I prefer to think of people as individuals responsible for their own actions rather than members of groups privy to outside definition. Stop trying to put others into context and let them reveal themselves to you, I think you will find the same to be true. America has produced and will continue to produce individuals of the highest caliber, and their existence redeems the vast hordes of devolving hiveminds jostling in endless recapitulation.
Individuals make up crowds that, through human history, have done profoundly stupid, mean, crass, cruel, abhorrent, and highly, *highly* regrettable things. Your inability to acknowledge that should be a concern to you. There is nothing wrong with your recognizing the (huge!!!) potential of each and every human, but painting that brush in the other direction could get you killed. Good luck.
Individuals choose to make up crowds. I never disputed the existence of evil, only its lack of importance. Good luck to you as well.
Wow. Just wow. All-Merican thinkin', what can I say. Weehaw. Git yar guns loaded and saddle yar harse, partner! Let's go drop some bombs somewhere! Erm... Seriously. 1) America is not a country. Canadians, Mexicans and Peruvians are as Americans as you are. You're just a US citizen, that's all. You like to call yourselves Americans. But any other country in the Americas can do the same. 2) The US is not the wealthiest economy on earth. What are you talking about? GDP per capita? Gross GDP for all the country? Amount of natural resources? As per Fortune, these are the richest countries on earth at present: http://fortune.com/2017/11/17/richest-country-in-the-world/ Anyways. Take it easy. I'm not verbally attacking you. Don't get too emotive about my comment. Don't attack, don't shoot. Let's have a peaceful discussion, all right?
Ditto, Tom. This reminds me of Gustave Le Bon's Study of The Popular Mind, which was quite an enjoyable read to me, by the way. Here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/445
While I agree with most of your comments, if someone says the wealthiest economy their talking about that country's economy which is the country's GDP unless you're just being pedantic, and the U.S. does have the world's highest GDP. We need it in order to be able to spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined! Come to think of it the "Americans" comment is pretty pedantic as well. I was just in Peru and had plenty of Peruvians ask me if I was an American; which would be odd if they thought of themselves as Americans no? And I have a company in Canada and can honestly say that over literally thousands of interactions with Canadian's I've not once heard a Canadian refer to themselves as an American. Git 'er done!
I see Sig. You mean the wealthiest by nominal GDP. But the US has a population of almost 350 millions, which certainly makes it a very populated country. I personally think that the GDP per capita is a better measure of the wealth of a nation. Furthermore we all know that the wealth of the USA is not very uniformly distributed amongst its citizens, which makes it rather third-worldish with 3% of the population holding 97% of the wealth (more or less, don't quote me on this, but you get my point I hope)...
Those are all true points. But I notice that you didn't disagree when I said we spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined. You could equally say, "no by measure of military spending per capita Saudi Arabia and Singapore spend more than the U.S. and so spend more on their military" However you wouldn't because it's nonsensical to use any superlative when comparing Singapore's military to that of the the U.S.'s., just like it's pedantic to say Liechtenstein is the world's wealthiest economy because they have the world's highest GDP per capita.
I'm gonna' go home to momma' and nurse my open longs that are, well, hurting. Have done it before, and it, well, hurts. That Davos thing is stupid. I may yet get out of it though, I still have time.
What can I say, Overnight? Even if you win a rat race, you're still a rat. No pun intended. Why do you say Davos is stupid?