Reply #100: Got me thinking, too...

[elzenmahn]

...about the "spinelessness" of the Americans as perceived internationally.

I don't think we're as much a "spineless" people as we are a broken people. If anything, we have allowed our spines to become broken with endless division, endless propaganda, endless bigotry, endless...BS. We've seen what daring to protest injustice will get you (see: Kent State, the RNC8 in Minneapolis, etc. etc. etc.): tear-gassed, beaten, shot, a criminal record (which can limit your options later in life), your reputation smeared by the Right Wing and its media organs, etc. etc. etc. So people have withdrawn into their own cocoons, knowing that something is seriously screwed up but feeling completely powerless to do anything about it.

Just the way the Right Wing and Corporate America likes us to be.

And I, for one, am getting F$*%#ING tired of it.