What is Happening to America?

So, okay, I confess, I don't read the news and I'm pretty ignorant about current events, but I do read Perezhilton.com and unfortunately, that's the extent of my US news these days since I don't have US TV, radio or papers, BUT, this made it onto Perezhilton.com and so came upon my radar:



So I guess the UCLA police tased an Iranian-American student because he didn't have his student ID on him and wouldn't leave the library. The full story is at: http://www.dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960

BUT DAMN, while this is pretty shocking, it didn't shock me too much. What is becoming of our country? It really worries me. I know I'm sitting over here in London and globetrotting around the world, but it still worries me. What worries me the most is that I doubt this situation will get an adequate response. Americans just aren't as vocal about injustice anymore. They've become apathetic. Although who knows...maybe the UCLA kids will make me proud and get up in arms about this, but...I doubt it. I just reminds me why I left the country to begin with.

I haven't really addressed anti-American sentiment in my blog yet, so I guess I'll use this as an opportunity. At least in London, it's not so much they hate Americans, it's really more that we've become a huge joke to them, with Bush as the punchline. Nobody here approves of Bush. The people seem to question our country's values and our intelligence just by the fact that we allowed him to be elected, not just once, but twice. I think a lot of them understand Americans to be Bible-thumping, gun-toting, uncultured, racist idiots, overall. And I've never experienced it to be true, although I understand they get that idea by looking at our President, who is...a Bible-thumping, gun-toting, uncultured, racist idiot.

In one of the free newspapers they give you when you walk down the street between 5 and 8pm (either the London Lite or London Paper), they asked some people who was a bigger threat to the world: Kim Jong Il or George W. Bush and the responses were overwhelmingly Bush. Now that's a bit scary when you think that they consider our leader a bigger terrorist than that crazy psycho with the weird hair. What does that say about our country? Our foreign relations? Our future?

Americans have to start taking responsibility for America. We need to start caring what people think about us. We need to start voting and demanding for a proper government. And we need a government that represents what we really are, because I've lived in the States for 23 years, and last time I checked, most of my friends aren't Bible-thumping, gun-toting, uncultured racist idiots...other than Greg, but that's because he's from Texas.