[sperry]

Phil, I think what you just ranted about is pretty much the underlying thing wrong with America. People don't care about anything but themselves and their money. Corporate greed has been out of hand since the 80's, and now it's traveled down to people's personal lives.

Look at the looters in New Orleans. For all intents and purposes, it's armageddon down there. The goddamn end of the world. What are people doing? Trying to survive? Trying to comfort each other? No they're fucking stealing TVs and shooting at rescuers. I read a quote from an Indian woman in Sri Lanka. She called it dead on (and I paraphrase): "When the tsunami hit, everyone helped everone else, helped them to escape and to rebuild. The ablebodied helped those that were too weak to help themselves. In America people just sit around waiting to be helped or theive and loot, and fight." I'm repulsed by the crowds of refugees sitting around in front of the convention center chanting "we want help, we want help". See that, they *want* help... not "need"... *want*. Many of those people looked able enough to help themselves. Why aren't they doing anything to help each other? Blame the welfare generation. People so used to being provided for that they *can't* help themselves.

People in this country are by and large greedy and lazy. Everyone wants everything now and will do only the minimum amount of work to get it. I know I'm guilty of it... I buy shit on my credit card instead of saving up for it... I do it a lot. But there are people far worse than me. People rolling around in their 6000lb bling mobile SUVs living like they're fucking basketball players with a shit job that they rarely go to and bitch about the whole time they're there to pay for it all.

I'm pretty fed up with seeing people's "The Power of Pride" bumper stickers that have no clue what they're proud of. Are they proud of America's massive deficit? How about our policy of taking over soverign nations under the guise of "promoting freedom"? Are they proud of our inability to take care of our own citizens during a natural disaster? Maybe they're proud of our heavy reliance on forign energy. Or perhap they just enjoy the irony of driving around with a "Power of Pride" bumper sticker in the country that the rest of the world views as cocky.

America needs to face the music. We've gotten too big for our britches. The values of hard work and sacrifice that made us the greatest nation on the planet have all blown out of the majority of the people in America. We're complacent and expectant that the world will continue to be our oyster. Something tells me we've got a really harsh awakening coming. It's well past too late to fix things... and I wonder if there's at least a chance to mitigate the damage.