Oh just put 2 and 2 together!! Damn Hel you are right. I read the whole series several times and never thought about that part. ROTFLMAO. That so adds to it all.
Helland, I don’t even know what to say to you right now.
Thanks for answering my question everyone,
Next, I wanted to ask this: What is it like living in a country that many parts of the world want to see destroyed, through threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction? Many parts of the Western world live very similar lives to Americans–they have the same kinds of liberties, democracies, morals and other values, scientific and religious ways of thinking, etc.–but very few of them are the targets of non-Western animosity, very few of them are threatened by foreign enemies that wish to bomb them, except America.
What is it like knowing every day of your life that this threat looms overhead, that this could be the day that some fascist or radicalist country or terrorist organization drops a nuke on or near where you live? Do Americans live in fear to some degree, or do you just not think about it and live as if the threat didn’t exist?
Just another day. If it happens it happens. I could live in fear of an attack but, that means they win. I worry about hurricanes and idiot drrivers.
As far as the Brits (sorry… I’m a little late);
I admire their social standards for civility. They almost measure up to my own preference.
But I don’t admire their means for obtaining them.
The question concerning the fear in the USA is far too complex of a story to even try to approach.
re: British - some good points, but half-baked humor and boiled meat kinda ruin it. Lotta good musicians and actors, a couple of good philosophers. Overall, an enterprising lot. America surely learned from the mistakes they made building their empire. Overall, I guess they’re okay.
I don’t live in fear, no. Everyone hates us because we’re assholes to everyone. Seems fair.
I am darn nice, most times. Everyone else might be assholes but, not me. 
From a British perspective I think there are kinda two Britain [loosely], there are the people and then there is the ‘class’ which rules us and has been since the Normans. Most mp’s are Oxbridge educated or similar, and people educated in the public school system tend to gain a massive advantage in life. Said class are/were too stupid to realise the lessons they read in their history books, concerning e.g. Romans sharing authority [at least many emperors weren’t Roman], hence our ‘little problem’ in the past [war of independence]. In a way I think that if you were a follower of Cromwell then to some degree you should be on Washington’s side, trouble is there are so many royalists in Britain. That’s our bad point, it seems many people gleen some manner of one-upmanship by association via the monarchy, it somehow makes them feel all superior and shit.
I think Brits these days like Americans mostly ~ especially since the advent of the net, but for some there is a little niggle because we lost, I remember my history lessons at school skipped that period lol. Maybe some feel America was ‘ours’ or that we had invested massively in it, so there is a sense of loss or even theft there. I just think America had to be born, period.
I don’t know much about colonial history, but from what I gather it would seem that many republicans [Cromwell’s lot] and minority religions moved to America, so I am not surprised they ‘rebelled’.
The other day I learned that the term ‘kidnap’ [kid-nab] derives from British teenagers being stolen and taken to America, apparently as many as 100,000! ~ naturally it was the British doing this.
As for Britain being in a sorry state, well where I am from it is not and I am still proud of all the inventing we have and still do.
On another note; haven’t we been allies for nearly a hundred years!!! god historically we were lucky to get allies for that many days lol.
Equally I support all the efforts of our militaries to help unify the world ~ which is very important IMHO, and get rid of dictators etc.
I woke up this morning and grilled a lb of ribeye, then threw half of it away. Then I got in my car and drove around for an hour burning gas just to look at trees and stuff out my windows. Now I’m sitting here trying to swap some stocks around to make free money without having to work.
That’s some American shit right there. I also read about football, (real football not soccer), and watched Fox news for a few minutes.
Thanks again my American friends 
Most of you seem to go about your days as if everything’s business as usual. And that’s good–it’s healthy (I think).
Do you think Americans are accustomed to this because of going through 40-50 years of cold war terror?
I think it's more of a human thing than an America thing. I mean, the typical Israeli goes through their lives as though everything is business as usual, and they got it far worse than we do. Also, unlike Israel, the typical American doesn't think any of our enemies can really do anything to us. 9/11 is as bad as it's going to get. Sure, some country could drop a nuke on us, it's technically possible. But I don't think people are good at considering something like that as 'real' when it's so far beyond anything they have experienced, even when reason tells them it's plausible. The interesting thing I've noticed is that when discussions about such things come up, the Americans I talk to gloss over how bad it would be for us, and immediately consider what we'd do to the enemy that struck such a blow. If you say "Woudn't it be awful if somebody nuked Boston", the response is, "Yes, wouldn't it be too bad if we had to turn the entire Middle East into a trinitite punch-bowl". And it's sincere, not sarcastic- it really WOULD be too bad, a tragedy- but that's the side of the tragedy people focus on, when they aren't focusing on how cool it would be to be Mad Max.
But yes, there is some level of underlying fear I suppose. I mean, we practically invented the genre of "post-apocalyptic fiction", and it's as popular now as ever, even more so.
Well, first of all–do you know this is how the typical Israeli goes through his/her life? Second, both Americans and Israeli are under similar conditions in this context: both have been through at least half a century of being aware of immanent threat coming from the enemy (that was my point in bringing up the cold war). It makes me wonder how Canadians would react if all of a sudden some Bin Laden equivalent started carrying out threats and terrorist actions against Canada.
So would you say Americans are typically more enraged than scared by thoughts of terrorism against their country?
I just have one question: What’s your take?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkgJZntgaEc[/youtube]
That was perhaps one of the most moving clips I’ve ever seen. What movie is it from?
I dont think the USA has ever been the greatest country. I do think the potential is there but, internal conflict keeps us down.
You’re easily moved, gib. It’s just a bit of blatant leftwing propaganda, summarizing liberals’ reverence for the NEA and their hatred for religion. I’m not sure when the US was the greatest country in the world, but I’d guess the producers of this opus are centering on the Great Society years. Notwithstanding that we’ve never fought a war for moral reasons and have always beaten our chests. We still build great big things and we make more technological advances than ever, we still explore the universe and we still cure diseases. We are still the greatest in art and we still have a great economy (look around). We always identified with political parties and we still don’t scare easy - we just have the ability to overreact in an exponentially stupider way.
The speech is fiction. Drama. Nice reading, though.
I’d wager that there are many countries the citizens of which claim to be the greatest. It depends on the criteria you choose, for (only) one thing. I don’t think it’s an entirely adult concept.
Yeah, maybe. I mean, generally these sorts of conversations are outwardly lighthearted, tough to characterize by either emotion. But the emphasis is definitely on the retaliation and not on dealing with the tragedy in my experience.
I know as much as a person that had to study them for 2-3 classes to complete a minor can know. I haven’t been there, but documentaries and books and stuff present the day to day life as the Israeli as not preoccupied with terror. I mean, if you want to be that way about it, you don’t know how the typical American goes through his/her life and neither do I. It’s a big place!
The difference between Israel and America is that America has friendly neighbors, and you can’t stand on one border of America, throw a rock, and hit the opposite border. That’s mainly what I have in mind when I say Israel has it worse.
You know Gib, I literally just realized the other day that we’re in WW3, and that the US media just isn’t telling us.
I mean closing down 19 embassies, bombings at fertilizer plants in Texas, bombings in Florida at some other factory, NSA spying like outdoing anything we ever saw in the cold war. Russia, China, Iran et al have formed an alliance and yeah…we’re pretty much going to have to resort to bombing the shit out of the world pretty soon.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Smears - I think that what you say makes a lot of sense. The big panic in education right now seems to be that we need to import engineers. To which I say “So what?” We’ve been importing needed skill sets for forever. Forcing math down kids’ throats does not appear to make them want to become engineers, however.
Chuck - The US has had, for over a hundred years, a very good economy, compared to most of the rest of the world, on average. Look around. Yes - Switzerland and Monaco seem to have it made, but those are not very good comparisons, for what i hope are obvious reasons.