Why America Is Still Awesome

[PVnRT]

I know it's from Cracked, but it's actually very good.

This past year, we learned that karma is a bitch. That Wall Street is run by Hamburglars. The government is basically too many pigs at too small a trough. That we're broke, at war(s) and, instead of dealing with it, we've chosen to watch celebrities dance, dance, dance for the bloodthirsty hordes. We torture to make ourselves feel safer, cheat each other to make ourselves richer and have generally behaved like raging assholes.

...

I like to think of myself as a Patriot. I know that's kind of cheesy, but I've OD'd on snark recently. Sorry internet, but pure, uncut ironic disaffection has become an inadequate coping mechanism. I am not a bible-thumping, jingoistic redneck with the stars and stripes tattooed over generous man boobs. Nor am I an effete, pseudo-intellectual hipster with smooth, manicured hands who blames America for inventing cancer, earthquakes and human vices. But I am a Patriot, because this country gives me the right to be off my rocker.

Let me define my Patriotism: I think America is awesome the way the Whos in Whoville think Christmas is awesome. A Grinch can steal all the accouterments of patrio-eroticism --the flag, the eagle, the Statue of Liberty. And like the Whos, who didn't require gifts or a tree to celebrate Christmas, I will happily salute the idea that defines "America."

Posted in the lounge to avoid GD.

[3.14158675309]

1. I like a definition of "patroitism" that includes a reference to the Whos in Whoville!

:patriot:

[sarge43]

2. I love America because

it's beautiful: Mt Washington in the winter, a field of daffodils along a stream in Michigan's UP, a Gulf Coast sunset, a waning autumn moon over a Kansas wheat field, the New York City skyline.

I love it because it's nuttier than an outhouse rat: Biker Weekend, Weirs Beach NH, Key West, South of the Border, Clam Festival, Pismo Beach CA, Frankenmuth MI and cow flop bingo.

I love it because for all its faults and failings it has been generous with its gifts: The internet, the Marshall Plan, jazz, inventions from telephones to hybrid wheat, a refuge and opportunity for millions and much more.

I love it because it has set a near impossible standard for itself and once in awhile it achieves it. In one life time it has gone from the vilest segregation when a woman could bitterly sing Strange Fruit to an African-American president.