Barry's Bar

[Dave Strider]

Just got back from my exchange trip to Germany and I really wish I hadn't even come back to America, lmao.

[Dan the Man]

Lol because Europe is doing so well right now.

[Pericles of Athens]

Some parts aren't doing well, but some parts of America aren't doing well. I go to Spain for a few months every year and I've never seen a change in the economic standing of the people in Asturias. Its all about where you are.

[Dan the Man]

Some parts aren't doing well, but some parts of America aren't doing well. I go to Spain for a few months every year and I've never seen a change in the economic standing of the people in Asturias. Its all about where you are.

But globalization doesn't really work that way: One part suffers, the whole system suffers, even if you can't immediately see it. Greece's recent default on its debt, for example, is about to have some serious repercussions, in the EU and everywhere else. And that's just in the area of economics: Europe has plenty of other issues outside of that. I don't really understand people who fantasize about how great it must be in another country while doing nothing to fix the wrongs they see in their own back yard - that's more directed at Fred than you. Europe is not a utopia, and the United States is not a hellhole.

That being said, Fred can flee to Europe if he wants: Just means one less person voting for the wrong policies, and that's a-okay with me.

[Pericles of Athens]

Eh, there are some things Europe does better than us and a few things we do better than Europe. Not that either system cant use work, or that either system would function if it were copied and pasted over between the EU/US. Though Astruias doesn't suffer much in relation to others because they're based mostly on an agro economy and their system of family based farms is protected by the Spanish regional and national governments.

As I said its all about where you are, things are in Louisiana and Detroit but things over in NOVA are quite comfortable.

[Dave Strider]

Dan, that implies I'd be voting to begin with. One does not simply change a system built from the ground up to cater to the bourgeoisie with a vote. The keepers of the liberal parliamentary democracy gates are the enemies of the proletariat.

I admire Germany's much more pragmatic attitude about law and order. People in Germany are much more calm and sensible, I find, than those in America. That said, I'd probably rather live in Iceland, because Iceland doesn't exactly play a pivotal role in western imperialism; even small Germany, twice defeated in world wars, is a power player in that.

The issues with America run far deeper than mere liberal capitalist politics can understand. The enforcer of world capitalism, the backbone of world imperialism, the hegemon of world business and culture, and the oppressor of stateless nations both inside and outside its borders, requires much more thorough consideration than simply whether college should be free or not.

I don't consider Europe to be any better than America in terms of economics. They're both neoliberal parasites that make themselves rich off the blood and sweat of the third world and seek to dominate global geopolitics through increasingly more confrontational policies with Russia and China. I just think that German citizenry are less insane about MUH GUNS MUH FLAG MUH HERITAGE MUH FREEDOM than the average American, so it was relaxing - therapeutic, even - to be there for 17 days.

Not to mention, the girls were cute.

And some of the boys, too.

[Dan the Man]

Knowing how huge and diverse this country is, in its people, its landscapes, and its experiences, I refuse to believe any of the above. There is no such thing as the "stereotypical American citizen." There are 300 million of us, and growing. New cultures are being brought to this country by immigration, and are surviving to enrich the American cultural landscape by second-generation births. The face of America is changing faster now than at any other point in history, and your generalities are swiftly losing any semblance of accuracy.

I'm not going to talk to you about the merits of capitalism because frankly we've done this to death and I'm sick of it.

In fact, it, I don't have the time or patience to talk about...any of this right now. So, forget it. But I mean, come on, you couldn't have said that without expecting to ruffle somebody's feathers.

[Pericles of Athens]

MUH GUNS MUH FLAG MUH HERITAGE MUH FREEDOM than the average American, so it was relaxing - therapeutic, even - to be there for 17 days.

Guns? Most of Europe not so much, though the Swiss love their guns. But you are talking about the continent where individual regions want independence from their national governments, so I'mma go with a big N O on Europe (being defined as the individual states and regions within this context) not taking pride in its heritage. That's one of the key defining factors of nearly every region and nation in Europe and the reason they've remained culturally diverse despite the wave of globalization that has been polluting the planet these past few decades. Now Germany has to take significantly smaller amounts of pride in its recent history because they had their asses handed to them twice and tried to exterminate the Jews, gays, gypsies, etc. But if there's one nation in Europe that's truly economically imperialistic its Germany, they're the biggest bullies in the European political theater and that's why most other European countries don't like them.

[Kip]

Most everything in here is valid in one way or another, and I would never argue against one's right to believe what they believe, but I have to say I find it humorous when people voice wishes to leave America to escape the stereotyped "American" attitude. Almost invariably, the ability to entertain realistic dreams of relocating to a different continent is secondary to the comforts that American affluence affords you. In more general terms, this ability is secondary to "western" affluence - if you subscribe to the idea of American imperialism, oppression, and economic exploitation, you need to accept that Europe's hands are dirty too, even if it's the American flag flying over foreign soil.

Not to mention that a couple weeks in a foreign country is not nearly enough time to understand the social issues that will police your conscience there. For instance, did you see/experience anything concerning Turkish immigrants while in Germany? Confederate-brand racism and racial police violence is what you'll see in the world media, but racism isn't just an American institution. Persecution and discrimination against Muslims is pervasive in Europe, especially in countries with large minority populations (like North Africans in France). Speaking of France - French troops are active in numerous African countries. UN Peacekeepers are neck-deep in human trafficking world-wide. I don't want to start a debate whether Afghanistan is equivalent to Mali, the politics are certainly far different and too complicated to compare one-to-one. The take-home point is that those "American" sins are not uniquely American.

I won't argue that German girls aren't cute though. I'd move there for the girls, too.

[Dave Strider]

Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm not saying Europe's hands are clean. Europe, after all, was where imperialism originated, it's just migrated to America within the last few decades. Europe has countless genocides on its hands and no amount of social democratic feel-good liberal capitalism will ever undo that. I just find the attitude of European society to be less chauvinistic than American society, on the whole. In America people threaten to kill you for disrespecting the flag. In Europe at least they just say "well I disagree with you and that's that".

With regards to Turkish immigrants, yes, people told me that Turks in Germany are treated very similarly to how blacks in America are treated. Media bias, disproportionate treatment by police, the whole nine yards. So I suppose that in that sense, the seemingly calm attitude of Europeans toward the issues which Americans bare their teeth toward is all the more disturbing. At least in America you know outright if someone is racist, in Europe they might try and hide it behind "logic and facts" and attract a following because of their "reason".

Maybe it's just because where I was in Germany there weren't any European rednecks. Niedersachsen is a relatively well populated region, after all, and many of the embarrassing Americans seem to be countryside-based. Or maybe I'm just that biased against America at this point that I had a paradigm shift and got lulled into a false sense of serenity by being away from my homeland.

[Kip]

I think you have a pretty fair attitude about this, Fred. Good on you.

But really, how cute were the girls?

[Dave Strider]

I think you have a pretty fair attitude about this, Fred. Good on you.

The girls were breath-taking in Germany. I was humbled and dumbfounded and lovestruck all at once. And they were all so friendly and sweet and compassionate, too! I was blushing every five minutes!

One of them even said that she thought I was cute. I'm disappointed I didn't get to meet her, I'd've loved to know what she was smoking and where I could have gotten some of this mystical herb.

Also, our layovers in Iceland were heavenly. The girls there are even more stunningly beautiful. And the landscape and climate are more my speed too.

[Dirty Chai]

I'll have to mimic everything Fred said as I went to Europe last summer, going to Scotland, Ibiza in Spain, England, Belgium, and France all in that order.
I went to different countries of course, but I have to confirm Fred's suspicion that some areas of Europe do indeed have idiots just the way that America does - they're just obsessed with different things.

No offence to any SNP or pro-SNP in observance, but when I was up in the highlands of Scotland, oh man did I witness a high level of denial and drunken misguidance, all of them wearing little blue "Yes" pins on their shirts.

[Dan the Man]

Europe, after all, was where imperialism originated...

Sargon of Akkad beat 'em to the punch by about 4000 years.

EDIT: But you know guys, full disclosure on this one, what with Donald Trump now being a serious Republican nominee, I think I may have to move somewhere else myself.

[Pericles of Athens]

No offence to any SNP or pro-SNP in observance, but when I was up in the highlands of Scotland, oh man did I witness a high level of denial and drunken misguidance, all of them wearing little blue "Yes" pins on their shirts.

What's wrong with the SNP? They want independence for their people and I think that's an admirable goal. If I were a Scottish national I'd certainly want independence from the UK. And I still firmly believe the vote was rigid by the UK national government in coalition with the EU, they couldn't let Scotland gain its independence lest similar movements in countries like Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Poland face become emboldened by their victory over the homogony the EU is trying to establish in Europe. Along with renewed vigor in seeing Northern Ireland freed from the United Kingdom's yoke and risk Wales getting uppity as well. I certainly have full support for my kin in Asturias and Galicia in their movements for increased autonomy/independence and Ireland's fight for a unified country free from the foreigners who've polluting their shores for centuries. But I tend to think that a people in an area have a right to sovereignty and freedom, a national government exists at the whim of its citizenry and shouldn't be allowed to perpetuate itself on those who don't want it if they're the majority in their area.

All that said I could only seriously consider living in three places other than the united states. Ireland, Northern Spain or a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

[Barry Goldwater]

@Fred I think it's safe to say that there have pretty much always been imperialists ing over others on every continent, except Antarctica of course, since the emergence of anything resembling a nation. The Russians didn't become the biggest empire in the world by being nice guys & their shadow's always loomed over Eastern Europe + Central Asia in one form or another no matter whether they flew the Romanovs' standards, the Soviet red banner or (as we're seeing now in Ukraine, the Baltics & Moldova most prominently) the modern tricolor. The Chinese put together an empire ahead of even the Romans in part by assimilating the many non-Huangxia peoples of early China into the Han Chinese identity (a process taking many centuries & costing more lives than there were people in contemporary Europe, IIRC), and have since asserted their influence across East Asia whether it was through Zheng He bringing back foreign dignitaries sufficiently awed by the might of his treasure fleet to become Ming tributaries in the 15th century or by building artificial islands to assert their claims in the present-day Pacific. The Mideast, well hell, as Dan just pointed out that's where the first known true empire was born, and that's also where we got the first recorded mass-scale use of terror tactics (hello, Assyrians). The Americas had the Aztecs, the Mayas and the Iroquois battling & oppressing their neighbors long before Europeans laid down their first permanent settlements.

I've been to Europe as well, and racism is most definitely alive there, sharing a low melanin content has never stopped Europeans past and present from hating on other Europeans. Sometimes it's also about as subtle as that stereotypical 'Murican sledgehammer-to-your-face racism you mentioned, Fred. Just some examples:

-the various Balkan ethnicities still nurse grudges against each other to varying extents (I found Serb/Albanian tensions to be worse than Croat/Bosniak tensions for example, though that might be a case of 'well getting crucified is still a worse way to die than being machine-gunned' )
-more and more Russians don't believe Ukrainians are a real people but rather are basically confused and tainted mini-Russians while Ukrainians increasingly consider Russians to be murderous and honorless traitors to their 'brother Slavs', Germans don't seem to have a very high opinion of the Greeks to say the least
-MENA immigrants and refugees are increasingly resented and in many cases have been treated poorly for a long time (look at how the French treated their immigrants for just one example)
-God help you if you're a Roma in Europe 'cause virtually everyone & their grandmas have a major hate-on for them

The above also isn't even close to covering the myriad religious, regional and sociopolitical faultlines crisscrossing the continent, some of which have been around well before America was even settled permanently. They might not all chant local equivalents of 'ZA DOM SPREMNI' (as I once had the misfortune of hearing in Split some years ago) but, as you said, the smarter ones tend to mask it with faux-science/history (witness any Russian/Ukrainian argument on how 'real' the other ethnicity is) or dog-whistles ('I'm not racist, buuuut I'm quite sure that Greeks are lazy parasites/Roma are criminal scum/what have you, see: common sense & all these mountains of totally non-biased/anecdotal evidence').

[Dirty Chai]

What's wrong with the SNP? They want independence for their people and I think that's an admirable goal. If I were a Scottish national I'd certainly want independence from the UK. And I still firmly believe the vote was rigid by the UK national government in coalition with the EU, they couldn't let Scotland gain its independence lest similar movements in countries like Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Poland face become emboldened by their victory over the homogony the EU is trying to establish in Europe. Along with renewed vigor in seeing Northern Ireland freed from the United Kingdom's yoke and risk Wales getting uppity as well. I certainly have full support for my kin in Asturias and Galicia in their movements for increased autonomy/independence and Ireland's fight for a unified country free from the foreigners who've polluting their shores for centuries. But I tend to think that a people in an area have a right to sovereignty and freedom, a national government exists at the whim of its citizenry and shouldn't be allowed to perpetuate itself on those who don't want it if they're the majority in their area.

All that said I could only seriously consider living in three places other than the united states. Ireland, Northern Spain or a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

Sure but have you actually looked into the SNP plans they had back before the referendum?
It'd be another Greece or worse. For one, it relied on the oil in and around Orkney. But polls said Orkney had a pro-British population majority, meaning they could actually lose Orkney in another referendum after getting Scottish independence. Their plan is so flawed.
(I should note I'm getting most of this information from people I spoke to in Scotland, both friends and speaking polite to locals, who were very passionate about the issue in many cases).

It's one thing to want a country for your ethnic/cultural identity. I'm all for that.
But the reality is that a lot of that said nationalism is often blind to the other problems and consequences that very often come with that nationalism - in my opinion outweighing the positives of independence.

It's not as black and white as an ethnic minority wanting representation v.s. an ethnic elite repressing that.
A lot of it is also because politics are becoming increasingly racial and xenophobic in Europe right now (yes, just like in America).

[Pericles of Athens]

-the various Balkan ethnicities still nurse grudges against each other to varying extents (I found Serb/Albanian tensions to be worse than Croat/Bosniak tensions for example, though that might be a case of 'well getting crucified is still a worse way to die than being machine-gunned' )
-more and more Russians don't believe Ukrainians are a real people but rather are basically confused and tainted mini-Russians while Ukrainians increasingly consider Russians to be murderous and honorless traitors to their 'brother Slavs', Germans don't seem to have a very high opinion of the Greeks to say the least
-MENA immigrants and refugees are increasingly resented and in many cases have been treated poorly for a long time (look at how the French treated their immigrants for just one example)
-God help you if you're a Roma in Europe 'cause virtually everyone & their grandmas have a major hate-on for them

The Africans living in Europe have it pretty rough too, its extremely difficult for them to get hired especially with the current economic conditions. Though honestly having a pro native born national hiring policy isn't our of place in Europe, European countries aren't meant to be the melting pot America is. I've also found that, particularly in southern Europe, a lot of racism is due to limited exposure thanks to these nations being nearly entirely homogenous in nature (something that cant be said for America).

As for the Roma I can attest to life in Europe being crap for gypsies. But in the end they do isolate themselves and live in their own communities where they tend to run scams and steal, its not really prejudice if its true. But the situation begs the question are Gypsies crooks or are they forced into by the prejudice system they live in? I tend to go with the latter.

It's one thing to want a country for your ethnic/cultural identity. I'm all for that.
But the reality is that a lot of that said nationalism is often blind to the other problems and consequences that very often come with that nationalism - in my opinion outweighing the positives of independence.

It's not as black and white as an ethnic minority wanting representation v.s. an ethnic elite repressing that.
A lot of it is also because politics are becoming increasingly racial and xenophobic in Europe right now (yes, just like in America).

Freedom supersedes nearly all else in my mind, money comes and goes and economies ebb and flow but what's in your veins never changes. I'll always have the blood of a galego and the emerald isle in my veins and I thinks that something worth taking a hit for. And often times that national government wants to keep them in th fold so it can keep itself afloat not for reasons that benefit the ethnic minority. Spain, France, Italy.. take your pick.

[Dirty Chai]

I'll support the SNP when I see a better plan, one that I can take seriously.
But I'm not a Scot by at least 4 generations, so my opinion doesn't matter.

[Dave Strider]

When I say imperialism I don't just mean "making an empire". Sorry, I keep forgetting you guys probably don't know the Marxist definitions.

Imperialism in a Marxist sense refers to the highest and most dangerous stage of capitalism, where, because either a) resources are running low in their home country or b) socialist consciousness is forming in their home country (or sometimes even both at once), the bourgeoisie of a nation seeks to exploit the resources of a less developed nation for its own gain. Or, in simpler terms, a first world nation utilizes the full force of its power - diplomatic influence, advantageous economic treaties, even military "intervention" - to allow itself access into a third world nation and leech off of its resources.

This was what Britain did to half of Africa, establishing entire colonies and creating entire societies around the prospect of serving the colonial nation's hunger for resources. Infrastructure was built so as to allow for removal of resources, not for the maintenance of an overbroad society. They made sure that their African colonies, by the time they were thrown out, had little wealth, plenty of guns, and plenty of arbitrary borders for those with guns to fight over for access to some of that barely existent wealth. Thus preventing, or at least seriously hindering, those nations from ever being powerful again. So long as they were capitalist, at least, because every time a socialist leader attempted to challenge that status quo (with the exception of possibly Mugabe, but Mugabe is a piece of anyway), they were assassinated at the hands of European interests.

So yeah, what I'm saying here is, imperialism in this sense isn't just referring to an empire. It's referring to one nation's bourgeoisie leeching off of another nation's proletariat (and sometimes their bourgeoisie, too, though in the situation of imperialism basically the entire nation is treated as a proletariat to the colonial bourgeoisie).