What the fuck, America?

Inflammatory title aside, I'm sure there must be at least a couple of members from europe/australia/rings of saturn that have the same question burning a hole in their sanity.

I realise that every country has their own share of particularly vocal idiots, but it seems to me that America has a double helping plus another on the side of weapons-grade insanity. Even just taking from the first page of CE, we have topics on:

1) "Woman a victim of British Health care"/ "Hey guys, health care reform..."

Its a big SOCIALIST medical conspiracy! By insitituting this health care reform the SOCIALISTS wont let us see the doctors of our choice, will make us wait for ages, and will actually let us see a doctor without cripplingly expensive medical bills! What utter *bastards*!

2) "President is a loon" / "Obama joker poster"

Im not even sure what the point of this is. Some far-right loonies are comparing Obama to the Joker? I mean, wow. Edgy. I cant quite find the words for this, so I wont bother.

3) Generic "Obama wasnt born in the US so isnt a US citizen, he should be deported, yadda yadda yadda".

Theres several threads and articles about this ranging from your garden variety tinfoil hat wearer to, IIRC, some officer refusing to deploy to Iraq on the basis that he wont follow fraudulent orders from a fraudulent commander in chief, and has touted the refusal of the supply of Obama's birth certificate under some freedom of information request as conclusive proof that hes actually a foreign national.

4) "Moron Labe - The idiots are coming to get us"

Citizen militia forming up against said "illegitimate" president fearful he's going to take their guns away.

5) Sarah Palin.

There's far too much out there thats capable of creating vitriol, so I'll just pick my favourite.

http://www.examiner.com/x-5266-Seattle-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d1-With-Sarah-Palin-gone-shooting-wolves-from-airplanes-is-increasingly-under-fire

Sarah Palin spent $400k to push a bill through allowing people to hunt wolves by shooting them from fucking helicopters.


So with these stunning examples from the last month, I'd like to put it to you.

In spite of the aforementioned average vocal idiot dilemma, what is it that I dont understand about US history to be consistently amazed by these people? From where Im standing, most reasonable thinking populations would drop these issues on the basis of not being logical, but from what I can see, merely trying to set out a case simply and clearly very often incites people into a fervour defending their pet conspiracy theory.

So please, Americans. Help me understand.

I wish I could help you understand, I really do.

I think you're talking to the wrong people.

You're on an overwhelmingly liberal site which spends time discussing how bad the other side is, essentially slagging the vocal minority that any party has especially when its not in power. considering the majority of the members of SG are american, the shots tend to be taken at the conservative party in this country. if you want, we could discuss the BNP or Jean-Marie Le Pen and the FNF but it would be a relatively small discussion.

In fairness, have you ever checked out the British tabloids? Don't pretend you don't have your own loonies on your side of the pond.

I like the page 3 girls. Or is that page 2? I can never remember.

either way, those girls are so newsworthy that they should be placed right up in the first leaf of the paper.

Oh of course. In the spirit of fairness I'll gladly post up the best of this weeks offerings from the Daily Fail and The Sun. I dont deny these things exist, I'm just curious as to the apparent prevalence in the US for assuming everythings a giant conspiracy controlled by the guvvermint.

They have a website now, but Id stick to SG.

http://www.page3.com

That's really just one guy here on SG, and it is best not to read what he has to say.

that's just what they want you to think.

its no different than any other big conspiracy believed (generally) by the elderly who lack the power and social standing to do much to change their position. in the US, currently, its a fear that the government will take away their medical care (which is a valid fear if you're old and need the medical care to survive). they are told by people they trust that the government is going to kill them and they're scared. it's no different than why, in general, the national front parties in europe tend to be stock with old people. it's because its easy to scare the elderly into fearing change. whether the change is in medical care or xenophobia is only a matter of who you can make the enemy. in truth, the NF parties tend to have a certain advantage in turning youth out (because immigrants are their competition for lower rung jobs that tend to be filled by youths) which tends not to be the case with the far right. however, the far left does a wonderful job of scaring the youth on environmental issues and the like. look at who shows up at g8 protests wearing the black masks.

also, these sorts of things are reported despite being small events because its easy news that doesnt take a lot of work and will garner a lot of viewers. they can send one cameraperson, have the host either say "wow, look at the crazies" or "look at how were being oppressed" and their audience will respond.

if you want to actually know more i would recommend taking a class on political revolution which will cover the theories of how and why the different approaches to scaring your constituents work with different groups. you can also check out any number of books on the politics of fear.

Because that is our national heritage as well as the central lesson to be learned from the study of history - every government, no exceptions, eventually turns tyrannical and parasitic because those drawn to the levers of power are the very people not to be trusted with it.

Every last founding father was "a conspiracy theorist." You keep your freedom by squashing out the conspiracies that inevitably develop in any bureaucratic system, particularly those hatched in the compartmentalization of government where the deeds can be implemented en masse and under the cover of legitimacy or with public support.

Sadly my degree doesn't allow me to take such classes outside of the field. Do you have any suggestions on a reading list, however?

Ah yes. Sergeant Psycho is most prolific, and most profane with his fevered rantings. He seems to be gathering quite the fan club.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I remember hearing somewhere that more Europeans than Americans believe that 9/11 was an inside job. So again, I'm not so sure that conspiracy theories are all that unique to America either. In fact, I'm pretty sure that David Icke is British.

Actually, I was talking about the person who posted just above you. SergeantPsycho is just a troll.

Yup, there is a global awakening occurring. Most of the old tricks don't work anymore.

To the OP:

The US population is 307,000,000 people and this country is 9,161,923 sq km.

Texas is more than 20% larger than all of France; Austria is about the same size as Maine, and there are 48 more states to go. The 4,500km between New York and Los Angeles is 300km longer than the drive from Lisbon across Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and half of Lithuania.

We have more wackos because we're both huge and densely populated.

At least we're not saddled with Luxembourg . . .


bastards

The United States of America is such a large country...that we have a ridiculously large number of regional tendencies. Whereas some of you Europeans find a strong difference between...say...Northern & Southern Italy.....or England vs. Wales....here we have significant diversities within most of our 50 states...let alone the different regions of the country.

Whereas the UK has a population of roughly 60 million....The United States covers that with California & New York.

What does all this mean? Basically...with the sheer amount of people living in this country....we're bound to have out share of crazies (nutters....for the English folks)

Really...despite their disproportionate coverage in the media...the people disputing the birth certificate of Barack Obama do not represent a majority...much less a credible minority.

As far as the debate over healthcare...when have you ever seen a country execute a completely new policy seamlessly? Nationalized healthcare is so foreign to the US.....that there is bound to be trepidation...even from open-minded people.

Perhaps it seems like America has more per-capita nut-jobs than other places....is that despite our troubles & crises.....we're still the biggest kid on the playground...I say that not as a braggart....just....as observed analysis. The US still leads the world ina lot of areas.....some good, some bad.

What I've learned....especially over the last 10 years or so...is to separate the people from the government.

You are just jellus. You would be talking german now if it wasn't for us. Take Simon Cowell, for instants, please take him. Captain Kirk would kick Dr. Whose ass prolly even Spock but he's only just a naturlized citizen.

...and "No Child Left Behind" has been a fabulous success.

See Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics or the Wiki write-up

It has less to do with "I got mine" and more with America's love of a good conspiracy and a bit of "these folks without medical care are too lazy to work a job." The latter view hearkens back to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens driving Cadillacs (Welfare and Cadillac being code words for black.)

Suicide Girls' right wing wackos see SergeantPsycho's postings or the conspiracy nut postings of vermicious_knid. But these two are nothing compared to the members writing on the forums of Rapture Ready or Free Republic

Have I helped?

Y'know, I'm pretty sure the UK has its own share of nutjobs.

Yes, the Continental US is quite large and densely populated. And yes, Alaska is even bigger still and far less populated. Alaska is separated from the lower 48 by some 1500 miles of Canada. Most US residents have a very poor understanding of Alaskan issues, as many are poorly represented in the crap ass mainstream media. Remember the "bridge to Nowhere?" Well it was certainly a bridge to somewhere which would have taken thousands of commuters off the Glenn Highway and eased traffic and shipping in and out of Anchorage, but no one knows that except Alaskans. So please do me a favor and leave any Alaskan politics out of your limey rant. You think shooting a wolf from a helicopter is wrong, inhumane, unfair to wolves....fine. Strap on your snowshoes and try walking 500 miles into the bush then. I would guess that Alaska has wilderness area in excess of the total area of the UK. I would also bet the UK has more paved roads than all of AK. So for now I'll wager that the UK knows shit about how Alaska should manage it's wildlife.
Looooove.

Some good observations here. However here are a few more completely unfounded theories.

1. The rhetoric of the Founding Fathers is still surprisingly prominent as an undercurrent in people's thinking as to why we're here and what we're doing. Every elementary school class learns about the Declaration of Independence, the Boston Tea Party, and how the Founding Fathers broke themselves free from a monarchy that was controlling all aspects of their lives including their trade. The implication is that the freedom of the individual needs to be preserved above all (never mind that the Constitution, until the Bill of Rights was added, was more about protecting the interests of an elite) and the main purpose of the new government was to prevent itself from infringing upon individuals' rights. (Also hence the idea that any individual should be able to succeed, welfare is a handout, blah blah.)

2. Frontier experience. I took a class once that was a case study of four countries' political systems and how they impacted those countries' environmental policy. One of the points was that countries whose recent history had the experience of a frontier and vast expanses of wilderness (the US and Brazil) were much less likely to have policies that took care of the environment than those with constrained space and limited amounts of old wilderness (Germany and Japan). Perhaps environmental policy is the best example of the impact of this, but it's not hard to see how it might also mean that, if all else failed, you could take your gun and your axe and live in a cabin in the wilderness. Not that anybody actually wants to do this, but it's not the farthest from people's minds. There's a definite reluctance to rely on a system.

3. I hate even to bring it up, because it makes people seem so closed-minded by their very nature, but there is the fact that in Europe you have many countries and languages in close proximity, whereas in large areas of the US people only infrequently have to deal with foreigners. People who don't speak English or aren't American citizens are therefore unfamiliar and potentially dangerous. Also we only share borders with Canada, who--let's face it--are stereotyped as innocuous and accustomed to cold weather, and Mexico, stereotyped as the hardworking poor who come across the border for work. There isn't anybody else even close. In major coastal cities we have plenty of immigrants and children of immigrants, but that isn't the case everywhere.

Just some things off the top of my head that have some bearing or other on American culture, and are likely to give the nutjobs something to talk about.