Who goes first?79 responses total.
Me first... Why do people fight about a religious monument on public property, but don't bat an eye when the president spouts religion, quoting the bible and in essence calls gays sinners?
The First Amendment has two clauses about religion: one saying the government
can't promote it (the "Establishment" clause), and one saying the
government can't interfere with individuals' rights to practice it ("Free
Exercise"). They frequently lead to results that look contradictory on the
surface, but actually aren't.
Here, the monument in a public park gets dinged for promoting religion --
while Bush's Bible quotes are protected by his right to free exercise of
his personal beliefs. I wouldn't say people aren't batting an eye,
though; many find his remarks deeply offensive and will hold them against
him come election time. They just know there's no point in trying to do
anything about the fact that our president is a bigot.
Side issue:
There's also some argument over the meaning of the Establishment clause,
with some taking the position that it only forbids the government to
promote specific religions (the extremists in that direction claim all it
forbids is the establishment of an official state church like in England),
and others -- like me -- arguing that it bars the promotion of religion
even in the general sense.
People may be comfortable with the use of the word "God" in places like
the Plege of Allegiance (it promotes "religion as a concept"), but may
still be uncomfortable with actual New Testament quotes on public property
because they're specifically Christian.
In theory, I think the president has two voices. One where he speaks as the mouthpiece of the nation, and one where he speaks his personal opinions. I certainly have no problem with the president saying religious things in his personal voice. He's allowed to be as religious as the next man, to worship the God of his own choice. He's allowed to talk about his faith in public, and the role it has in the choices he makes. But religion should not be a factor when speaking as the mouthpiece of the nation. That really is a hard line to draw though. Even when the president understands it, the media and the nation often don't. Once Bush Sr remarked that he didn't like broccoli. There was a huge uproar from the broccoli lobby. He had to issue an apology and broccoli was prominent on the white house menu for a while. This is silly. The man is allowed to not like broccoli, without it becoming a matter of national debate. However, a lot of our current political leaders, including our president, blur the line pretty fiercely. God is in almost all of his speeches. He invokes religion in support of particular policies. There are still limits. He doesn't say "we should attack Iraq because God said we should". But his penchant for invoking God at every opportunity is certainly one of the many things I don't like about him. Why does America tolerate it? The fact remains that Americans are still mostly Christian. We do fairly well at tolerating other faiths, but I think for most Americans tolerating Christianity in Government isn't really a matter of toleration at all. They hardly notice it, and take it for granted. Talking this way still gains Baby Bush more votes than it costs him. The people opposing religious monuments in parks are a vocal minority, opposed by another vocal minority. Most people don't care one way or the other. Because of the complexity introduced by Bush's right to be religious as a person, if not as the representative of the nation, attacking his right to say such things would be a great deal harder than attacking a monument in the park. I have a great deal more respect for politicians who do not use their faith as a cheap trick to win voters. But I'd be very reluctant to try to formally restrict their right to do so.
Joe slipped in with a somewhat similar opinion.
Why does it have to be a cheap trick? If the man truly believes, which is my impression, why does his mention of God and his beliefs have to be anything but his own need to speak about it? (After all, one of our, ah, responsibilities as Christians is to bear witness to our faith. A lot of people forget that, but it's still a part of Christianity.) Speaking as someone who sometimes wonders just what's WRONG with being a Christian...
Nothing is WRONG with either being a Christian or even bearing witness to your Christian faith, of course. I'm not trying to invalidate your impression of "the man" either, but *my* impression is somewhat different. Is one of his Responsibilites as a Christian to criminialise the lives of others because he has judged us to be immoral? I really tire of this argument, that Christians are persecuted in this country. Believe what you want, but don't keep insisting on legislating your concept of morality for the rest of us.
There is a fine distinction, and it is even a question as to whether it still exists in the political arena, between the expression of personal religious beliefs, and playing to an audience of people who relate to those beliefs. If it is the latter, then it is a device (I wouldn't use the phrase cheap trick in this context) being used for political gain and the result IS the cheapening of religious belief. There is a proper "place" for even public testimony of belief in the context of a diverse society, and many would legitimately argue that the official activities of the President are not it, if only because even the appearance of official expression of a particular (and exclusive) religious belief denies a measure of public legitimacy to all others.
I understand what jmsaul and janc are saying. The president has a right to free speech and to say what he wants. However, like janc said, when he acts as mouth-piece for the nation, or represents the government (as he was doing on this occasion, with his comments of codifying a law), he shouldn't bring religion into it, and one particular religion at that. I agree with janc, it's not comfortable listening to a president using God in all his speeches. Sure, the majority is christian, but by invoking God, he's excluding people with other beliefs. A very subtle form of discrimination, in my opinion. When you talk about keeping religion out of the governemnt, it should include the president. I'm not saying he should stop praying, or going to work. But he shouldn't be using religious concepts in all his speeches. His job is not to preach. If that's what he wanted to do, he should have become a preacher
In the last para, I meant gong to "church". Sorry.
Oh, I'm not saying I *agree* with what he said, btw. I'm just annoyed that every time someone may be actually just expressing something they honestly believe (in this case, at least, I get the impression that it's something he does believe, agree with it or not) it's dismissed as playing politics or a "cheap trick". Not everyone plays politics all the time, not even politicians. Mick, sweetie, have I *ever* tried to say I want to legislate your morality? I don't. I have my own morality, as you know, and I may not always *agree* with choices some people have made (including my own children, which jmsaul will bring up, even if I don't -- hi Joe!), but I figure it's your life, and your own choice. I ain't God, and I figure I've got enough trouble trying to keep my own life in some kind of semblance of moral behavior to go trying to legislate what anyone else does. But that's ME. It just annoys me when some people try to say that all Christians are alike and we all want X. We all don't. Everyone is different, and everyone has his or her own ideas on what's right or wrong. Capisce?
Only thing wrong with it is that it is the majority religion in this country,
so even when it tries to tiptoe, it tends to shake the earth
Yesterday I was sitting driving home from the grocery store, listening ot NPR.
While announcing the headlines they said "Bush speaks out about [I forget],
[something else I forgot], and gay marriage". So I wondered, "what could he
possibly have said about gay marriage?" He can't be for it, because half the
nation would have heart attacks, and he can't really say much against it
without sounding like a homophobe. I'd have thought he'd do his best to say
as little as possible on the subject.
Turns out he was responding to a question in a press conference, so he
couldn't entirely dodge it. He opposed it, but used the phrase "we are all
sinners". This is quite adroit. It supplies a reason to not approve gay
marriage (homosexuality is a sin and marriage is a sacrament and the two don't
mix) without exactly stating it. At the same time, it invokes the Christian
principle of "hate the sin, love the sinner" to dodge the homophobia question.
So he pushes the anti-gay business off on the Church ("It's not my fault that
God hates gays") and comes out smelling rosy. (Never mind that lots of
Christian denominations do not regard homosexuality as a sin and even have
openly gay ministers, so what he is invoking here is less Christianity than
an oversimplified characture of Christianity.)
I think that if you want to oppose the government allowing gay marriage,
then you should have a secular reason for doing it. It's a secular government
after all. If you want to oppose having your church perform gay marriages,
then religious reasons are totally appropriate. Bush didn't state any
secular reasons, and only implied religious reasons.
To me this feels like less of a profession of faith, than a use of religion
for a political end. A person who didn't believe at all might be pleased to
seize on such a rhetorical dodge to get himself out of a tight place. I'd
be more willing to believe that he was making professions of faith and not
just using faith as a card trick, if he ever professed faith when it was not
politically expedient.
Still, as I said, the line is very hard to define. I think it is frequently
crossed by members of both parties. I won't call on Mr Bush to stop talking
about God, and I don't even think it would make my list of the top twenty
reasons not to vote for the man.
There is supposed to be separation of state and church, in which case Bush can talk about god(s) all he wants in private but not while on duty.
(about six responses slipped in) I'd caution anyone against assuming anything about Twila's politics. Just because people who believe A usually believe B, doesn't mean Twila can't believe A and not B. She has many strong beliefs, among the strongest of which seems to be not imposing her beliefs on others. Stock right-wing stereotypes do not apply.
Ok!! I will attempt to ask some simpler questions. 1. Why do they drive on the right hand side of the road? 2. Is Prom really as important as they show in the movies? 3. Is the divorce rate really 50%? If yes, why is to so high? 4. Why do US citizens call themselves americans when they are really referring to only citizens of the US. Isn't America a continent, inhabited by mexicans, argentininans and canadians too?
Re #12: I don't quite agree. Presidents are always on duty (see the Bush Broccoli incident). And for some people faith really is part of everything they think (though I'm more inclined to believe that of Carter than of Bush or Clinton). To ask such a person to completely excise religion from his public persona would be unreasonable. I'd just be content if he didn't give religious reasons for policies, and assume that a whole nation composed of people of many different faiths will just buy it. He needs to be invoking more fundamental American values than "homosexuality is a sin".
Re #14:
For the road side question, see
http://www.travel-library.com/general/driving/drive_which_side.html
For the "American" question, it comes from the name "United States of
America". "American" sounds better than "United Statesian." Everyone
knows it isn't entirely accurate. There was never a sensible name for
citizens of the Soviet Union either. Some countries are just too new to
have the history of their name blurred enough that it doesn't mean anything
else.
re:14.4, 16: in Spanish (at least, the Spanish I was taught in school), the word *is* United-Statesian: 'estadounidense'. According to the authors of my high school Spanish texts, people in other Western Hemisphere countries do get somewhat offended that 'American' usually refers to residents of the United States. IMHO, though, there are other words which refer to residents of the two continents, whereas as Jan noted there really aren't other words for US-ers.
It should also be remembered that, until the end of American Civil War, people generally felt more loyalty to their State than to the United States. The States were individual countries that joined together for common cause. (This distinction was less clear, perhaps, in the states formed from the Louisiana Purchase.)
Re #14: You've already gotten answers on some of these, so...
2: It depends on the high school, and the individual. I went to a small
private school, where Prom wasn't as big a deal as it is for a lot of
people. For some, though, it's the most important event in their lives
until their wedding, or it's an opportunity to show off how much they
can afford to spend to look cool. Anyone who still thinks their Prom
was a big deal ten years after the fact, though, either had a really
unusual Prom or needs to get a life.
3: I assume you're comparing us to India, though, given the tone of your
posts elsewhere, so I'll address why the two countries are different.
Bad marriages, including abusive ones, happen everywhere. In the US,
however, the partners have the option of getting out of them *relatively*
easily (this is not to say it's necessarily easy, just easier) and with
minimal or no social stigma. In India, an abused wife essentially has
to put up with it until she dies, her husband dies, or it gets to the
point where either or both families are willing to step in.
I've heard Indians claim that their lower divorce rate proves that
arranged marriages are better. I don't buy that argument, because I
don't personally believe that an abusive marriage is an improvement
over a divorce. Indian couples are more likely to stay married
because there's tremendously strong social pressure to do so,
remarriage can be difficult, and divorce is seen as an honor issue
(especially within the Muslim community). Here, a spouse can get out
of an abusive marriage. There, they can't.
Just remembered something else about the "50% of marriages end in divorce" claim, too. It can be misinterpreted as meaning that, if you get married, there's a 50% chance that marriage will end in divorce. That isn't true -- the statistic includes a large number of people who get divorced repeatedly, for whatever reason. I know someone, for example, who is on her fourth husband (all divorces). This skews the number.
Re 19> I would have to agree on the reason for a lower divorce rate in India. I've seen many marriages, that may not be abusive, but are not what I would call marriages. The husband and wife live separately, citing work, the kids are raised by the mom, and everyone puts up a happy front at public occasions. I wouldn't term these marriages abusive by any sense, all parties are quite happy with the situation, but these aren't really marriages in my opinion. Much better to get a divorce and move on,
Re 20> When you say 50% of all marriages end in divorces, it should include repeat marriages. Doesn't matter if it's the 1st marriage or the 6th marriage of the bride or groom in concern. It is a unique marriage, irrespective of past marital status of either partner. I don't see how multiple marriages skews results in this case.
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Re #22: But it isn't a unique marriage independent of the past marital
status of the two partners. This isn't like a coin toss: the
divorce history of the partners influences the chance that the
current marriage will last. For some people, the chance that a
given marriage will end in divorce is far higher than it is for
the general population.
These tend to be people who either have a personal problem that
causes failed marriages, or a pattern of picking spouses who do.
For example, an alcoholic who becomes abusive when drunk will
often go through a series of marriages and divorces because he/she
can behave for long enough to catch a spouse, but will eventually
fall off the wagon and get dumped. Similarly, a woman who picks
abusive husbands (this is more frequent than you might think, and
usually a result of being raised in an abusive household) but has
the sense to divorce them when she figures it out could rack up
quite a list. Or someone who has affairs. There are a lot of
patterns that lead to multiple divorces and make it very likely
that subsequent marriages will end in divorce too.
Since these people are included in the statistic, it skews things.
Unfortunately, I don't remember by how much.
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when referring to someone from the continent, you would prefix it with "North" or "South". Anyone from Mexico, Canada or the US is a "North American". Any one from Brazil, Argentina, or the like is a "South American". There is not continent "America". There is a "North America" and a "South America" (and even "Central America", though that's not recognised as a separate continent). So it's perfectly acceptable to call some one from the USA to call themselves American, there's nothing to be confused about.
Re: #2: If the president is a bigot based on the remarks he made, then please add me to the rolls of that bigotry. In fact, add the overwhelming number of US citizens to that roll while you're at it.
the 50% is a statistic about marriages, not people who get married. If there were only 20 people in the world, and they all married each other , there would be 10 marriages. If four of those people divorced and remarried, 20% of the marriages would have ended in divorce. And 20% of the people would have gotten divorces. The, those four people proceed to marry and divorce until they have all been married and divorced in all possible combinations. The percentage of _people_ who divorced would not change. 80% remain married, 20% got divorced. The percentage of _marriages_ that ended in divorce would change dramatically. 67% of the marriages were stable, 33% ended in divorce.
Unless I misread something (else), the numbers in that last line were reversed, and should've been 33 and 67, respectively.
Re 28> Agreed. I think what Joe was trying to say was that while 50% of all marriages end in divorce, one needs to keep in mind that that percentage is skewed to some degree by a relatively small number of people who have a tendency to repeatedly get into marriages that will end in divorce. Did I get that right, Joe?
Re #25: uhhh....the English drive on the left.
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In most of the divorces I know about one partner left because they fell in love with someone else, or wanted to 'find themselves'. No abuse, no alcohol. My cousin was amicably divorced twice. My uncle decided to marry someone 20 years younger. His first wife invited us all to her second wedding.
We can all agree divorce is pretty common, whatever the statistics actually are. As a divorcee myself, I think it's very unfortunate it happens so often.
Re #30: Yep.
Re #34: Yes, but in many cases it's better than the alternative. I'm not
speaking for your case specifically.
Re #5: What's WRONG is defining the public face of the office of POTUS as an explicitly Christian one. Government officials should not act in any sectarian capacity while exercising their office. Re #21: Sounds like the way officially Catholic countries handle it.
resp:14 Well, basically why the *English* drove on the left was to have your weapon on the ready for that pesky highwayman. We just started driving on the right to spite them and be different, really. We embraced Santa Claus because he wasn't that English Father Christmas-- if I remember right, there was all sorts of things during the 19th century that we did to distance ourselves from Britain.
re resp:35: I wasn't speaking of my divorce, in particular, either, though of course it has affected my perceptions of divorce. As a general case, though, I bet we all know someone who has had 4 or more marriages. I knew a guy in college who had had 5 stepdads before he graduated from high school. He was fortunate in that his maternal grandfather was a stable influence in his life. He certainly didn't have any other male role models he could count on. I'm sure his mother was unhappy with all of her various husbands, once she married them... but at some point, this guy and his two sisters, the children, ought to have received some consideration as well. The American characteristic of driving on the right instead of the left originated in the 18th century. Santa Claus wasn't a big deal anywhere until the late 1800's in America. I don't belive our mass giving of presents occurred until after the Great Depression.
I think the modern image of Santa Claus (jolly fat guy with reindeer) was created first from nearly whole cloth by the author of "The Night Before Christmas" and popularized via a series of ads for Coca Cola. Web searching...yup...http://www.the-north-pole.com/history/ says Thomas Nast did a lot to develop the character too, and Rudolf was invented for Montgomery Ward advertisements. The night before Christmas was 1823, and the Coca Cola ads were 1931. Santa is a pretty modern creation though bits of the legend have ancient roots.
Thanks!! What myths/images/impressions created by Hollywood movies, usually, would you like to dispel about the US?
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In real life America, there are toddlers. As a parent of a toddler, I'm struck by the fact that the only movie that contains a toddler in a significant roles is "Monsters, Inc" where they computer generated the toddler. Apparantly getting a toddler into a movie is harder than an alien, a talking pig, or a dinosaur.
indubitably.
resp:41 Indeed, many of us have traveled to other countries: and many of us even appreciate the mix of culture here in our own backyard.
Regarding the divorce thing. Do you think that the relative ease of getting out of a marriage makes people less adjusting to each other? Or tend to hit the eject button sooner than required? Why do porn stars never take off their footwear in movies (if you ever noticed)? ;-) Do people regularly leave their parents after teenage and see them after 5-10 years? Are parents usually left in old-age homes? How important are relatives to a US family? How common is sex at say, 13 or 14 years of age? Is it acceptable to parents there usually? Can you really tell whether a kid is a gay when he/she is 13-14?
I'd guess dissertations have been written on the first question, and every one comes to a different conclusion. I'd say that relatives are important, but a significant portion of the population is sufficiently mobile that relaties aren't around. Moving out as a teenager, after high school, is not unusual, but not seeing parents for several years _is_ unusual. Well, not maintaining contact is unusual; the aforementioned mobility can interfere with physical visits.
There's very little I could tell you about porn, but even if I knew a lot more about porn than I do, I imagine it wouldn't be the footwear that I would have been paying attention to. ;) I'm not sure what you mean about seeing parents "after 5-10 years." A lot of people move out of their parents' houses when done with high school, or soon thereafter, in order to go to college or otherwise live their own lives once they're old enough to not need to be taken care of on a daily basis. On the other hand, a lot of Americans make it well into their 20s (or occasionally longer) living with their parents, either out of being happy with the arrangement, or inertia, or inability to afford housing of their own. As for the "see them after 5-10 years" part, when I lived in the same city as my parents I used to see them at least once a week, and often more. Now that I live a few thousand miles away from them, I still see them several times a year and talk to them on the phone at least once a week. I don't think that's atypical. A lot of people attempt to care for their elderly relatives themselves, and a lot of people put their elderly relatives into facilities where they can be cared for by professionals. I suspect both have their advantages and disadvantages for those being cared for and their younger, healthier, relatives. I don't know which is more common. I don't think kids having sex at age 13 or 14 is all that common. At least among kids I knew at that age, I think people were still trying to figure out steps less than that. Among 15 and 16 year olds, my impression is it's a lot less common than most 15 and 16 year olds tend to think it is. But maybe I'm way off.
Re: 41.9: We (or rather, y'all) can take jokes and laugh at [y]ourselves when [you] need to ? Define, "when we need to".
Re truth vs. movie myths: New York City is neither a bright bustling joyful metropolis nor a filthy greedy violent hell-hole. Also, the main thing that even the most accurate movie depiction of midtown Manhattan can't tell you is: what it smells like. Most US drug-dealers, murderers, pimps and prostitutes are white. Most Italian-Americans are not in the Mafia. Most Jewish Americans are indistinguishable from most other Americans. Rachael Leigh Cook wearing glasses wouldn't actually be considered unattractive in the US, as she was in the movie "She's All That."
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I do tend to agree with the theory that because divorce is so easy, it's easier to hit the eject button, so to speak, when the marriage hits a rough patch. You see so many people get married too young, barely out of their teens because they think they're in love, and think that marriage is going to be a bed of roses. At the first sign of the prickly patch, they think it'snot working, and bail out. That's pretty sad but it happens. Sometimes you hit a hard patch, you need to work it out. But by making divorce so readily available, you're also breeding a bunch of people who think it's a good enough solution to their problems. I think the ease of divorce is also the reason that so many people get married without really exploring the whole concept. Not saying everybody, but I'm guessing a significant number. Geting married at an early age is all great and stuff if you're willing to stick through the hard times. And when you're 19, you don't believe you could ever have a fight. Divorce is one of those necessary evils. You do need it, for cases when it's warranted. But it has the ability to be misused so easily.
My brother lives in Tennessee and avoids contact with my parents other than a visit or two per year. He doesn't contact me a lot, either. However, my parents and I see each other about weekly. We live about 60 miles apart. We're in nearly daily contact via the Internet. I believe both my parents, and I, would rather they lived in an assisted-living center rather than have them move in with me. There'd be no question, if there were ever a need, they could move in with me.
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I'd rather see divorce be easier, not harder, maybe having all marriage contracts be for a set number of years, say five. The basic disolution contract could be agreed to at the time of the marriage. At the end of the five years the contract could be renewed if both partners were in agreement. This would keep everyone on their toes, looking for ways to keep the relationship thriving, instead of one or both partners feeling tenured, and complacent. Would this result in more divorces? Most certainly. Would more good marriages fail? Doubt it. I wouldn't want to be in a marriage where I wasn't loved and respected. Nor would I want to feel stuck with a partner I didn't love or respect. Five years seems about right to evaluate if the partnership is working. Bad marriages happen. Be as gentle on yourself and those in the fallout zone as you can be. Learn from your mistakes. Avoid playing the victim and move on.
Er, dissolution.
STeve and I have a contract marriage. We contracted for 300 years. It has been a running joke throughout the 21 years we've been together. One of the few things that made him smile right after the Drs confirmed that he had a stroke was my leaning over and whispering in his ear that he just had to be ok because he had 281 years left in the contract and I was holding him to it.
re resp:54: It sounds great. Except that you can't conceive and raise kids in 5 years.
I personally don't know of any divorces that occured due to wife abuse. Jim was in an abusive marriage for ten years but stayed married because he wanted to raise children. At the time divorced men lost their childen (every other Thursday visits is not raising children) and also had to pay 1/4 to 1/3 of their income to the person who stole their children. Re visiting twice a year, that does not sound to me like jep's brother is avoiding contact. I visited once a year at most but wrote frequently.
In India, physical abuse in a marriage would probably be as common as it is in the US or anywhere else in the world. The reason for low divorce rate is mostly social pressure, social stigma attached to divorce and considerable difficulty in getting remarried. An example is if you lookup matrimonial ads put up bu divorced Indians. Nearly each one of them says "Innocent divorcee looking .....". Innocent bcoz the society treats divorce as a fault of one/both the partners. Strange, but true!! Hehe.
I agree that most divorces are not about abuse. But if more people were stuck in relationships that weren't working for them, then some of those non-abusive, unhappy relationships might well develop into abusive relationships. I think a bad relationship is more likely to get worse than it is to get better if you "stick it out". You know, you only get one life. Should you devote it to trying to make a marriage work with some person that you don't even like anymore, much less love? Children certainly change the equation. But I think not as dramatically as people used to think. I think every American who doesn't have divorced parents themselves at least has numerous friends with divorced parents. We know from personal experience that divorce isn't great for kids, but it isn't disasterous either. I think that often a divorce in a family with kids is harder for the parents than for the kids.
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Dan brings up a good point. The whole concept of karma is very strong in India, especially the rural parts. If you're having a bad marriage,it's most probably of the bad deeds you performed in earlier lives. Of course, this logic seems to apply only to women. You'll hear a lot of "this is what my fate is" and the like, from women who will not get a divorce. Anf then there are monetary factors, which are almost as great in determining whether one should get a divorce. How will I support myself and my children...
Re #42: CGI toddlers will follow the script, and they can be made to perform as many takes a day as the director demands. Child labor laws do not yet apply to CGI toddlers (a glaring oversight IMHO).
CGI toddlers? Ah, you mean computer generated images of toddlers. In the context of the rest of the day's discussion, you threw me for a loop, Russ.
When free legal aid is first provided to a community of poor people, the first thing that happens is that they all get divorced. Seriously. It turned out (at the time the legal aid infrastructure was first being put together in the 1960s and 1970s) that there was a tremendous pent-up demand for divorce among people who didn't think they could afford the legal fees and so on. I once read a sardonic essay by a conservative political columnist reviewing a video which gave instructions on how to become a porn star. Among the helpful hints he mentioned was one about always bringing your own footwear to a photo shoot, because the floor or ground underneath gets, um, soiled with stuff you wouldn't want to step in.
Re #64: Thank goodness it was only a loop. If you went into infinite recursion, stack overflow and crash, I'd never forgive myself!
I still think divorce happens because people don't fully understand what they are getting into-- and haven't fully prepared for it, don't know what they want, don't have realistic expectations, and don't realize that marriage is constant work. I'd say preparing for marriage begins way back in the preteen years in a gradual and slow process. I've explained it before and don't feel like explaining it all again. But I'll still say a good marriage is a well-thought out labor of love that is not by any means taken lightly. (And granted, I admit you might not get it on the first try.) resp:45 (6) With so many hormones kicking in, and bodies starting to change, should a person really be making decisions this early about sexuality? Nothing has stabilized yet? Granted, quite a few people I know have had these sorts of feelings, so to speak, from the childhood years, but it seems lately that this is more a product of the very late modern era-- i.e. in the years when homosexuality could be spoken of a little more freely in the U.S. Whether this is due to supposed lessening of social pressure, or society's greater emphasis on sex, one cannot tell, but *I* do somewhat suspect the latter somewhat. Even the experts admit sexuality is not perfectly fixed, and again, I have trouble accepting a confirmation made when hormones are not in balance. The 'coming out' age used to be more around the early twenties or so, but again, the debate could be made over sexual maturity or social freedoms given around that age.
Another truth about the USA that isn't always evident in the movies is that the USA has been coasting for at least thirty years now. The mass and velocity were so enormous to start with that it's taking forever to coast to a stop. There are occasional little bumps like 9/11 and the "dot-com implosion" that reduce the momentum slightly, and there are compensatory jolts of force like the rise of the African American educated middle class. But, on balance, the machine that was moving the whole thing along is no longer powerful enough to do so. The machine, of course, is human practical intelligence, what used to be called "American ingenuity" (although there is nothing especially "American" about it). There are a million theories about why it lost its power in the USA: liberal humanists blame the know- nothing Christian Right, intellectuals blame degraded public education, Ayn Randites blame the rise of unreason, feminists blame testosterone, conservatives blame the tax-and-spend mentality, religious fundamentalists blame godlessness, snobs blame popular culture. Insert your pet theory here. These are all related, and there might even be truth in some of them.
Don't completely agree. I think that the rise of the internet was a definite example of some spark-plugs still firing. And though it wasn't entirely an American thing (it never is), it was in many fundamental ways an American development. And .com bust or no, the internet is here to stay.
Playing devil's advocate just a bit: Wasn't most of the fundamental research that made the internet possible done 30+ years ago, consistent with Michael's timeline in #68?
Yup, I guess Michael's right after all!
> What myths/images/impressions created by Hollywood movies, usually, > would you like to dispel about the US? "The US doesn't really look like that." Most TV shows and many movies (especially stuff made before say 1985) were filmed in Southern California. The first time I visited LA and Pasadena, it was really weird: all of a sudden, I was in places that looked like the TV shows I had watched growing up. The lighting was right, the buildings looked right, etc. I hadn't experienced that before. > Apparantly getting a toddler into a movie > is harder than an alien, a talking pig, or a dinosaur. Real toddlers are probably impossible to work with on movie sets, and it's still very hard to do a realistic CGI human being. Easier to do something non-human, because people won't catch it as easily.
Also, real Americans can always tell when a supposedly Chicago or New York movie was shot in some budget Canadian locus like Toronto. I've seen plywood-and-plaster sets that were more realistic. US suburbia is never as interestng or amusing as movies like American Beauty want you to think it is. US cops are pretty good shots. The innocent guy who is falsely accused and trying to escape, or who just gets in the line of fire, seldom makes it out unharmed.
" US suburbia is never as interestng or amusing as movies like American Beauty want you to think it is. " uhh, ya it is.
Very little U.S. law enforcement is conducted by private vigilantes. Any police officer who behaved like just about any police officer in any TV show or movie would be fired immediately. The TV ones are always either incompetent or lone-wolf heros who conduct high-speed car chases through shopping malls. Neither is encouraged in real life.
Re #17: Sort of like how my friend from Washington gets annoyed when people use 'West Coast' when they mean 'California'. Re #49: I've heard Manhattan mostly smells like urine. True? Re #67: I agree with you for the most part, but on the other hand, hormones change all through life. They peak sometime in your twenties, generally, then decline gradually after that. It's not as if there are only changes in your teens and then things are stable for the rest of your life. Re #72: At the rate things are going now, pretty soon all the movies that are supposed to be set in the U.S. will look like Canada. ;>
the subway tunnels mostly smell like urine.
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resp:76 1) That would get annoying. But we seem to get a lot of Californication up here anyways. You can't escape the influence.
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