[GT40FIED]

This has to be one of the most disgusting things I've seen in my fairly young life. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic or proud of where you've come from, but do it with taste. In the last year and a half I've seen more flags on car than ever. People don't seem to realize that empty gestures don't win wars. And hey, why not slap a few on my Benz? I didn't care enough to buy American, but I definitely support America. And that flag? It was most likely made in Malaysia or Thailand or some other economically deprived country. Yeah...put a flag on your car...it's LITERALLY the least you can do. Suddenly when we're threatened we've become a patriotic nationalist ethnocentric culture that will point a gun at anything that moves. There's nothing wrong with retaliatory actions against those who have harmed you...TO A POINT. Americans like to entertain this fantasy that we're so moral and justified when in fact we've led some of the greater atrocities in recent history. But, hey, forget about all of that, we're in the middle of a "war". Sorry folks...a war is when two or more countries fight. I haven't seen any declaration of war OR any country that, as a whole, could pose a threat to us. I'm speaking, of course, of the countries we don't arm first then blow the sh!t out of. Do you really want to fight a war because another country's president wanted to kill the father of our current president? Of course not...you just want to watch the fireworks show on CNN when we attack. Ok...so Iraq may have the 4th largest army in the world, but after the first 3 there's a REAL big drop-off. I am the 5th largest army in the world.

Last time I checked we lived on a round planet and we weren't the only ones on it. As Bill Maher so correctly pointed out, "they hate us because we don't even know why they hate us". You really wanna fight terrorism? Pick up a book about another culture and LEARN. You can't rightfully hate someone you don't understand. Maybe then you'd realize that some countries have a legitimate beef with us. Americans can't take the moral high ground anymore because...well...we're an immoral society. We kill for mostly political reasons rather than real physical threats and throw our weight around as we see fit. We're too wrapped up in our SUV-driving, cell phone, corner office, Jerry Springer lives to see what's happening in the rest of the world.

Truth be told, I'd rather live here than anywhere else in the world. This countries freedoms allow me to do and say things I could potentially be killed for elsewhere (like this post). But am I proud? Not particularly. I've seen where we've come from and where we're going and it disgusts me. All in all I suppose what I'm saying is that if you wanna be proud to be an American....that's cool. Just make sure you know what you're proud of.