Re: Sad to read this
@Superb, I personally wouldn't generalise about Amerca or the people there, I'm married to an American who has friends and family over there who are people I have come to care about as well.
Likewise, I spent a very happy few months in the states in 15, and actually found (as I've said in other places), that general extravertion levels and attitude among the population and aceptance of blindness was rather better in the states than in Britain, or at least it was in Pennsylvania and the few transit places I had getting there.
That being said, it is precisely because! I am now rather more personally tied to what happens in the states That I am concerned about this sort of thing, quite apart from the fact that while undoubtedly there are horrible things and violent nasty people in many parts of the world, America (rightly or wrongly), does have a massive affect upon English speaking culture, and therefore what happens in America itself naturally draws more attention.
Sadly, one thing I found myself in America has been very accurately portrayed by someone in this topic:
But there's no way in hell I would ever vote democrat. I'd rather spend my last moments being fed through a wood chipper or soaked in kerosene and lit on fire, so I guess you know who I'm voting for.
I don't speak directly here about Ironcross's political affiliation, but the way he expressed it.
He is a republican, so naturally he is voting republican and endorses the republican party, irrespective of what they say or what the other side does.
this sort of extreme us/them, black/white, good evil sort of factional duelism was highly extreme in the states, indeed my lady told me a chief reason she left was simply that it became literally impossible to actually debate any opinions.
this is what I found as well, not that people were biggotted or rude or unpleasant, as I said, I was made extremely welcome, but simply that there was one, and only one perspective.
I find Camlorn's remarks about warzones sort of ironic, given that when I was in the stattess people asked me whether Britain was the same way, and whether it was true there were parts of Britain where the police feared to go due to extreme Muslim terrorists.
I told the truth, Britain, like everywhere has it's dodgy iner citties and places where leaving your car unlocked is a bad idea, however these have nothing to do with extremes of one sort or another beyond extreme drunkenness and general loutish behaviour, and that in fact all the muslims I knew (including my parents long standing next door neighbors), were perfectly decent people.
My father in law then said, "Well, I still think America is safer!"
so, I had directly refuted his premise, that England was a hive of extreme islam and violence, and yet he refused to accept the conclusion simply because he did not support his world view.
Neither what I have seen is this sort of radical entrenched extremeism unique to the republican party either.
this isn't to say there aren't! reasonable people in the states, however, unfortunately it always seems to be the extreme viewpoints that take up the attention, and thus matters grow ever more polarised, heads grow ever hotter, and the hole situation seems to get worse over all, so that when problems do occur (and there seems to be a dam serious problem with the American police), everyone is too busy protesting, mudslinging and name calling on behalf of their chosen faction to actually try and derive reasonable answers, much less any kind of dialogue.
This isn't to say Britain is free from factionalism either, it probably exists everywhere opinions are held to a lesser or greater extent, but at least here energy, emotion and over all hatred of the other side is still on a spectrum, not on a singly defined boundry.
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