The shop owner has great marketing skills 🤣

I bet that's here in the states.

'murica, fuck yeah !

Gotta love the U.S. of A ❤🇺🇲🇺🇸

@bioDan I don't have to love any country 🤷‍♂

@bittersweet lol of course you don't and i cherish for your freedom to express it! But I can wish you did.

I'm just an observer who used to live there for a couple of years as an international student, and i appreciate it and love it.

The amount of new gunowners this year is crazy.

@bioDan Usually, populations surprise me positively at an individual, cultural level; But they disgust me as a group.

Countries are groups of people, so I tend to be anti-nationalistic, not just towards my own country, but towards displays of nationalism in all countries.

There are many amazing aspects to human culture within the United States -- but waving a flag and unironically yelling the name of the nation you happened to be born into degrades that rich heritage more than it contributes to it.

Especially because the intricate web of regional traditions and the fruits of multiculturalism (Fucking hell, I'm a EU citizen and I ate Cajun, Texmex and NY Pizza this week) is something to be much more proud of than the things which "United" the United States.

@monzrmango With how crazy people are getting, it's little wonder people want the ability to defend themselves.

@bittersweet nice, i understand and respect your point of view. Infact i find it interesting so i want to understand you better.

Does that extend to other grouping of people like religious/ethnic groups, arch-linux users, devRant or other online communities, etc? Because the analogy you presented stands up to those groupings too.

I also find it somewhat amusing that you cherish the individual just like the founding principles to which the U.S. aspires to, namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (which extends to the constitution/bill of rights). These principles are so rare among the different groups of people in the world and its one of the main reasons why the U.S. is the indisputable and un-elected leader of the free world for the past century.

@bioDan The question is: What good has the US done, at the federal level?

Of course there is a reason half the world consumes American media, uses products designed by American companies, visits American communities online.

There is a great foundation, laid down by a few smart individuals — but again it has deteriorated as the nation became larger and more nationalistic.

American contributions to the world are largely private contributions, and I do still feel like many communities turn worse as they grow — devRant has turned into a crowd of meme kids, luckily still with some amazing people interspersed.

I feel like the only truly great thing Americans have done together, as a nation, is to put people on the Moon. That might be the only "fuck yeah, USA, let's wave our flag"-worthy moments.

@bittersweet that is a great question. I guess I'm more of an optimist in this regard since i would argue that when balancing the good, the bad, and the alternatives, mostly good things came out of it in terms of security, economy, STEM, and culture as a whole. I can name some examples for each vertical, but I'm not sure devRant is the correct platform to get into an in-depth discussion on that question.

On the other hand, i tend to agree with you that there is a scaling problem over time. But that's not entirely the fault of the people or the system as the vast majority of natural processes suffer from the same entropy problem when scaling up. Corrections and changes should be applied if we want to preserve the good things and discard the bad things, and Im glad we agree that the core (foundation) is good, so the refactoring of the system is far less painful.

Ive heard plenty of voices from people in the U.S. saying we should trash the current system and start a new one and that idea terrifies me.

Kind of reminds me of the notion that in my father's generarion - when things broke, you'd tried to fix it. Now people just throw away the whole thing and get a new one whether its a tool, product, relationship, etc.

Some form of face mask has been required by State law in order to enter businesses or other public buildings for a good while now... Somebody is probably liable to be sued.

@Frederick Let them get beaten, stabbed/shot, their car smashed, and their house and business burned down, then. 🙄

The criminal is the one at fault, not the person defending themselves. To think any different only serves to encourage more violence.

@Frederick
You reward that which you want more of,
And punish that which you want less of.

Rewarding a criminal with freedom encourages criminal behavior. Punishing the victims for self-defense encourages meek behavior. It's also an asshole thing to do.

Doing both of these shows that those countries don't respect their citizens, especially those who stand up for themselves. Then again, controlling the meek is bloody trivial. They've been quite literally trained to roll over and accept whatever happens to them. even at the hands of a criminal.

No wonder why are more Covid cases, freedom over brain

"The art of being an asshole", part one