From time to time I take advantage of my unique perspective on the state of affairs in the U.S., given that I no longer view and gather information from inside the U.S., but rather from my perch here in Toronto, Canada, the most culturally and ethnically diverse city in the world.
After having spent thirty years in the U.S., and having the world's news/current events bombarding me solely through the all-American lens otherwise known as the U.S. media, these past three years in Toronto have provided me with a much more realistic picture of how the U.S. is regarded around the world by more civilized nations like Canada, Britain, Scandinavia, western Europe, etc.
The picture is not a pretty one. I quickly learned that U.S. based media outlets are largely full of shit, for want of a better term. Nothing down there comes close to the level of intellectual reporting, relative objectivity and news gathering of, say, BBC or CBC. Even Al-Jazeera is more journalistically honest than the best the U.S. has to offer in the form of CNN, Fox News and others. There are many reasons for this, the most obvious and glaring being the fact that private enterprise controls the U.S. news machine, and the private sector corporate behemoths only care about one thing -- MONEY. In fact, they are legally obligated to do whatever it takes to increase the share price of their stock. The result??? News outlets that feed the masses the kind of information that keeps them glued to the screens -- the TV, the smartphone, the tablet, whatever. It's all contrived bullshit, typically engineered to keep the public in fear of the unknown.........so that they'll keep watching to see what happens next -- glued to the little screens.
This ends up creating a populous that in aggregate enters more queries on Google and Twitter for Miley Cyrus 'twerking' on the same day the U.S. is contemplating going to war in Syria. A mass of people who seek comfort at places like 'Fatburger' and Las Vegas. Hookers and cocaine and guns and gangbangers. Rich white kids buying 'music' created by street-corner drug dealers who fancy themselves as 'artists.' Cyberbullying, suicide, entrenched racism that has nothing close to a solution in any of our lifetimes, and a litany of deep-rooted problems that nobody in the U.S. has the balls to properly address. Political correctness is prioritized above reality, security, education, healthcare. All the politicos care about is that they don't offend the sensibilities of one group or another. In other words, they care more about 'hurt feelings' than actual democratic progress and success. A bunch of fucking babies.
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| The most important news item for most Americans - this is a fact people. |
This is one of those moments when I actually feel glad that I was deported from the U.S. to Canada (the country of my birth) in 2010 for my 'horrendous' crime of trying to pass a phony prescription for Vicodin (Percocet) in the U.S. while I was struggling with a life-threatening addiction to pain pills. This, after having lived in the U.S. for thirty years. I'm just one of many -- and you will soon be hearing from more of us -- who had his life turned completely upside down and destroyed for minor technical bullshit.
