[lbo-talk] school uniforms

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Aug 26 08:54:22 PDT 2003


Chris:
> I lived in the US for 25 horrible years.
>
> You DO live in hell.
>
It is interesting to observe that similar opinions are shared by many European visitors and traveled US-ers. The untraveled ones, otoh, firmly believe they live in the greatest country on Earth, and everyone else envies their particle board suburban shacks and gas-guzzling cars.

What makes this country hell is not the living standards which, albeit lower than those in Western Europe, are still incomparably higher than those in the developing world - but the tremendous amount of waste - from piles of junk mail, to wasted energy, time, and resources, to wasted opportunities. Indeed, this country has the resources to make this world a better place to live, but instead its main exports are war, pollution and intellectual putrefaction.

Nobody holds it against a handicapped person when he runs poorly in a race, but it is utterly disappointing when an Olympic champion barely out-runs a man in a wheel chair.

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list