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I Still Love America (1 Viewer)

ChiefD

ChiefD

Footballguy
I'm 52 years old.

My life has been wonderful. I have a beautiful wife and three wonderful children. I've had trials and tribulations like anybody else. But today everything is really good.

20 years ago was when my generation faced it's first real crisis as adults. We saw tragedy, and shock, and pain, and eventually unity. There are two times in my life where I experienced the worst day and the best day all at the same time.

The first day was when my dad died. He was an awful father, and the day he died was one of the worst days of my life at 17 years old. But that day I was also free from him. It was also one of my best days.

The other day was September 11, 2001. A life changing day. The pain of that day exists today. But that day also was a good day in the sense that in MY life I got to experience an America coming together.  A group of passengers came together on an airplane in the sky over Pennsylvania and saved who knows what. They didn't know each other. They didn't know about their religious beliefs or political beliefs or any such thing. But they knew they had to do something for America.

For America. At that time and place in our history those people sacrificed the one thing they had at the time: their life. And they gave it - for America.

In the aftermath, we saw a United States of America. We were TOGETHER. United as one. We had an enemy, and we went and fought them. 

Now, we fight with ourselves.

I love my country. I love my neighbors. I love my friends who don't agree with the things I say. I love that we love each other enough to know when to say when.

I love that we live in a country where it's ok to express your opinion. What I don't love is that if someone else's opinion doesn't agree with yours it is ok to denigrate them and humiliate them and treat them as a person beneath you.

I teach my children that it's still important to love thy neighbor no matter what. I teach them that it's good to talk through things, and at the end of the day we are still neighbors.  We are friends. We are Americans.

My hope is that people still give a damn about our country. I do.

I love America.

 
This is probably a surprise for people who have watched me on these boards for over ten years, but part of me can't help but think that as God dies, so does America. And I'm hardly religious, but my secular morality holds when it comes to respecting other people, their opinions, and their property.

I'm afraid that for a lot of people, it doesn't hold anymore and that we're searching for our religion in other places, assured of coming up short with what edifies about religion.

America was an idea that was supported by a voluntary acquiescence to community, to brotherhood. It has, in my lifetime, come to epitomize self and consumer desires.

Please don't take this as a hyper-politicized thing I am saying. It is simply what I observe, what I see. The America I was raised on and with is dead. Long live that America.

 
I also don't want to pooh-pooh the OP's sentiment too much. I sympathize with it. But reality tells me something different. I mean, I realize that it's 9/11 and that it invokes a lot of emotions, but we're a different country now. We took a very specific path to remediate the damage done on 9/11, and for the most part, it's been a net loss for the country, both in terms of freedom and in manpower. We've lost so many of our former freedoms, put ourselves under so much surveillance, engaged in all sorts of adventurist wars and questionable foreign policy measures that a reckoning should be undertaken rather than empty paeans to a time gone by and never to come again.

America, quite simply, needs to check itself before it wrecks itself. No amount of flag-waving or empty gestures will solve it. There are machinations afoot to make us less free, less secure, more wards of the state with our oversight wardens every day. New and inventive ways by both corporations and politicians into your privacy and affairs. And that was decidedly not America's mission, America's founding, America's raison d'être, if I may borrow from our French cousins.

America, in terms of practical living -- I mean just living -- becomes more difficult every day, especially if you don't hold tons of capital. It is difficult to rent, to buy groceries, to provide for a family within reason without living paycheck to paycheck. Our services are so expected that we bear enormous costs just in the everyday scheme of living.

It is too hard to be a citizen without intrusion, living within comfortable and secure means.

It is a dream lost, and I'm not sure when we lost it or how we find our way again. I only hope the best among us see what I see and will it thusly.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
ChiefD said:
I'm 52 years old.

My life has been wonderful. I have a beautiful wife and three wonderful children. I've had trials and tribulations like anybody else. But today everything is really good.

20 years ago was when my generation faced it's first real crisis as adults. We saw tragedy, and shock, and pain, and eventually unity. There are two times in my life where I experienced the worst day and the best day all at the same time.

The first day was when my dad died. He was an awful father, and the day he died was one of the worst days of my life at 17 years old. But that day I was also free from him. It was also one of my best days.

The other day was September 11, 2001. A life changing day. The pain of that day exists today. But that day also was a good day in the sense that in MY life I got to experience an America coming together.  A group of passengers came together on an airplane in the sky over Pennsylvania and saved who knows what. They didn't know each other. They didn't know about their religious beliefs or political beliefs or any such thing. But they knew they had to do something for America.

For America. At that time and place in our history those people sacrificed the one thing they had at the time: their life. And they gave it - for America.

In the aftermath, we saw a United States of America. We were TOGETHER. United as one. We had an enemy, and we went and fought them. 

Now, we fight with ourselves.

I love my country. I love my neighbors. I love my friends who don't agree with the things I say. I love that we love each other enough to know when to say when.

I love that we live in a country where it's ok to express your opinion. What I don't love is that if someone else's opinion doesn't agree with yours it is ok to denigrate them and humiliate them and treat them as a person beneath you.

I teach my children that it's still important to love thy neighbor no matter what. I teach them that it's good to talk through things, and at the end of the day we are still neighbors.  We are friends. We are Americans.

My hope is that people still give a damn about our country. I do.

I love America.
Click to expand...
:wub:  

 
I guess, now that I've woken up and had a chance to think, really, in the end I agree with ChiefD, whose posts I almost always personally enjoy and relate to. I just love the country so much that when I see it splitting over things that could be solved but for a little less self and a little more community, I ache a bit. And I think that's what the OP remembers and loves, too.

peace out, in every sense, and hopefully not pretentiously, either.

 
rockaction said:
I also don't want to pooh-pooh the OP's sentiment too much. I sympathize with it. But reality tells me something different. I mean, I realize that it's 9/11 and that it invokes a lot of emotions, but we're a different country now. We took a very specific path to remediate the damage done on 9/11, and for the most part, it's been a net loss for the country, both in terms of freedom and in manpower. We've lost so many of our former freedoms, put ourselves under so much surveillance, engaged in all sorts of adventurist wars and questionable foreign policy measures that a reckoning should be undertaken rather than empty paeans to a time gone by and never to come again.

America, quite simply, needs to check itself before it wrecks itself. No amount of flag-waving or empty gestures will solve it. There are machinations afoot to make us less free, less secure, more wards of the state with our oversight wardens every day. New and inventive ways by both corporations and politicians into your privacy and affairs. And that was decidedly not America's mission, America's founding, America's raison d'être, if I may borrow from our French cousins.

America, in terms of practical living -- I mean just living -- becomes more difficult every day, especially if you don't hold tons of capital. It is difficult to rent, to buy groceries, to provide for a family within reason without living paycheck to paycheck. Our services are so expected that we bear enormous costs just in the everyday scheme of living.

It is too hard to be a citizen without intrusion, living within comfortable and secure means.

It is a dream lost, and I'm not sure when we lost it or how we find our way again. I only hope the best among us see what I see and will it thusly.
Click to expand...


Was the exact same way when I was a kid, 900 sq ft small home with 6people, always an old car, no extras, living paycheck to paycheck. When we got or drivers license at 16 we were not allowed the family car to drive until we paid our our insurance premium. Lots of pasta and potatoes at dinner time.

So I can relate.

 
rockaction said:
I also don't want to pooh-pooh the OP's sentiment too much. I sympathize with it. But reality tells me something different. I mean, I realize that it's 9/11 and that it invokes a lot of emotions, but we're a different country now. We took a very specific path to remediate the damage done on 9/11, and for the most part, it's been a net loss for the country, both in terms of freedom and in manpower. We've lost so many of our former freedoms, put ourselves under so much surveillance, engaged in all sorts of adventurist wars and questionable foreign policy measures that a reckoning should be undertaken rather than empty paeans to a time gone by and never to come again.

America, quite simply, needs to check itself before it wrecks itself. No amount of flag-waving or empty gestures will solve it. There are machinations afoot to make us less free, less secure, more wards of the state with our oversight wardens every day. New and inventive ways by both corporations and politicians into your privacy and affairs. And that was decidedly not America's mission, America's founding, America's raison d'être, if I may borrow from our French cousins.

America, in terms of practical living -- I mean just living -- becomes more difficult every day, especially if you don't hold tons of capital. It is difficult to rent, to buy groceries, to provide for a family within reason without living paycheck to paycheck. Our services are so expected that we bear enormous costs just in the everyday scheme of living.

It is too hard to be a citizen without intrusion, living within comfortable and secure means.

It is a dream lost, and I'm not sure when we lost it or how we find our way again. I only hope the best among us see what I see and will it thusly.
Click to expand...
This has been making the rounds so perhaps everyone has seen it recently  but Hunter S. Thompson of all people really nailed down the impact 9/11 would have on America. 

"... I live out here in the mountains with a flag on my porch and loud Wagner music blaring out of my speakers. I feel lucky, and I have plenty of ammunition. That is God's will, they say, and that is also why I shoot into the darkness at anything that moves. Sooner or later, I will hit something Evil, and feel no Guilt. It might be Osama Bin Laden. Who knows? And where is Adolf Hitler, now that we finally need him? It is bad business to go into War without a target.

...We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time."Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history -- which is no doubt true -- but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a war-time economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks."

 
I like it here. However, if I could learn another language there would be a legitimate chance I'd be retired and living somewhere else. 

 
Leroy Hoard said:
Canada would be ok but I really don't want to learn French.
Click to expand...
You can get by easily enough in probably 95% of Canada without French language skills. Cost of living and/or snow & temperature would keep me from wanting to live there.

 
It's fantastic

Just trying to explain this in the california thread who some just love to crap on.  It's wonderful here.  Wonderful weather, people, i feel safe, I am free to do whatever i want to do.  Life couldn't be nicer or easier

 
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