A little more Horrible Truth™, Jim: Hating America

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Hey, man, has it ever occurred to you that love is a is not the opposite of hate?  You can't enjoy the other emotions properly without it.  Bitterness, vengeance, hate...these are all offshoots of love.  No, indifference is the opposite of love AND hate.

I was born in America, but I grew up in Canada.  I moved here just at the right time, when the school was covering the US constitution.  Once I got down into it, I fell in love with this country and the ideals upon which it was founded.  The ideals speak for themselves, and the historical progression of America - though it had its dips - was a steady increase in the standard of living and liberties for more and more of its population.  Hell, I loved this country so much, I spent 10 years in its service.

And that's about the time things started to go bad, Jim.  I was sent to two "conflicts" that turned out to be nothing more than trade shows...nothing new there, just another dip in the road, right?

But then I've watched since, as we picked up two MORE trade shows, and as we've tossed away more and more of our principles along the way.  Torture is acceptable now, and 50% of America believes that there never was a right to privacy.  Religious whackjobs (see: The Family) control what parts of our government aren't run by huge corporations, and freedom has been reduced to Freedom™.

So what happens when you suffer constant disappointment with something you love?  When the bastards chip away at everything that made this country great, and the general population couldn't give a damn, or even cheers it on?

Yeah, you get hate.  So if you've ever wondered why I hate America™, now you know.

Or Kill me.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

[Richter]

I get told I should be Patriotic, Roger. 
I get told it in person now and then, and passively by a whole slew of sentiment and expectation.  I also want every countrified jack - bastard who expects me to pay more for a t-shirt "made in America", to suck a tailpipe.  They all fall apart jsut as fast, and I'd rather buy products I'm proud to own up to being made here.

What has America done for me? 
America taxes every purchase I make, any luxury they can pin down, and the very money I earn at my job.
I live frugal, I don't overuse heat, water, or electricity, I keep focused and spartan to do things I like, only to watch assistance and favor go to people I hate and programs I'll never see benefit from.
America educated me in a brick bomb shelter surrounded by hoods and assholes, letting cynical second rate teaching, glory hole administration, and students who didn't want to be there drag down the whole insitution. 
America rattles the dying suspension out of my car and drops chunks of interstate highway on it's roof because road repair didn't quite make the budget.
America treats it's thugs with an impotent convoluted court system, and spits them out of it's "houses of correction" as soon as they get too crowded.  They enver get any of the GOOD criminals either.
America elects whackos, and even if an infintessimal vote is the only tool they have against them, they can't be bothered to use it against said whackos. 

America is also where my cohorts, most of my friends and family are.  However badly it fucks up, or however poorly it's run, I'm still a piece of it, not at the end of the day, but every minute and day. 

It isn't the paragon of reason, education, and civility I'd like it to be.  I'd cry until I BLEED if people could react to the good of a country as a whole, instead of their hard wired tribal instinct, but it's not the kind of thing they'll do naturally.  It's not a thing you can tell them either, they have to figure it out themselves, and I don't trust the fuckheads to go that far yet.

I want to scalp every "businessman" who treats dollar bills like pokemon too, for starters.  They are the new lawyers.

So I'm exclusive about my America.  It's only the people I like; who even if you're wrong color, wrong side, wrong birthplace, can still act civil, and respect that you're in the same shit they are.  The folks settign up shops or industries I want to see get good business, who's primary inspiration is doing their work, not shitting in the well just for the sake of making a few of their own filthier rich.  I'd like to have an America that's worth having.  If this one goes down before that can happen, I'll dance and scream and fan the flames.  Seeing this palce square it's shit away would be a rare thing, but a worthwhile one, It'll happen here a lot quicker and easier than the rest of the world.

 

[Cramulus]

Humanity i love you              by ee cummings




Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than inquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Shit yeah.

[Dimocritus]

  Fucking awesome!

I especially liked this bit.

...love is not the opposite of hate.  You can't enjoy the other emotions properly without it.  Bitterness, vengeance, hate...these are all offshoots of love.  No, indifference is the opposite of love AND hate...

So many times I'm called a miserable asshole, and my friends wonder why I "hate everything" so much. So... Yeah... Diggin' it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fucking awesome!

I especially liked this bit.

...love is not the opposite of hate.  You can't enjoy the other emotions properly without it.  Bitterness, vengeance, hate...these are all offshoots of love.  No, indifference is the opposite of love AND hate...

So many times I'm called a miserable asshole, and my friends wonder why I "hate everything" so much. So... Yeah... Diggin' it.

It also explains why you can love something and hate it at the same time.

[Payne]

The distance between love and hate isn't as great as the distance between either and indifference. All Jedi on this bitch: Love can lead to Fear and Jealousy which can lead to Hate. Of course, a pithy way to put it and not incredibly illuminating.

The real difference between the Passions and Apathy seems to be effort. Indifference is often typified by "I cannot be bothered" laziness, and with a large number (ever increasing) of people who cannot be bothered, there is now a market for manufactured, plastic, 'Passion^tm'. The distance between Passion and 'Passion^tm' is designed to appear very small, but is actually even larger than that between Passion and apathy.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and 'Passion^tm' is the very incorrect first step. Real Love or Hate requires getting to the end of those thousand miles, each and every step.

[LMNO]

There's also a difference between passion and completely losing your shit over something trite and inconsequential.  Cf: People on "Reality TV", Twilight fans, etc.

[Elder Iptuous]

There's also a difference between passion and completely losing your shit over something trite and inconsequential.  Cf: People on "Reality TV", Twilight fans, etc.

what's the line, then?
it has to be something 'worthwhile'?
it has to be longstanding?

[LMNO]

I have no idea where the line is.

But I find it very hard to call the screaming madness of MTV's The Shore anything closely resembling "passion".

[P3nT4gR4m]

The feeling is the same, the biological urge sated - that's the scary part. These mass produced phantasmagoria milk the passion from our masses like sucking the venom from a diamondback. Viper may as well be toothless by the time the "vote now" message has been transmitted.

[Triple Zero]

wasn't there also some thing about how crying and laughing are really similar on some biological level or something?

[P3nT4gR4m]

That's how we arrived at horrormirth if I'm not mistaken

[Darth Cupcake]

I have no idea where the line is.

But I find it very hard to call the screaming madness of MTV's The Shore anything closely resembling "passion".

I don't know how to accurately define it, but I see it as:

infatuation vs. passion

Not to say that I really have a grasp enough on reality to stand in judgment as to what is "real" and what is just an infatuation, but... That's the best I've come up with so far.