Culture, politics, and society.

To me, mainstream American culture is pure crap. You start with Puritans and slave drivers and go downhill from there until you get KFC, Britney Spears, and all the moronic sports teams someone listed upthread. I love some aspects of Hollywood, but it too has gone way downhill too since it fell out of the control of mostly European-born Jews and into the hands of mainstream corporate America. On the other hand, there are millions of subcultural niches in America that are interesting either as subjects of study or lifestyle alternatives. To me, these are not outgrowths of the mainstream culture but new cultural evolutions facilitated by the structure of our society.

American politics are frustrating and tiresome for the most part. Our government does the horrible things that all governments do, but we sign up for a share of the blame by participating in "democratic" institutions. Half the time it seems like a scam. There are flagrant differences between the treatment of the rich and the poor in our courts. The Constitution is full of great ideas but screws us regularly through the existence of the electoral college. Someone should wake up to the concept that we no longer have Village Wise Men and draw up a new one that preserves the best of the old but reflects the structure of modernity. Meanwhile, the endless squawk jocking about meaningless "issues" like abortion drowns out all meaningful discussion, as anyone who has read a political website knows.

What keeps me here is our society. There are no titles in America, which is very important to me. I don't even like it when fellow Americans use "sir" or "madam." The whole bloody mess of aristocracy and chivalry is something I think it's really important to leave behind. But more important than this formal distinction is the fact that America is one of the few, maybe the only society on earth where you really get to beat your own path. Sure, opportunities are different for people of different births, and noncomformists are punished economically and physically. However, the society we have built out of remnants of other societies is so enormous and complex that the individual DOES have a chance. There is always a chance to walk out and start over, because there are just so many people and jobs that are so microscopically fragmented from each other. You can find a job where everyone breaks to pray every two hours or one where employees openly smoke pot at work. Yes, it's easier for the guy who actually enjoys football and Chevrolets and fast-food hamburgers and American Idol. BUT, no matter who you are, even if you are as weird as Joey Ramone or Robert Crumb, there is a way in American society for you to survive and thrive. You just have to be lucky enough to find it.

1. Adults having consensual sex with teens

2. Adults befriending prepubescent kids and persuading them to have sex when the kids don't know any better

3. Adults who violently rape children of any age

The threes belong in lock-up. The twos need to be monitored and kept away from kids, but lifelong financial reparations--for therapy, education, etc.--would be more beneficial to the victims than an "eye for an eye" (meaning prison rape). A lot of the 2's happen in the context of institutions like churches or schools, the former at least having deep pockets.

As for the ones, well, I'd lower the "age of consent" to begin with and just hope that judges can sort out what's right in what is usually a family dispute.

A lot of jobs lost to mechanization and technology in the past half-century. A bigger part of the population doesn't have to work in order to sustain the population. Do you think that these people should be artificially made to work, or supported out of taxes on the now-more-efficient corporations?

It's the favorite tool of smug, arrogant, rich, phallocratic white straight male "moderates" who wank themselves while constructing a completely unreal system of rationalizations in their mind that makes their ultradominant position in culture and politics appear to be both fair and sustainable.