James

To say that US has been "up to no good in South America" -

That is an understatement and a half.

I am guessing that you have never really heard of the SOA. If not I encourage you to look it up, but I have to warn you, it is stomach churning. Properly. When you combine that with a lot of the other stuff they get up to (and there is plenty of do$%^&entary evidence of both direct and indirect actions - including (directly) setting off car bombs in mid-east to try to assassinate "undesirables": straight form the terrorists' textbook) it becomes stomach churning in the same way that the holocaust is.

As for stupidity: I call it like I see it.

Within work I have met many Americans that I cannot even come close to matching, in terms of skill and ability.

This same kind of thing over spills into sports too. Americans will hand you your ass. There is no such thing as playing for fun. I am not saying this is bad, I am saying it is culturally different.

But both work and sports have value in American society.

Knowledge, in and of itself, does not.

If it is part of your job to be knowledgeable, you will be.

But ignorance, in its truest sense, abounds.

"they have a system that makes excellent thrive"

Yes, they do. But that does not mean they foster intelligent thinking in the populace.

Have you heard of Edward Bernays and do you know what the "Engineering of consent" is?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bern...


He was instrumental in forming policy of governance that lives on to this day.

In basic terms, things like the US constitution, the Gettysburg Address, etc. are the marketing materials of the USA.

Quite brilliant stuff.

And life in America is good for Americans.

But he said that keeping the populace poorly educated and unquestioning made the whole thing work better.

I encourage you to research both the above. Some truly shocking $%^& out there.

Mikeisheness - I can understand why you wold say that, but I stand by my observation. God knows I have met many of them, and while you could go drinking or have a BBQ with almost all of them, getting an informed opinion about *anything* "current", or historical, was almost as impossible as getting an informed opinion of anything to do with the EU is in the UK ...