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Friday, August 19, 2016

A NATION OF UNTRAVELED, IGNORANT RUBES

Michele Vachon Beaudin gave me an idea earlier and I just went with it.

Make America Great Again - By Just Being Honest. And Then Doing What We Need To Do.

Most of the people in the US do not travel to other countries. 70% ++ don't even have a Passport, and fewer still go anywhere. A huge majority of the populace thinks Epcot is good exposure to other cultures. Olive Garden is good Italian food.

As the years pass, sophistication, education and travel have rendered a large swath of our population more like country-bumpkin rubes, when compared to the middle income populations of Eurooe & Scandinavia.

Oh-- it's great here if you have money and power, but those opportunities are fewer and fewer.

People in other first world countries are terrified of Trump (and his followers), love Obama, but some still have this old concept of the US being free and strong and still the land of opportunity.

But we are no longer willing or able to fund our country, with time or treasure, to do what we need to do. I don't understand why.

Compare generally to the first world, our salaries are generally lower here in the US-- our “middle class” has nowhere the income available as in Germany, Iceland, etc., the idea that we have a large middle class with solid disposable income is a myth.

In the US, we have droves of homeless, jobless, street vagrants--- I was in Iceland for 15 days and saw one semi-vagrant, and everyone was being nice to him and talking to him. We are simply not at all better off, in any way, than other first world nations. We were, but we aren't now. We have ghettos and slums that wouldn't be believable in other first world countries.

Our infrastructure is decayed, while other countries install communications, high speed rail, new airports, medical facilities-- we do not.  But most people here don't know that, because they've never been anywhere, and they don't even watch educational travelogues. Their world is limited to their job, church and TV set. They believe the Earth is 7000 years old and they plan trips to “NOAHs Ark”. We are dragging our asses waaaayyy behind. Really. That isn't true in the first world elsewhere. For example, in Iceland, you seldom see anyone watch television, and certainly not mindless sap. Most stream news on internet devices and spend time in meaningful conversations. Thy are not overrun with drunken “sports bars”, or silly pizza huts, playing FOX.

Quality health care in the US, is comparatively unavailable for everyday labor folks, or mediocre (unless you have a good supply of money), costs a fortune and still involve the hurdles of large co-pays. We view health care as a privilege, a matter of luck or money-- we suffer, we go bankrupt from the bills. We are tormented by the system. Elsewhere, say in a Western Europe or Scandinavia, taxes are set at a level to provide basic health care for all citizens and everything works better. USA vacations are not taken-- elsewhere they are expected and prioritized... , child care so expensive it is devastating , and vacations? never 6+ weeks. We suffer the impact of 100,000 shootings a year, police violence, civic violence and unrest,  anti-woman, anti- science, pro-ignorance, religious buffonery masquerading as education, high child mortality rate, and more children in poverty and hungry than any other first world nation, and we generally impart substandard education, and then busy ourselves with “nation building” and  war mongering.

We better make America great again, but that won't happen with Republicans

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