| So, off the top oh my head, the: - Regular school shootings; - Teachers living in their cars; - People being charged $8K if an ambulance picks them up after an accident; - One of the highest proportions of the populace with cardiovascular problems and diabetic conditions; - Incoming real estate bubble pop; ...does not give you a pause and make you think that maybe, just maybe, USA isn't as great as you think it is? Empires don't fall overnight. The Roman Empire's history -- and the works of fiction based on it, one of which is Asimov's "Foundation" -- demonstrate that once certain positive forces vanish then the collapse becomes imminent BUT it does happen quite slowly, like a tumbling giant. This makes it easy for people to keep pretending that things are going great and everything else are just blips on the news. (Until one day the courier carrying their package gets robbed and the company shrugs it off and says you won't get a refund. Then it will hit close to home and you'll start believing it, I presume.) Also sticking to the view that the rest of the countries are worse off than USA is severely mistaken -- but as you said, at this point our perceptions of reality just differ too much indeed. |