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Is the United States the best?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Tweener, Jan 10, 2020.

  1. Regan MacNeil

    Regan MacNeil Well-Known Member

    Freedom isn't free. No, there's a hefty fucking fee.
     
  2. Scout

    Scout Well-Known Member

    And most of the world has it, too.
     
    Tweener likes this.
  3. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    I don’t know all the personalities here.

    I asked because the answer might sway one’s response to the question.

    It did apparently reveal a major bootlicker. You.
     
  4. Regan MacNeil

    Regan MacNeil Well-Known Member

    Excellent retort, Eddie. Now run along.
     
  5. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    Three months strikes me as a bit short -- you're still in the honeymoon phase at that point. I'd give it a year, if only to experience all the holidays and weather patterns a place has to offer before forming an opinion. You are very much correct, though, that there is no substitute for actually living and working in a place -- lingering stereotypes and brief visits as a tourist don't provide enough (if any) insight.

    There is no objectively best country because there is no agreed-upon definition of "best". As Mr. Gee said, every place has something to offer, but that thing might not necessarily appeal to everyone. There are some people -- like me -- who like the idea of life at the end of the earth and don't mind Scandinavian weather. (The latter is frustrating as I seem to keep ending up in warm-weather locales.)

    I live in Singapore, which is clean, safe, efficient, and has amazing food. It's also crowded, stupidly expensive, and run by a paternalistic, one-party authoritarian technocracy that has no qualms about limiting free speech and had a very public freakout when it 'only' got 60 percent of the vote. Those who cherish individual freedoms, elbow room, and/or car ownership might find Singapore intolerable; others might (and do) find the benefits worth the trade-off. I know "it's all relative and depends on what you value" doesn't make for the most scintillating discourse, but unless the goal of the discussion is to separate the participants into chest-thumpers and self-flagellators, I have a hard time seeing where else it could lead.
     
  6. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    How many of us have been in enough different countries to really answer this question? (TB, put your hand down. Will KJIM see this?)

    Lived in a country in Southeast Asia for three-plus years. Makes you appreciate what can be and is usually good about this country. Shoot, even lived in different parts of this country long enough to appreciate what is there and what I have where I currently reside.

    Would much rather be here than Southeast Asia ... but we also got out about six months before the natives wised up and got rid of a horrid dictator who had robbed the country blind for years. A dictator who had a political rival murdered on the tarmac of a country upon the rival's return from a self-imposed exile. A country where collective poverty takes on a meaning that many here who merely struggle would be hard-pressed to understand.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2020
    britwrit likes this.
  7. Sea Bass

    Sea Bass Well-Known Member

    Serious question that may reveal ignorance. How does a party only get 60% in a one-party system? Independents got a full 40%?
     
  8. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    Apathy?
     
  9. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    You are a calling someone else a bootlicker? Where’s the spiderman meme
     
  10. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    It's effectively a one-party system in much the same way as Japan is and Malaysia, Mexico, Italy, and Indonesia were until comparatively recently -- one party is far and away the dominant force despite the existence of nominal opposition parties. Singapore is even more so because the same party (the People's Action Party) has held power since independence in 1965. In the election in question, the PAP had its worst showing ever but still took 81 out of 87 seats while the Workers' Party (the runner-up and only serious opposition party) got a whopping 12.8 percent and six seats.
     
  11. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    You Canadian you. May you rot in your thawing tundra and a million black flies roost in your crack.
     
  12. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    Another good one. Your comedy is enjoyed on both boards.
     
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