Roger from Oklahoma - Reality
Dear America,
I read many of these letters to America but they are really not addressed to America. They are addressed to the writer's concept and visions of America, a phantasm created by their own cultures media, American TV and movies, and their own personal experiences.
I live in America. People in America don’t consume energy at three times the rate of a European. People don’t go and buy buy buy. People don’t live in houses like those in American TV. They don’t have police stations in America like in CSI. People in America do not act like the Americans in TV shows. New York has almost nothing to do with the rest of the United States.
People in America do worry about money. They scrimp on gasoline. They pay enormous taxes to live in a house. They shop on craig's list. Many people have never been on an airplane. They have never traveled more than 500 miles from their houses. Many who live west of the Mississippi have never been east of the Mississippi. Many people in the South have never been in NY. People in Iowa dream of visiting San Francisco.
People in America are consumed by the work of daily life. They say live and let live, but dont impose your religion or morality or way of life on us. And "your" could be the morality and religion of Washington, or Paris, or Oslo, or Mogadishu.
People in America are puzzled by TV news which tries to lie to them by presenting versions of reality rather than news, to once great papers like the New York Times which seem to be run by college dropouts from Soviet Union think tanks, by fanatics like Al Gore or David Dukes.
People in America see danger around the world stemming not from armies massing in distant countries, but my a politicization of false beliefs held by people both within and without her borders.
About the Author:
Name: Roger Hornbeck
Age: 47
Country: United States
City: Tulsa
State: Oklahoma
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Retired
Experience With US: Currently Live in the United States
I read many of these letters to America but they are really not addressed to America. They are addressed to the writer's concept and visions of America, a phantasm created by their own cultures media, American TV and movies, and their own personal experiences.
I live in America. People in America don’t consume energy at three times the rate of a European. People don’t go and buy buy buy. People don’t live in houses like those in American TV. They don’t have police stations in America like in CSI. People in America do not act like the Americans in TV shows. New York has almost nothing to do with the rest of the United States.
People in America do worry about money. They scrimp on gasoline. They pay enormous taxes to live in a house. They shop on craig's list. Many people have never been on an airplane. They have never traveled more than 500 miles from their houses. Many who live west of the Mississippi have never been east of the Mississippi. Many people in the South have never been in NY. People in Iowa dream of visiting San Francisco.
People in America are consumed by the work of daily life. They say live and let live, but dont impose your religion or morality or way of life on us. And "your" could be the morality and religion of Washington, or Paris, or Oslo, or Mogadishu.
People in America are puzzled by TV news which tries to lie to them by presenting versions of reality rather than news, to once great papers like the New York Times which seem to be run by college dropouts from Soviet Union think tanks, by fanatics like Al Gore or David Dukes.
People in America see danger around the world stemming not from armies massing in distant countries, but my a politicization of false beliefs held by people both within and without her borders.
About the Author:
Name: Roger Hornbeck
Age: 47
Country: United States
City: Tulsa
State: Oklahoma
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Retired
Experience With US: Currently Live in the United States
Labels: 40's, consumerism, foreign policy, male, media, medium income, morality, oklahoma, retired
John from Pennsylvania
Dear Global Community,
I'll worry about the US when the wall under construction on our southern border is being built to keep me in instead of keeping them out.
About the Author
Name: John Cunningham
Age: 59
City: Haverford
State: PA
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Retired
1 Comments
Published on at 8:00 AM.
I'll worry about the US when the wall under construction on our southern border is being built to keep me in instead of keeping them out.
About the Author
Name: John Cunningham
Age: 59
City: Haverford
State: PA
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Retired
Labels: 50's, immigration, male, medium income, pennsylvania, retired
Larry from Alabama
Dear Global Community,
I was going thru some of the letters that were submitted and just wanted to voice my opinion about a few things. But first, a thing or two about myself. I'm a Southerner here in the States and a Republican as well. I voted for President Bush and I support his policy on Iraq as well as Iran.
I think that President Bush was right to go into Iraq. He tried to go the diplomatic route, but it didn't work. He tried to go thru the United Nations, but all the wanted to do was the same thing they'd been doing for over a decade. Give empty warnings to Iraq. Saddam had been committing atrocities for years in that country, and what did the UN do about it? Nothing. He was accumulating weapons of mass destruction. And it wasn't just the intelligence agency of America saying so. France and Britain and a host of other countries. So in my opinion, President Bush didn't have a choice in the matter. It was either address the issue, or sit back and do nothing until we had another Hitler on our hands.
As for Iran, I honestly can't understand how anyone in this world could fault us for taking an aggressive stance with them. Who could possibly think that a nuclear Iran wouldn't be dangerous? And besides, we've tried the diplomatic route by offering them aid, financial assistance, lifting trade embargos, etc etc. And yet their leader continues to spew rhetoric about how they have a right to nuclear power.
And lastly, I do agree with the people who've mentioned that America shouldn't be the world's police. But frankly, I don't see anybody else stepping up to the plate to do it.
About the Author
Name: Larry
Age: 36
State: Alabama
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Technical
2 Comments
Published on at 7:52 AM.
I was going thru some of the letters that were submitted and just wanted to voice my opinion about a few things. But first, a thing or two about myself. I'm a Southerner here in the States and a Republican as well. I voted for President Bush and I support his policy on Iraq as well as Iran.
I think that President Bush was right to go into Iraq. He tried to go the diplomatic route, but it didn't work. He tried to go thru the United Nations, but all the wanted to do was the same thing they'd been doing for over a decade. Give empty warnings to Iraq. Saddam had been committing atrocities for years in that country, and what did the UN do about it? Nothing. He was accumulating weapons of mass destruction. And it wasn't just the intelligence agency of America saying so. France and Britain and a host of other countries. So in my opinion, President Bush didn't have a choice in the matter. It was either address the issue, or sit back and do nothing until we had another Hitler on our hands.
As for Iran, I honestly can't understand how anyone in this world could fault us for taking an aggressive stance with them. Who could possibly think that a nuclear Iran wouldn't be dangerous? And besides, we've tried the diplomatic route by offering them aid, financial assistance, lifting trade embargos, etc etc. And yet their leader continues to spew rhetoric about how they have a right to nuclear power.
And lastly, I do agree with the people who've mentioned that America shouldn't be the world's police. But frankly, I don't see anybody else stepping up to the plate to do it.
About the Author
Name: Larry
Age: 36
State: Alabama
Gender: Male
Income: Medium
Occupation: Technical
Labels: 30's, alabama, iraq war, male, medium income, middle east policy, republican, technical, united nations
Cristobal from Arizona
Dear Global Community,
Where to start...
Americans are complex, passionate, organized, yet troubled individuals, just like everyone else in the world. People seem to hate us, we see Palestinians, for example, burning effigies of Americans in their dusty streets (it seems to be a different group every week, depending on where the president goes and what he says, where he doesn't go...)
People (by people, I mean foreigners) also seem to think they know something about us we, ourselves, don't know....because their news source is The Economist, and our news sources are biased, of course.
The problem might be in our animal nature, in what St. Agustine called the libido dominandi, the will to dominate. Every sentient being, including plants, competes to survive. In order for me to have, I must take. This includes the will to win arguments, to give advice and demand our conversers take it, to be right...or to pretend to be the bigger person by allowing the other person to be right.
If someone has what I want, I might try to take it, and if I lose the challenge and I can't take the thing I want by force or by negotiation, I become resentful.
Envy is another important element in "America hatred"
Competition has always made people hate each other. Or maybe it was the people in power who made the people hate each other in order to make them fight harder against their common enemy. Or in order to make them fight at all. Every nation on earth, by virtue of its existence, is in competition, even if there is no competition. (I mean even if we are dealing with countries on opposite sides of the development line.)
It is easy to turn the "other" into the enemy, for the sake of a common enemy, if for nothing else. This builds camraderie among the citizens....There are many benefits.
I can go on forever. This stuff is too dense to talk about in a single letter. And even if I did talk about everything, I'd still remain an ignorant American who doesn't really know what's going on in the world because I'm too busy ridin' my atv (the foreigners "prawlly" have no idea what the hell that is) and being ensconced in my affluence to see the world as it really is.
Here's another idea. In the states, we only see the more sophisticated foreigners who speak English and have enough money to come here. And since we're students, we are mostly acquainted with those foreigners who decide to go for a degree here. This is like the .0001th percentile. I have Mexican relatives who contemplated how long it would take to get to Spain by bus. This is unfathomable here. There are people in the world who still believe in magic (yes, even in the states) we all know some of the ridiculous things people in the world believe. My point is that we Americans tend to think foreigners are somehow intelligent. Or more intelligent than ourselves. We associate intelligence with Einstein's foreign accent, and since the idiots from the Frankfurt School had the same accent, we thought they, too, were intelligent.
Foreigners came up with such disastrous catastrophes as the Holocaust, Slavery, Imperialism, communism...the US came up with the A-bomb to end all of that non-sense.
Our empire will have been dwarfed by the greatness of the Roman Empire. Let us have our day in the sun. Maybe I should say, We shall have our day in the sun.
"Once more onto the breach dear friends, once more. or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there is nothing more becomes a man than modest stillness and humility, but when the sounds of war ring in our ears, imitate the action of the Tiger"
-from Shakespeare's Henry V.
About the Author
Name: Cristobal Colon
Age: 26
City: Tempe/Mesa
State: Arizona
Gender: Male
Income: Low
Occupation: Conceptual Artist
0 Comments
Published on at 7:44 AM.
Where to start...
Americans are complex, passionate, organized, yet troubled individuals, just like everyone else in the world. People seem to hate us, we see Palestinians, for example, burning effigies of Americans in their dusty streets (it seems to be a different group every week, depending on where the president goes and what he says, where he doesn't go...)
People (by people, I mean foreigners) also seem to think they know something about us we, ourselves, don't know....because their news source is The Economist, and our news sources are biased, of course.
The problem might be in our animal nature, in what St. Agustine called the libido dominandi, the will to dominate. Every sentient being, including plants, competes to survive. In order for me to have, I must take. This includes the will to win arguments, to give advice and demand our conversers take it, to be right...or to pretend to be the bigger person by allowing the other person to be right.
If someone has what I want, I might try to take it, and if I lose the challenge and I can't take the thing I want by force or by negotiation, I become resentful.
Envy is another important element in "America hatred"
Competition has always made people hate each other. Or maybe it was the people in power who made the people hate each other in order to make them fight harder against their common enemy. Or in order to make them fight at all. Every nation on earth, by virtue of its existence, is in competition, even if there is no competition. (I mean even if we are dealing with countries on opposite sides of the development line.)
It is easy to turn the "other" into the enemy, for the sake of a common enemy, if for nothing else. This builds camraderie among the citizens....There are many benefits.
I can go on forever. This stuff is too dense to talk about in a single letter. And even if I did talk about everything, I'd still remain an ignorant American who doesn't really know what's going on in the world because I'm too busy ridin' my atv (the foreigners "prawlly" have no idea what the hell that is) and being ensconced in my affluence to see the world as it really is.
Here's another idea. In the states, we only see the more sophisticated foreigners who speak English and have enough money to come here. And since we're students, we are mostly acquainted with those foreigners who decide to go for a degree here. This is like the .0001th percentile. I have Mexican relatives who contemplated how long it would take to get to Spain by bus. This is unfathomable here. There are people in the world who still believe in magic (yes, even in the states) we all know some of the ridiculous things people in the world believe. My point is that we Americans tend to think foreigners are somehow intelligent. Or more intelligent than ourselves. We associate intelligence with Einstein's foreign accent, and since the idiots from the Frankfurt School had the same accent, we thought they, too, were intelligent.
Foreigners came up with such disastrous catastrophes as the Holocaust, Slavery, Imperialism, communism...the US came up with the A-bomb to end all of that non-sense.
Our empire will have been dwarfed by the greatness of the Roman Empire. Let us have our day in the sun. Maybe I should say, We shall have our day in the sun.
"Once more onto the breach dear friends, once more. or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there is nothing more becomes a man than modest stillness and humility, but when the sounds of war ring in our ears, imitate the action of the Tiger"
-from Shakespeare's Henry V.
About the Author
Name: Cristobal Colon
Age: 26
City: Tempe/Mesa
State: Arizona
Gender: Male
Income: Low
Occupation: Conceptual Artist
Labels: american history, americans, anti-americanism, arizona, artist, foreigners, middle east policy
William from Florida
Dear Global Community,
This will be what may turn out to be a dose of hard truth. I am an American, born in the state of Florida and currently residing in the Tri-State area. What I am about to write here constitutes some strong feelings that have been haunting me for nearly eight years now.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican in my political views, I merely believe in common sense. I understand that no candidate is perfect, and each has their flaws and accolades. I am not merely a "Bush Hater" nor an extreme leftist as I would be eagerly branded by my fellow countrymen.
This has got to stop. The President of the United States is the highest office and elected leader can hold in our country, and with this position one is expected to set an example for the country. Our current leader is neither doing this nor is he interested in the well being of it's citizens.
From the time he has taken office, he has summarily lied to his nation nonstop for personal gain and at our expense. This person has waged war on multiple countries under false pretense. This man has orchestrated the greatest acts of treason in our history with the now blatantly obvious orchestration of the 9/11 "terror" attacks.
We are Americans, and we pride ourselves on not falling for fascism. Our country was founded in this very principle in 1776. We fought fascism in both world wars with success, and we stood up to communism and violations of human rights afterwards.
And yet, somehow, we are quickly losing all of the liberties and freedoms our forefathers lost their lives for. Six years ago when these atrocities began to pour in, it was people like myself who blatantly tried to tell our country it was an inside job, and that he was going to try to send us into a never-ending war.
We were short of persecuted as conspiracy nuts, or eliminated as some type of dissenting witch hunt. Four years into his presidency, when he was up for re-election, we had overwhelming proof from all sides that we were already marching into a fascist regime and that all we had to do was simply elect somebody else in order to put a stop to it.
Yet, this man was re-elected for a second term. He spent the first four years lying to us non-stop, and yet we somehow believed him when he said he was telling the truth for re-election. Many of us still believe he is not and has not lied to the very people he has sworn to protect and serve.
Look, even if you still believe that terrorists did in fact attack the world trade center, you still have to ask why we haven't caught the man responsible. Last time I checked, this is what the war on terror was about - Al Quaeda and the capture of Osama Bin Laden. It has been nearly two presidential terms, and we are waging wars in countries that had little to no connection with the WTC attacks.
And as a country, we are allowing it in our names. This is an atrocity at the very best, and absolute treason at it's worst. The man who has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America has been eroding and eliminating those very same freedoms from day one. At this moment in time, the Bill of Rights has essentially been eliminated, and much of the Constitution itself is under the watchful scrutiny of those who would wish to practice revisionism for their own sake.
We live in an age where information is freely available for the asking. All we have to do is a search on Google, and all of the evidence and proof unfolds. But we simply do not do this for some odd reason.
This inaction reminds me of when Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf detailing every single thing he was planning to do and where he stood on issues, available on bookshelves across the country. And still nobody read it, and after the world war, the people who suffered ignorance and apathy told the world that they had no clue he was doing such horrible things; which was a total fabrication sine people clearly did know ahead of time.
Well, now all of the treasonous acts against our country, the lies, the preemptive wars (ignoring Geneva conventions), the concentration camp known as Guantanamo Bay, the calm elimination of our Bill of Rights at his discretion, and so much more go unnoticed by the majority of people in this country.
And for the people that know these things are going on, it is still a shameful act to sit idly by and allow him to continue. Just because you conquered your ignorance does not mean you can still latch onto your apathy as a convenience.
Is witnessing a murder but doing nothing to stop it, and even authorizing it, still a crime even though your weren't the one to commit the murder? Of course it is... so why is it so hard to accept what is going on, and then stand up to it?
Remember, doing nothing but watching as a murderer pulls the trigger makes you just as guilty as doing it yourself. And this is a concept I truly hope hits home with this country.
I still would like to believe that America and it's citizens are not as stupid and apathetic as the rest of the world seems to believe. So far though I have little to disprove the rest of the world, and I simply wish above all else that we as a people finally put our feet down and say enough is enough.
We owe it to our founding fathers.
We owe it to ourselves.
We owe it to future generations.
When my son or daughter looks back in the history books and reads about this time period, and when this child looks me in the eyes and asks his or her daddy what he did during these times to try and stop it - I will say in all honesty "Everything I could."
I believe it's high time the rest of America legitimately make that claim as well, making our forefathers proud. The rest of the world used to look up to us (maybe not the French) and now they see us as a threat to Freedom, Democracy and Liberty.
Pretty ironic since we as a country apparently live by that code. We are simply acting shameful and like cowards. This man, George W Bush, is garnering Unilateral power over America... and no, this is not a good thing. All I am asking is to make some waves, let this administration know their actions will not be tolerated. There is so much more I wish to say in this letter, but I realize that I couldn't possibly cover a fraction of what this man has done in our names.
So I will simply close this open letter to America, hoping that the components which enlighten you, as well as motivate you.
Sincerely,
William Burns III
About the Author
Name: William Burns III
Age: 28
Country: USA
Gender: Male
Occupation: VR Designer
Website: http://www.vr5-online.com
1 Comments
Published on Saturday, March 3, 2007 at 1:40 AM.
This will be what may turn out to be a dose of hard truth. I am an American, born in the state of Florida and currently residing in the Tri-State area. What I am about to write here constitutes some strong feelings that have been haunting me for nearly eight years now.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican in my political views, I merely believe in common sense. I understand that no candidate is perfect, and each has their flaws and accolades. I am not merely a "Bush Hater" nor an extreme leftist as I would be eagerly branded by my fellow countrymen.
This has got to stop. The President of the United States is the highest office and elected leader can hold in our country, and with this position one is expected to set an example for the country. Our current leader is neither doing this nor is he interested in the well being of it's citizens.
From the time he has taken office, he has summarily lied to his nation nonstop for personal gain and at our expense. This person has waged war on multiple countries under false pretense. This man has orchestrated the greatest acts of treason in our history with the now blatantly obvious orchestration of the 9/11 "terror" attacks.
We are Americans, and we pride ourselves on not falling for fascism. Our country was founded in this very principle in 1776. We fought fascism in both world wars with success, and we stood up to communism and violations of human rights afterwards.
And yet, somehow, we are quickly losing all of the liberties and freedoms our forefathers lost their lives for. Six years ago when these atrocities began to pour in, it was people like myself who blatantly tried to tell our country it was an inside job, and that he was going to try to send us into a never-ending war.
We were short of persecuted as conspiracy nuts, or eliminated as some type of dissenting witch hunt. Four years into his presidency, when he was up for re-election, we had overwhelming proof from all sides that we were already marching into a fascist regime and that all we had to do was simply elect somebody else in order to put a stop to it.
Yet, this man was re-elected for a second term. He spent the first four years lying to us non-stop, and yet we somehow believed him when he said he was telling the truth for re-election. Many of us still believe he is not and has not lied to the very people he has sworn to protect and serve.
Look, even if you still believe that terrorists did in fact attack the world trade center, you still have to ask why we haven't caught the man responsible. Last time I checked, this is what the war on terror was about - Al Quaeda and the capture of Osama Bin Laden. It has been nearly two presidential terms, and we are waging wars in countries that had little to no connection with the WTC attacks.
And as a country, we are allowing it in our names. This is an atrocity at the very best, and absolute treason at it's worst. The man who has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America has been eroding and eliminating those very same freedoms from day one. At this moment in time, the Bill of Rights has essentially been eliminated, and much of the Constitution itself is under the watchful scrutiny of those who would wish to practice revisionism for their own sake.
We live in an age where information is freely available for the asking. All we have to do is a search on Google, and all of the evidence and proof unfolds. But we simply do not do this for some odd reason.
This inaction reminds me of when Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf detailing every single thing he was planning to do and where he stood on issues, available on bookshelves across the country. And still nobody read it, and after the world war, the people who suffered ignorance and apathy told the world that they had no clue he was doing such horrible things; which was a total fabrication sine people clearly did know ahead of time.
Well, now all of the treasonous acts against our country, the lies, the preemptive wars (ignoring Geneva conventions), the concentration camp known as Guantanamo Bay, the calm elimination of our Bill of Rights at his discretion, and so much more go unnoticed by the majority of people in this country.
And for the people that know these things are going on, it is still a shameful act to sit idly by and allow him to continue. Just because you conquered your ignorance does not mean you can still latch onto your apathy as a convenience.
Is witnessing a murder but doing nothing to stop it, and even authorizing it, still a crime even though your weren't the one to commit the murder? Of course it is... so why is it so hard to accept what is going on, and then stand up to it?
Remember, doing nothing but watching as a murderer pulls the trigger makes you just as guilty as doing it yourself. And this is a concept I truly hope hits home with this country.
I still would like to believe that America and it's citizens are not as stupid and apathetic as the rest of the world seems to believe. So far though I have little to disprove the rest of the world, and I simply wish above all else that we as a people finally put our feet down and say enough is enough.
We owe it to our founding fathers.
We owe it to ourselves.
We owe it to future generations.
When my son or daughter looks back in the history books and reads about this time period, and when this child looks me in the eyes and asks his or her daddy what he did during these times to try and stop it - I will say in all honesty "Everything I could."
I believe it's high time the rest of America legitimately make that claim as well, making our forefathers proud. The rest of the world used to look up to us (maybe not the French) and now they see us as a threat to Freedom, Democracy and Liberty.
Pretty ironic since we as a country apparently live by that code. We are simply acting shameful and like cowards. This man, George W Bush, is garnering Unilateral power over America... and no, this is not a good thing. All I am asking is to make some waves, let this administration know their actions will not be tolerated. There is so much more I wish to say in this letter, but I realize that I couldn't possibly cover a fraction of what this man has done in our names.
So I will simply close this open letter to America, hoping that the components which enlighten you, as well as motivate you.
Sincerely,
William Burns III
About the Author
Name: William Burns III
Age: 28
Country: USA
Gender: Male
Occupation: VR Designer
Website: http://www.vr5-online.com
Labels: 20's, florida, foreign policy, history, independent, male, politics, technical, terrorism, war and conflict
