Things you love and hate about your country.

[Xanatos]

*Love*

Education - I feel our diplomas and education system are seriously underrated worldwide, which pains me as I sincerely believe our education system is among the best ones out there. The sheer amount of content we learn per subject, the content itself is at least one bar up compared to that of vast amount of other countries. Almost every exchange student thinks our schedule is bit excessive.

Natural Beauty - some of the most beautiful scenery you'll ever see, our tourism groves immensely every year because of it.

*Hate*

Corruption - corruption runs deep in my country, it's present at almost every level, you see that shit even at places such as hospitals, it's not even funny how obvious it can be sometimes. If you think your politicians are bad you should see ours.

Economy - our economy is laughable to say the least, you would think a country with such potential and natural resources would flourish, but no. For instance we are one of the leading countries in producing quality electricity, yet we have nothing of it, the worst thing is we are charged the most for our own electricity compared to prices in other far more richer countries.

Law - same shit goes for our law and order, penalties for certain crimes are laughable, max three years for murder out of which one will serve two year tops... it's just ****ing sad.

[Pete]

To be honest, I love and hate the same thing. It's the level of freedom that we have in America.

I love it because I will never have to worry about somebody taking me away and killing me because I may have an opinion that varies from the people in charge. I can go about my business and be free do to so, so long as I'm not breaking any laws. Hell, I have the freedom to go and make money and spend it how I want. If I wanted to buy a gun I could.

I also hate it, because it means that complete morons have the same freedom to make completely irresponsible choices, and become a burden on everyone else. People have the freedom to choose where they eat. They choose McDonalds every single day. They develop all sorts of problems, meaning that my health insurance will go up, to cover their dumb asses.

I also happen to love our melting pot culture and our rich albeit young history.

I'm tired. Good day

[Order]

Xan, Ive never heard someone talk about a country like that other than the US.
I can understand how frustrating it must be to see it so plainly. Is there any sort of talk about adressing those problems (waste of resources, corruption, abuse of authority)?
Do you feel like your country could ever overcome the problems you pointed out?

I'm going to agree with Pete on America, but go into a little more detail...
The civil freedoms of americans is definately a double edged sword,
In the eyes of the law and governing powers, an individual has the benefit of the doubt every time. The best example I can give is this:
Imagine a guy is clearly casing a neighborhood. You can tell he doesn't live there because he's driving slowly, eyeing each house in detail. You've seen him doing this plenty of times before and you realize it is only a matter of time before he breaks into someone's house.
If you report him to the police as a suspicious person, a unit will come. If they show up in time and actually spot him, they'll ask him specific questions such as where he's going and where he came from.
Its not difficult to pretend he's just out for a drive, so the cop tells him to leave the neigborhood.
But he's free to come back.
He's free to continue casing the area and will probably just change the time of day he rolls through until he is comfortable that a particular house is unoccupied and risk of being caught are lowest.

There's really nothing you can do. You cant prove he is planning anything illigal. You can confront him, but you cant forcably remove him.

It goes beyond that, but its a good example.

Another thing I deal with daily is sexism and racism. That may sound dumb, considering Im a white male, but hear me out.
Everyone is quick to accuse me of sexism or racism. I have to consciously watch what I say very closely because nearly any conversation can be twisted into one of the two.
I have learned since back in school not to mention someone's race at all, even if it would clarify for the listener who the subject is. I am not able to point out differences of cultural backgrounds or gender, even when the idea directly impacts an explination for miscommunication between people that i am trying to clarify.
I work with a lot of chinese people, they don't understand American slang. I'm not able to say that to most people I work with.

Whats worse is I have been accused of sexism at work when I was in the Navy. Not for anything I said, simply for the way I split up the work load (trying to put people who get along naturally together on tasks or simply putting someone on a job they are already good at).
It came to a point where I had to spend weeks proving that I was not motivated by anything other than a subordinates knowledge, quals and work ethic.

I was accused of racism once there. Luckily, it was by a kid who claimed every white person he worked with was racist and it blew over quickly.

Its a serious issue in american society, though. The white male is always the abuser. I understand that douchebags in the past messed it up for me, but people my age and younger never had it bad. Diversity is celebrated these days, not insulted. I'm all for it which is why it angers me to be accused of something so petty.

Truth is, every time I've had to deal with an accusation like that, it was because someone was trying to get out of doing their job. The union mentality, someone else can do it, pass it off to the next guy, everyone else is doing it.
Guarentee, Im the 'next guy'. I am that someone else and it causes those lazy asses to resent me because Im "making them look bad", or "ruining their good thing".

Thats just about every day for me.

[Xanatos]

I can understand how frustrating it must be to see it so plainly. Is there any sort of talk about adressing those problems (waste of resources, corruption, abuse of authority)?

Yes, but it all ends at that, a mere talk. No one's prepared or willing to do anything concrete about it.

Do you feel like your country could ever overcome the problems you pointed out?

With right leadership and some of us regular folk pitching in I do believe in fact we can rise above our current situation. The biggest issue though, while most of other countries have two major sides/parties we have three divided by not political point of view but rather petty things such as religion and nationality. As you can probably guess that ignorant stance seriously slows down our potential progress.

[Freya]

To be honest, I had to think about this question for a long time. And I've come up with something I hate about my country:

Lack of patriotism
(I suppose now basically everyone knows I'm not from the US XD just kidding)
I hate the fact that people aren't proud of their country. Every two years everyone is in favor of the national soccer team. But aside from this one month every two years, they pretend as if they've never hung a flag out of their window at all.
And I hate people who hate people who are in favor of patriotism. (Weird? Yes!) I don't get why I can't be proud of the country at the time I was born. Almost every country has a "dark past" which you just can't be proud of. There's been so much sh*t in every single country.
The only country without patriotism is mine, though. The rest is somehow capable of seeing the positive things of the country.

Whiiich leads me to the second part: What is it I love about my country?
Seriously, we weren't taught to love anything. Newspapers tell us to hate economy, politicians, education and everything else there is.

So the only thing I could probably mention are famous writers who are known all over the world, famous scientists who were really amazing, and that's it.

Still, I personally love everything about the federal state I live in. Just because it's awesome. Good education, nice sights, and the best dialect.

[Sheechiibii]

I love my country mostly anyway. I love the beauty of it, the hills and nature and the fresh air, because I know down south the air is more grey in a lot of places than clear. I love how safe it is, most people are very friendly and will help out strangers, you rarely ever hear about much attacks or other crimes. I love how much assistance and support our students get, so that we don't end up with Universities full of only people who can afford it instead of people who will end up being a better harder worker for the country.

I had to think a bit more about what I don't like. I don't like how much our government takes from us, most people barely get more than half of their wage and the rest goes to the government. Then they complain they don't have enough money and cut back on things like health care only to give huge massive bonuses to random bankers or mps for doing nothing. I also think our benefits system is flawed, it's very easy for people to take advantage of it and can often be more beneficial than going out and getting a job - that's not how things should be.

[Taco-Calamitous]

I love the natural beauty. There are a lot of different regions-most of which I've never visited-but there is a lot of it concentrated here in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon has the coast, the mountains, the forests, the hills, etc. We have Crater Lake (which I've actually never been to.)

I love our creativity in music, art, literature, and movies. When it's good. Hate it when it's bad. Love our big melting pot of a culture too, like Pete. Love the famous inventions that have come out of this country. Was looking through a list of US inventions on wikipedia, and was like "cool." Records, telegraphic machines, airplanes, lots of innovations to automobiles, and likely the most important: the potato chip. Or maybe what this guy did. Overall, guess I love our imagination. Also proud of a lot of our country's leaders, chiefly Abraham Lincoln.

Don't much care for how we pushed native americans out of their lands so we could take over. Don't much care for our history of racism either. I love and hate our national pride and our ambitious nature. Anyhoo...

Wuv, Yer Mom

[Lily]

It's pretty abysmal to be british at the moment.

That's all I have.

Oh, Yorkshire puds are pretty cool

[Unknown Entity]

I find it hard to find a single thing I like about my country. I hate it. It's full of scum, both lowlife chav, and upperclass, bigotted conservatives. I live in the heart of London, and all I see on a day to day basis are things that could be improved if people did their jobs properly, or weren't so lazy or up their own asses. My country is a joke. At the moment, we have the voice of Borris Johnson (our Mayor) on London busses, telling us to have a nice day and enjoy the Olympics. Well, **** him and the busses. The busses are never on time, aren't regular at peak times, still have heating on in summer, are always packed, rarely cleaned, and 70% of the time are on diversion or have a destination change. ><

I do love my Queen though. She has a fantastic sense of humour, allowing her entrance into the Olympic Park to be James Bond styled with Daniel Craig. I loved the Opening Cerimony too. I do live in a creative, multicultural and immersive country. But it's let down by the overall majority who are lazy, or who view themselves as too important.

Oh, and the NHS isn't too bad either. Who wouldn't want free healthcare?

[Lacquer Head]

Oh, and the NHS isn't too bad either. Who wouldn't want free healthcare?

The American health care system lol

As for love, I love the cultural heritage and the true spirit of what America is supposed to be. I live in one of the best parts of America (if you ignore the white Protestant supremacists) mainly for music and nature. It's just beautiful around here, and everyone will wave to you or talk to you...as long as you're straight. I suppose I do hate the way the government tries skew the past, the insane control the media has over the country along with capitalism.