something. Yeah, maybe the country should not be written off. Having never been there I can't judge either way. But one thing is clear from the articles that he pointed out. The fact that they were printed does NOT mean those things are not common. If is very clear they youths beating up bystanders is common and these cases were only reported because of the severity of the injury that resulted. How many other cases did the victim only get some bruises or a broken bone and recovered within weeks. Such stories would not get reported.
Probably
Some of the stories he talks about are merely outrageous rather than injurous (e.g., the "gay" horse). Therefore your theory is out the window on the first go. The fact that we are supposed to be outraged by these stories indicates how uncommon they are, and how they grate on our sense of justice. If our sense of justice was not provoked by these stories, then I'd be packing my bags for Australia. But they do, and so I'm not.
Ivan
I thought about this yesterday when I had to go to a mall. I generally rarely interact with the masses here (just south of SF), but I have noticed that they are just becoming more and more ignorant. And I don't just mean their complete lack of formal education, but also the values that they take seriously.
If I see one more middle-class white or Asian kid with his pants around his knees and a baseball cap on sideways, I'm gonna go postal.
One kid I who walked past me yesterday had on the full gangsta attire - cami shirt, cami-jacket, the requisite bling, the cami SF Giants hat on sideways and his cami pants around his thighs. I think I must have been smirking because he turned around to look at me - obviously trying to decide if he wanted to confront me for "dissin'" him. He wisely chose not to, but you could tell he was thinking it.
From Homer Simpson to SpongeBob to the latest rap lyrics, ignorance is celebrated in this country. And if you're going to listen to SpongeBob, why wouldn't you listen George Clooney?
But unfortunately, ignorance isn't the opposite of reason, violence is. And the violence which comes from ignorance is alive and well and growing here in the US.
RE post #2, first thing I thought of.
"But unfortunately, ignorance isn't the opposite of reason, violence is."
Nice thought for the day, thanks.
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