Internet Comments Prove America is Angry and Losing It

America is angry. 30,000 commenters on a CNN article prove it. 

You see, there are these three boys (two of whom are black--which is important to the CNN article) that were bored in Oklahoma, so they went out and randomly shot/killed a 23-year-old Australian baseball player on U.S. scholarship.  

Now Australia (one of our only reliable allies) is angry at us, and thinking about boycotting travel to the U.S. What is wrong with our nation, when in the heartland of America, in an affluent town, three boys are bored enough, apathetic enough to go out and kill randomly in the middle of the day?What is making our nation so sociopathic? How did we become too dangerous for Aussies?  

These are tough questions. I, and others, have already written extensively about video game/media culture, economic depression, moral bankruptcy, fame seekers, and spiritual decline as possible culprits. All of these I believe (and can't prove) are reasons we have lost our way. Because we've been held down by a prolonged economic depression; we have lost our normal human ethical compass; been brainwashed by movies, TV, and games as to what is "normal human behavior;" tried to emulated our heroes on YouTube to get our 15 minutes of fame; and have traded away a belief in higher powers being in control for YOLO.  

But lately, the real problem has been pointing the finger. We Americans love our Constitutional Amendments, and freedom of speech is one of our greatest advances/hindrances. We've given morons the ability to speak for the masses.  

It's easy to point the finger at President Obama, or President Bush before him, for the reason we aren't doing well financially (or morally). Yeah, they both made some bad choices. Every story on CNN turns into a bicker-fest about what our administration did or didn't do that caused some terrible catastrophe. 

Supposedly, one of the kids who shot the Australian was black, and racist. He tweeted that 90% of white are "Nasty," and added the hashtag #HATE THEM.  (Never-mind that one of the accomplices was an idiotic white kid). So now, because this kid was an ignorant black moron, Obama is to blame.  Obama has to make some kind of admonishing statement, since he lamented Trayvon Martin, in the Zimmerman case.  If Obama doesn't make a statement about this case, it proves he is weak and a racist...These are just a smattering of cleaned up comments on CNN.com. To make an analogy of how pacified I made their comments, image Pulp Fiction edited for content and language to be appropriate for after-school hours on Nickelodeon. The Internet has become a Quentin Tarantino script.  

Recently ESPN closed down its message boards, and switched to Facebook only commenting in an effort to clean up the debauchery showing up on their threads. There are not enough admins in the world to control the angry tongues of anonymous Americans, even when discussing Ryan Braun's PED usage. A video about kittens attacking a fake mouse on Youtube will suddenly turn into people threatening each other's lives. Apparently the only way to keep Americans from yapping idiotically out of the side of our mouths, is to attach our real name and image to that statement.  Then the NSA can keep tabs (as if the NSA doesn't know who these "anonymous" morons are on CNN and other sites that allow screen-name commenting).  

How did we get so hostile?  Why are we so angry?  

Is it any wonder that unexplainable violence seems like the norm on television or the news anymore? Is it any wonder why we have kids killing out of boredom? Kids bragging about sexually assaulting girls on social media? Gung-ho vigilantes following suspects and killing them?  

We might just be as violently disturbed as the Romans were. Why not bring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to The Rose Bowl and fight to the death with Edward Snowden, George Zimmerman, the spotted owl (remember that), Bill Maher, and a bunch of Pokemon kids and loners dressed up as furries?  This is what individualism has made us into. Tiny subgroups divided against each other. We aren't a melting pot or a salad bowl, anymore, we are a bag of Jelly Belly's that have been opened and separated into 100 different bowls for similitude. Buttered Popcorn does not trust Licorice who will not be associated with PiƱa Colada who thinks the lifestyle of Passion Fruit is abominable.  


But we can't live like that.  It's too OCD. We have to stop dividing and separating each other into subgroups that fit our agenda. We are humans, and dammit, we are Americans. We can't de-evolve into Europeans who don't trust anyone who doesn't speak the same dialect as they do.  We, as a nation, have always been individuals with varying opinions and strange quirks but we still protected each other because we had been abused in the past by larger issues like: tyrannical governments, colonialism, indentured servitude, slavery, political and religious persecution, exploitation, and the elements.  Americans, like the Romans before them, thrived on the variety of its empire. It wasn't one homogeneous group that made it great...it was the ability to adapt and change and absorb the qualities and talents of the people inside it.  

Lincoln once said, "a house divided against itself cannot stand." I'm tired of separating my Jelly Belly's into groups and making derogatory comments about the flavors I don't like. If one flavor is too bitter, or odd, just add another handful. Usually the flavors meld into something enjoyable (as long as they aren't Bertie Bott's beans). Oh, for the love of Hermione, please tell me we Americans haven't added Bertie Bott's beans to our Jelly Belly mix...because if we've allowed vomit, rotten eggs, and boogers into the American mix, we're going to have to expelliarmus a bunch of quacks.    

4 comments:

  1. Great stuff Chris. So true. Feel bad now for unloading at The Moral today.

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  2. That wasn't much of an unload. I think it was tame by your standards. That lady deserved every word and more you said.

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  3. It's funny that I'm reading this today. A family gather yesterday demonstrated the "us" vs. "them" mentality into which America is devolving. There were insults, accusations of brain-washing; it was divisionism at its worst. Ugh. I fear for our future, in which we cannot have a discussion without hatred directing the whole thing. :(

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    1. At a family gathering? I hate it when families get divided on trivial issues. If blood can't accept blood, how can we expect any kind of progress with "outsiders."

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