Just one final thought ...

... at least for the moment.

Apart from all the nonsense, the confrontational approach to "discussion", the truly adolescent desire to win rather than to find out what makes sense, the refusal to budge from a position because you'll be perceived as weak, the blatant disregard for facts and the apparent (at least to me) cry-baby attitude toward being disagreed with, yes, apart from all of that, what disturbs me most and disturbs me most deeply is just how violent my home country has become. I'm sure most folks living in the USA don't see it, but it is pretty obvious to everyone else.

Way back when, I became an English major because I held (and still do hold) a deep respect for language and how it is so closely intertwined with culture. Following on the Beat Generation and Hippies, I have experienced a lot of shifts in what may and may not be said and most certainly in how things are expressed. I am fully aware that language is ever-changing and dynamic and I have not the least problem with that, from a linguistic perspective, but I do recommend all my fellow countrypeople to take a step back and give another thought to how things are being said.

Something as everyday and pervasive as marketing, is couched exclusively in military and war-waging terms and notions; we once had a national pasttime, but now (American, not real) football has become the national obsession where opponents need to be killed, crushed, demolished, slaughtered, and if necessary (which apparently it always is, if possible) humiliated. The vocabulary has slopped over into other sports as well. But just about every other area of life has been infected as well.

Politics is the worst, of course, at all levels, and I'm including not just the politicians, but all those wonderfully unbiased newscasters and experts and talk-show hosts Facebook and forum commentators, not to mention that ubiquitous symbol of American Freedom, the gun, carried openly or covertly, it doesn't matter. But it is, for better or worse, correctly or incorrectly, t-h-e symbol of violence without challenger.

Don't get me wrong, I have long and ardently argued for and supported the age-old adage: abusus non tollit usus. It's never the things, it's always the people, but when you've got a populace as uneducated, egoistic, self-centered, self-serving as you've got and you live in a culture that not only celebrates but for all intents and purposes worships violence, well, in my small mind, you're asking for trouble, and that's just what you've got.

I, personally, for a wide range of reasons don't get back to visit very often, but I know more than a few people here who would like to visit but are reluctant to for the simple reason that they don't feel safe there, and when I'm there, neither do I. It's not the number of guns that's the problem, and it's not the types of guns that's the issue (though some reasonable rethinking wouldn't be all that bad, but as I said above, that's no longer possible). No, it's the people, pure and simple.

There was a time when the Ugly American was the one visiting other countries and forcing his own way of life on others. These days, the kind, friendly, willing-to-help American is being obscured by the hate-spewing, loud-railing, brash, bullying, ideologue. I know most of my fellow countrypeople could care less what anyone else in the world thinks of them, but it's just that attitude that allows Ugly to happen.