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Is America Worth Saving? Part 2

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As babies, we are inundated by TV that shows us how great America is and how superior it is to other countries. Hollywood ensures that it sends a steady stream of action-packed, violence-based movies, even for the youngest of members, showing the might of the US and the weakness and frailty of the rest of the world. Since it is easier for daycare centers to place children in front of boxes to mindlessly absorb the propaganda being emitted, most children receive hours of the same rhetoric on a daily basis. Before the requirement in society that both parents need to work in order to get by, children were less likely to receive such quantities of overt indoctrination. They would be more likely to receive reinforcement of the values of family life than hours of solid propaganda. It is also true, in fact, that the family life is still the way things are done in most countries.

As the child moves to elementary school, he/she learns that the US has saved the world time and time again. There is great emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon history of one's locale, with but scant mention that the place existed long before and had a separate history prior to the arrival of the White man. An equal dose of worldly importance is given to one's state, one's region and the US as a nation. Little, however, is ever taught about the rest of the world, which usually gets relegated to strange Arts and Humanities courses about Dadaism and the importance of Cubism in post-orbital Spain, and long-winded and boring history classes about people who are all dead. There is virtually no attempt at connecting the dots through history or explaining the evolution of art and how different aspects came into existence and why. The American student is informed year after year that the US saved the world twice in the 20th Century, created a world economy that has made everyone's life fun and lovable around the world, and has destroyed the awful threat of Communism and anything that is colored red. And the US did this through the benevolence of its good graces and asks nothing more from the rest of the world than to live its life in peace and harmony and maybe start a couple of small, insignificant wars from time to time to test out new weaponry.

This complete propagandized indoctrination is continued unabated throughout the schooling years until the end of high school. While the universities offer a bit more reality about what is going on in the world, few actually take the time to investigate. College life in the US is replete with parties, feel-good protests against small, local anomalies, and a desire to get to the end and graduation with the least amount of effort possible. The goal is bent towards creating a network of "Good Ol' Boys" who will facilitate one's rise in fortune rather than creating a formation that would benefit not only oneself, but the world around one. Here again, it is commonly accepted that the US is the only game in town and all other countries must bow down and beg for mercy. Nearly every aspect of collegiate formation uses this concept of the world whenever the need arises.

During one's professional career, nearly all contact with the outside world is made to appear awkward, bizarre, and unnecessarily complicated. Nearly all questionnaires, forms, applications and systems are built using the American model exclusively and ensuring that any requirements to include information from another country are virtually impossible to input. Try writing a phone number from another country and the automatic, computer-generated questionnaire will not allow you to place more than ten numbers, 3-3-4. Try writing an address from another country and the same program will force you to identify the name of the American state where that address is located. Nearly every place where a mention of human existence outside the US is possible is created in such a way as to make such mention impossible.

Home entertainment is just as propagandized. TV shows are usually American made. They show American life only. They portray American ways of doing things, even in international settings. Americans are constantly inundated with the standard propaganda that America is the best, no other country even comes close, America has the best of everything and if it isn't ranked #1, it's only because Americans are not interested enough in it to get there. Everywhere you turn, and in every American generation, this concept is always reinforced, as in John S. Hall's Def Jam Poetry, "America Kicks A**." As embarrassing as this video is, the rest of the world is convinced that we believe it, and our actions around the world demonstrate just how right they are.

American sports are almost entirely separate from the rest of the world. American football is, by far, the biggest sport in the US, yet it is virtually unknown and unviewed in the rest of the world. Football, or what Americans call "soccer," is, by far, the largest sport in the world. It has billions of fans and is the biggest sport in virtually every other nation, but it is practically unknown in the US. The disconnect between those sports which galvanize the world and those which are popular in the US has only been slightly decreased over the years. There is greater awareness in the world about basketball and a smaller increase in their awareness of baseball, but by in large, sports in the US remain unique to the US and the sports practiced in the rest of the world are barely ever mentioned in the US.

Hollywood's unfettered romancing machine

Movies in America are violent. Perhaps not all of them, but the preponderance is towards more violence, not less; more confrontation, not less, and more madness and irrationality, not less. While this may be the winning formula for American blockbusters, it's also a very poor tool for the common citizen to use in any personal crisis management they may need to undertake. Americans are already indoctrinated that their family is nothing more than a bunch of deadbeat losers and they are virtually on their own to decide how to resolve pressing issues. They are then given the choice between using a gun, using a loud voice and violent gestures, or just going completely insane and medieval over the situation and hoping for the best. Hollywood's mirroring of the American way of life is complete with divorcing families, individuals going crazy during crises of their own imagination, and a world of cartoon characters that follow the predetermined script handed down by US policymakers and eagerly gobbled up by its citizenry.

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66 year old Californian-born and bred male - I've lived in four different countries, USA, Switzerland, Mexico, Venezuela, and currently live in the Dominican Republic - speak three languages fluently, English, French, Spanish - have worked as a (more...)
 

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