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Well I am not really completely back from the dead. I still feel like I just returned yesterday. Maybe I should take the time to unpack my bag, that might kinda solidify my return and remove this veil of zombiehood.

Watch me, once I have finished this I shall indeed take the 3 minutes it would take, and unpack my bag.
Anyway it feels good to be home. Temperatures around freezing point are not nice, but its not too bad in general.

I liked Miami, the weather was nice, the people were nice, the availability of stuff to buy was great. I guess most of those points apply to the entire USA.

I just got this thought. I shall type.

Generally the population is formed by the leader and their education (which is affected by the leader). As with all nations, we have the small percentages of hardcore freaks that tend to decide for themselves, but most follow the leader. One could say that this is not true democracy, and one would be right. True democracy implies that the population forms the leader, but this is obviously not the case. This might be the case in other countries, but right now I am talking about the USA.
Before getting elected, leaders try to find what people want and tell them that they will get it. After the election some of those promises are fulfilled, while other’s are silently or loudly dismissed and are never heard from again. Eventually the leader convinces the people that something is good or bad. Those that voted for him at first will probably go with his words. Those that voted against him will of course not agree. Some might.
Thus the leader convinces them that its a great idea to protect the american people by fighting a war on the other side of the world.
Now, I dislike Saddam as much as the next guy, and still can’t decide if I think it was a good or bad idea to kick his ass by direct war, but it is done, so I won’t discuss that.
The fact does remain that many people were convinced.

That is how the circle goes, a president comes and feeds people with ideas that they would never think of before he came along, and many accept it and go along with it.

Many people around the world dislike the USA and Americans in general.
Although there are plenty of reasons to dislike Americans, it is not entirely their fault.
First of all, the education system in the USA is really bad and very nationalistic. Primarily, you are taught to love your country and your president. There is nothing wrong with loving your country but I do not believe in loving your president. A president should be critisized as much as possible. You should only give him critique and sometimes support. Never “love”. How can democracy function when people are taught to love their leader? If they love him, does that not mean they would be uneasy to elect someone else?

Another problem in the USA is that the people generally never leave their country. Some statistics say that less then 20% of the American people own a passport. That means that even fewer ever travel outside their country. I believe that traveling around the world is important to the formation of perspective that will allow you to critisize your own nation. How can you say that your country is the best if you have never seen any other? I have not yet found the “best” country, but I have seen my share and have my own ideas. The point of that is, once you have seen many countries, you will eventually realise that there are many things that are better and worse in countries around the world.

Anyway the point is that the American people are generally a pretty decent bunch. What they need is a leader that will take their kind hearts and lead them in the right direction, help educate people as to the world they live in and help them find that which is important. Of course I would not be one to complain if they decided to fix the problem on their own, but that does not seem likely.

Eventually one can hope that people will stop being formed by the leader, and form the leader themselves.
But that is a naive thought huh?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2003 at 10:03 and is filed under Diary, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.