What is wrong with the american people?

[Middle finga]

by Leon Fisher, Unknown News


You see them at the supermarket aggressively pushing their shopping carts around, and you get this feeling that if you do not move fast enough they might just run into you. You detect an undercurrent of suppressed rage, hostility, and detachment as if they are on some other planet.

You feel the same thing when you are driving down the road, and you see them driving with one hand on the wheel, the other hand holding up a cell phone to their ear, wheeling their SUVs around just as aggressively and at the
same time detached, like those people in the supermarket pushing their shopping carts around.

No-one smiles any more. No-one wants to talk about things that matter. If you want to discuss anything other than sports, sex, or Dancing with the Stars, no-one seems interested.

What is happening? Is it something in the water, or is Invasion of the Body Snatchers actually happening for real?

I do not remember people being like this. They are hostile, impatient, full of suppressed anger, abrupt, suspicious, and some even threatening.

Not so many years ago, you couldn't walk down the street without running into your friends and neighbors wanting to talk about anything and everything, and have a good laugh. People, I remember, used to communicate -- now they just glare at you, or completely ignore you.

No-one wants to complain about anything. No-one seems to be bothered by high taxes or inflation. They just look at you and roll their eyes like you are crazy if you dare to express your dissatisfaction with the status quo. And God forbid, do not mention the wars, that topic really gets people uncomfortable. It is as if you are asking some personal question.

Have our fellow human beings, our friends and neighbors, become overwhelmed by the course of events these last six years, so they're burying their heads in the sand? Or have they become closet fascists, who privately support the dictatorship in Washington? Are they over-medicated with prescription drugs, or are they getting off on the horrors which the "Decider" and his handlers are inflicting on humanity?

Are these the same people whose answer to every problem, real or imagined, is "Bomb Them!? No wonder the Bush Cabal and the rubber stamp Congress have no problem disposing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I will not defend them. I will not try to enlighten them any more.

All these vegetables think about is their new shiny cars, the ridiculous clothing they buy, the garbage that passes as entertainment, and the anti-depressant drugs which helps them avoid reality. They do not want to admit to themselves that America is in trouble ... After all, that's not supposed to happen here, we are told.

Well, folks, like the Germans and their victims deciding to ignore things, who had to learn the hard way some sixty years ago, it ain't going to be any different this time around.

[NMDemDist2]

1. you know, when I moved out of a big city to a much much smaller city

I don't see it any more.

I usually have two or three conversations at the grocery store, nobody is ramming and jamming their carts and my smiles are always returned.

in fact in this small city, if someone does seem a little pissy, a smile will stop it dead.

this article reminded me how glad I am I moved.....

[midnight]

7. I have to ask if you moved from a dem city to a dem city,

[NMDemDist2]

8. nope Red City to red city n/t

[kineneb]

37. one can't hide in a small town

example: I was having a phone/e-mail discussion with Mom about her belated Christmas gift to us: landscaping for our back yard. She was worried that the landscapers would run off with the deposit and not finish the work. I reminded her that in a county of only 65,000, I would be able to hunt them down and insist they finish the work properly. Not only that, I could put them out of business, if I had to.

It is much easier to be rude to someone if you assume you will never see them again. If you know that you have to see them, or their friends, on a regular basis, you learn you should be nice.

[NMDemDist2]

43. yuppers! what cracks me up is that people will still hold opinions on someone

for something they said or did in the 8th grade :rofl:

[truedelphi]

40. Same here. We moved from the San Francisco Bay area to the rural

area known as Lake County and that whole edgy - my life is over if you so much look at the parking place that I am looking at
thing is merely a nightmare memory of the distant past.

About six months ago, the seventeen year old bag boy announced to the cashier that he needed a minute break. then he said to me: "Would you come with me to the back of the store?"

I followed him to the back of the store. In my still lingering big city paranoia, I thought that he was going to mention that the manager had mentioned one of my checks bounced.

Instead, he said, "Can I offer you a hug. They were saying the other day that your cat died, and you still look like you need to cheer up."

I then became the recipient of one of the sweetest hugs I have ever gotten.


Move back! Not in a million ka-jillion years.

[NMDemDist2]

42. how sweet was that???

:hug:

[Ron Green]

2. I think it's a real conundrum.

Through their fear, people elected "leaders" who have governed so badly that there is a kind of national psychosis. And psychotic people are not likely to choose better leaders.

[Mojambo]

3. They've been neutered.

Intellectually, emotionally, socially (and in most cases) economically.

Domesticated animals with checkbooks. Ill-tempered, but harmless if you pen them up and feed them regularly.

[Labors of Hercules]

14. What's the cause?

And how do you stop the cycle?

[RC]

25. Try this...

Finish the job.

http://www.goatworld.com/articles/castration/castration2.shtml

[Igel]

39. Don't be angry.

That's about it. Be tolerant and cheery, friendly and nice. You alone can't do much until there's a critical mass to combat the public angry-face that people feel like they need, the existential justification for hate. ("I'm angry, therefore I hate. I hate, therefore I am.")

If nothing else, your blood pressure won't be as high.

[snot]

4. That doesn't really match what I find.

I remain mystified that so many manage to remain inattentive to important issues; but generally, I find increasing awareness and concern, with many Republicans expressing disgust, shame and outrage toward the Bush Admin.

What really mystifies me is Congress.

[melody]

5. That's right, it's all those other people that are weird, not us

And in that fantasy, we preserve the illusion that we have some choice to be anything else.

MOST Americans aren't thinking about "shiny new cars" -- most of the Americans I know are trying
to keep a roof over their heads. What neighborhood does this guy live in? What socioeconomic
bracket? Most Americans I know are fighting to save their jobs ... worrying about paying their
health care insurance ... worrying about how to put gas into their ten year old cars.

I don't know these car-obsessive, neurotic automatons. I just know real people, like everywhere else.\

I swear, these "Americans suck" diatribes are beginning to sound just like freeper rants against "those
Mexicans".

[Labors of Hercules]

17. Not to put too fine a point on it, but...

The OP sees more of what I see: It may not be a majority yet, but there are enough people who are so "angrily devoted to self" as to create real disturbances in the way society should operate, and if something isn't done to bring people out of themselves, they will become more and more corrosive to our shared well-being.

"It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from such individuals that all human failures spring." -Alfred Adler (as quoted by Dale Carnegie)

[TheDoorbellRang]

21. The folks I meet who aren't engaged in the national issues

aren't so much angrily devoted to self as concerned with how self is gonna manage day to day finances and/or personal problems. It's not so much that they couldn't care less about the nation's problems, but rather they have no left-over emotional strength to even contemplate them. The result, no doubt, of our booming economy and social safety nets. :sarcasm:

[melody]

27. Precisely. Well said n/t

[calimary]

33. Welcome to DU!

I think it might be a sense of national overwhelm. An overriding sense of helplessness and overwhelm - VERY FEW of our fellow Americans think things are just dandy these days. VERY FEW. Everybody else knows and feels acutely how bad things are. How bad WE as a nation have become that we're now a nation that tortures and wiretaps and lies about why we have to get into war, and bullies other countries and other peoples. We're the nation nobody trusts or looks up to, much, anymore. WE are now the rogue nation that everyone else cringes over and over which they grit their teeth. WE are the ones who scare the rest of the world to death. So much for that purported "shining city on a hill" that reagan always rhapsodized about.

Now, even having an INKLING of how wrong your country has turned while you were busy doing something else - is BOUND to affect people's behavior and psyches. Awfully hard to work up any national pride and/or self-esteem when you have to face what your country has become, and how low it's sunk. Shame enters into it, for sure.

And that's just for the folks who are willing and/or able to face what's happened. And, if they actually voted for it, IMAGINE the shame in that case - assuming they, too, are willing and/or able to face what THEY once found acceptable and wanted for the country. Imagine having THAT kind of load to carry around - if you helped make it happen by voting for it not once but twice!!! But, again, that's assuming some of these people are man enough (and woman enough) to admit they approved this and enabled it.

The rest of 'em, who either can't or won't face their role in it, how they helped make it happen if they voted for it, I think the denial is probably so deep it's down in the bottom of the Marianas Trench. I wouldn't want to admit it if I'd fallen for the bullshit and the sales pitches and the cosmetic crap. Talk about shame. In fact, there are probably more than a few people who resolutely cling to the "everything's just fine" attitude simply because they don't DARE stop and think about what they voted in, and what they thought was okay for our country. Who would want that on their consciences? Who's adult enough to accept the blame for that? It comes back to what I've pointed out here before - that nobody wants to admit they've been had, that they fell for it, that they swallowed it whole.

And what makes it even more painful is how this may well be the decline of America. We may now be on a downward slope the same way the Roman Empire began to disintegrate when it had grown too big, to overinflated, too over-extended, too decadent, too out-of-control. Sad to say we may be on the wane as a world power. Yeah, we've still got the big guns and perception of a lot of success and money and power, but we're a shade of our former selves, and we sure as hell don't have the moral high ground anymore. bush certainly took care of that one. And I suspect the national angst articulated in the OP is part of that. And if you live in a big city, and you're crowded in on one another more, and everybody's scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie, it's just that much more painfully evident. I see people like that around my area every day. Selfish, self-absorbed with their cell phones in their ears while they're supposed to be driving or paying attention in line or at the checkout counter - thoughtlessly keeping everybody else behind them waiting. Maybe when it gets just a little too shitty around you, you turn inward to get away from it all.

[melody]

26. Just that -- it's not the majority, so why generalize and make it all Americans?

It's because there's a preexisting bias.

It's the same reason people only see "crime" when they see a black criminal and not a white
one.

[calimary]

34. GREAT Alfred Adler quote.

Thanks for throwing that in. Really describes where a lot of people are these days, unfortunately.

[Double T]

6. The 'American Dream' has been, or is in the process of being, taken away.........

and to date they have done NOTHING to stop it. The longer Americans continue in their high fructose corn syrup induced coma, the worse their situation will become. It is time for NEW corporate and government leadership change; our national security has been destroyed by this nation's ENTIRE current leadership.

[izzie]

9. Besides these few things I think things are about the same.

Kids do not seem to go out and play, not as many people walking around, no baseball games blasting out of homes as you walk down the street and half the people have a phone on their ear. And if you thought about that I bet my father would have said the same about the days he grew up to when I grew up.

[Sparkly]

10. "Not so many years ago..."

"Not so many years ago, you couldn't walk down the street without running into your friends and neighbors wanting to talk about anything and everything, and have a good laugh. People, I remember, used to communicate -- now they just glare at you, or completely ignore you."

I'm always skeptical about statements glorifying some Good Old Days. The image that we "walk down the street" and "run into friends and neighbors" seems a bit fictitious, let alone the idea that they used to want to talk and "have a good laugh" and now they don't.

There were always jerks and assholes, and there still are. I do think the country has been at tremendous risk from BushCo (and it will be paid for by generations and generations to come) but, at least in my experience, people aren't all unaware. I think there's a burgeoning frustration and anger going on right now. It only takes a few jerks to annoy everyone else, though.

[Hersheygirl]

20. I have to disagree,

on the "fictitious" point. I don't know how old you are or where you live, but I can remember back to the 50's and yes life was like that. I can remember my grandparents taking along with them to town and having many a conversation with people they ran into on the street or in the stores.

There are a lot times I wish we could go back to that time, when life was so much simpler and easy going. Now we live in a dog eat dog world where we're all out to get what we can as fast as we can, without thinking of the consequences.

[Bitwit1234]

11. The other poster is correct

I moved from the DC area to a small town in Minnesota. It is cold in the winter which is bearable and doesn't seem as cold as the DC area with it's high humidity. The snow gets deep but it is easy to SWEEP out of the way cause it is fluffy. But I wouldn't go back to that area outside DC for anything.

People are nicer out here. The pace of living is slower. You are not afraid to run into someone accidental. You aren't glared at, and you hear LAUGHTER. Of course it isn't as crowded but nearby small towns have a lot of traffic, but no one is constantly blowing their horns and giving you the finger.

I suppose people back east are tired out, working two jobs to make ends meet. Keeping up with their next door neighbors. I am like you I just don't know what has happened to America. It is the "me" generation and it is getting worst.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. K & R. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion...

...over the past five years that we are indeed a nation of "good Germans" who refuse to see the reality of our situation.

We are headed toward, and in fact are forcing, major world conflict with our role in it reversed from WWII -- WE are now the ones in pursuit of world domination through brute force, which, by the way, history has repeatedly demonstrated DOES NOT WORK.

[hashibabba]

13. I live outside Washington, D.C. and I don't find this to be true.

The more friendly I am to other people, the more friendly they are to me. If I'm walking around with an attitude or a frown, I get very few people getting friendly in return. If I'm happy and outgoing, they respond in kind. Pretty simple. I even wave and say hi if someone gives me the finger. What good does it do to act the same way they act?

Antidepressant drugs don't make you avoid reality. Its too bad so many people spread this kind of crap around. I'd have been dead without anti-depressants. And they don't make me avoid anything, they make me MORE aware because I'm free of some of the mental health issues I suffered from for years. Now I'm able to live in the real world and able to be a functioning member of society because my mental health required some help. ADs only make me feel *normal* again.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

15. A link, por favor, to the "Unknown News". Gracias.

I'd like to read more of their offerings. MKJ

[Middle finga]

31. link to Unknown news

http://www.unknownnews.net/

[Senator]

16. This Is What 21st Century Fascism Looks Like

Were you expecting goose-stepping?

--

[Stevepol]

18. Partly comes from seeing un-elected reps running the country.

When you vote and you KNOW that the sentiment of the country agrees with you, and then you see the votes as reported by electronic voting machines totally contrary to what you know is the case, and then you have to put up with the quality of people who are naturally put in charge when they don't have to worry about being elected -- incompetence and hypocrisy and nobody addressing problems that have to be addressed -- you get a little edgy.

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. Sounds like this guy just moved into my neighborhood.

The "ownership" generation is about owning money and property, not about owning up to responsibilities of citizenship. And believe me, you don't want these people even trying community service, because they will try to find some way to make money out of it. Breaches of Fiduciary responsibility lead to lack of trust which adds to the hostile zombie attitudes in a community that this writer writes about.

[kineneb]

38. sorry to hear that

My neighbors are all lower-middle class to downright poor (lots of retirees and disabled people), but they are nice folks. We all look out after each other and help out, if needed.

I guess one really can loose their soul to Mammon. Personally, I am merely interested in making sure we have enough food and can pay the bills. A bit more money would not change our situation; only single-payer healthcare could do that.

[ananda]

22. Too much and cancer.

America is the country of too much, which of course causes cancer.

[rabies1]

23. I see them as frustrated and scared silent.

I think for too many years we've been escaping into TV. Any product is readily available at stores. If you need it, go get it. The world will just absorb any trash we have somehow. For years it seems we've been a people who just consumed, we weren't threatened by anything. No matter what president came along, we still managed to make it through. Now things have changed. People are in danger of losing their home, any savings etc. I see them as feeling isolated and shocked as to not knowing what to do. Suddenly they pay attention and start to see things have gotten way out of control. We're so used to things just working out. We have not been prepared on how to deal with this. So we have to learn - and fast. And if we can get beyond the point of believing - 'Why should I have to take care of this problem?' 'I was just living.' 'I didn't do anything wrong.' We've become a nation of sheep. We have to get angry enough to just not care what happens to us personally. Look at the lessons of history and the bigger picture. We must stand up and take control and change this. Hit the streets. Write congressmen. Learn all you can about politics. There's a lot of people to come around and unfortunately it takes time. I believe most of us will get there though.
Yes, people do seem tense and angry - maybe they're becoming aware and getting terrified.

[Mythsaje]

24. Many people are mirrors...

They reflect what they see. I deal with the public on a daily basis and most people are friendly and courteous. Maybe it's me. I seem to have that effect on people these days.

You can talk about just about anything with just about anyone if you approach it the right way. When someone asks about a store policy or something that seems odd, I usually smile and say "well, you can bet someone else is making a lot of money off of doing it that way." Which generally earns a snort of derision.

[ClassWarrior]

28. They're overworked, over-stimulated, and over-frightened by an out-of-control...

...corporate establishment.

NGU.

[TankLV]

29. For a few reasons:

1) Most people don't live where their born anymore, hence don't know the people around them, live in bigger cities, hence are rarely likely to bump into people they know.

2) Most people are adversely directly affected by repuke policies and HAVE to take care of their personal business before anybody else. Years past we had the time, freedom, money, etc. to care about others...

These are just two reasons...

[tom_paine]

30. I keep hoping beyond hope that you and I are wrong about this

(not to mention the tens of thousands who also think this is a distinct possibility in the decades to coem, especially if their is economic upheaval)

Unfortunately, I have just been reading "I Will Bear Witness" a Diary of the Nazi Years by Victor Klemperer, and the similarities are far closer between Germany 1933-37 and Bush-Ocuupied Amerika 2001-7 than I ha first thought.

Scary...and true.

We are a nation nearly ready to embrace the most horrific of atrocities, whichthe Royal Bushies will be happy to provide...

[superkia]

32. Its just the rat race.

If you live in a smaller town or city you probably don't see any of this stuff. In the overpopulated areas, its like a rat race. Throw a thousand rats in a cage with limited food and watch them go! After awhile even the nicer rats give in when they realize being nice and taking things slower equals no food for you and yours. Its a dog eat dog world in places like this, I don't think people choose to be like this I think its conditioning. My goals is to move to one of these smaller towns in my near future if possible. When I visit friends down south that live in smaller towns, its awesome how nice everyone is and how much the people actually talk to each other, even strangers! Don't point a finger, just try to be one of the nice people in the cage and hopefully you will save someone else from the mess.

[illinoisprogressive]

35. Everyone is angry because of bush and that they cannot get rid of him fast enough

[dflprincess]

36. Over worked and underpaid

they know something's wrong but they don't have the time or energy to figure out what it is - or if they do know, they don't know what to do about it.

[onewholaughsatfools]

41. I don't know where you live, but

if i were you I would move, your surroundings sounds like a living hell..........