Hai I would like to know what your opinion is about your own country. Which qualities does it have and which downsides? And if you had the chance, would you move? In case the answer is yes, where would you prefer?
I live in America and am the 5th generation of my family line living in America. I grew up in much different times and have seen America decline and become less of a good place to live to now a very disturbing place to be in. For anyone who moved here in the past 20 years or so I'd think they wouldn't know what it was like before they came. There are good and bad things any and every country has but it is up to you to make it as good as you can. I'm to old to move and really can't move due to many medical problems I have which are taken care of by my own doctors and hospital.
I live in the US. 3rd generation on my mothers side, at least 4 on my fathers side. I dont think that the us is any better than anywhere else just because I happened to be born here. Many Americans seem to root for the US like they would a sports team. People are people. Imaginary boundaries keep lots of people from realizing how much they have in common.
I live in India. Would never like to leave it. My people, my ways, does not matter if I am rich or poor. Optimism is the quality of my people which would win over any difficulty.
I live in the U.S.. I know its faults. I've been to quite a few other countries. I like and appreciate certain aspects of those as well. Like many people, I appreciate the U.S. a little more after traveling elsewhere but it still has its faults. In one sense those faults don't now bother me quite as much as before but the politics of the last 30 years does still bother me. I could live elsewhere but probably won't just because this is what I'm used to.
I'm home with the flu with nothing to do, so be prepared for a long post. I live in the United States. I'm 54. I have a master's degree in electrical engineering. I have traveled many times to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, both professionally and for pleasure. My life experience so far in the United States has been fantastic. While I love to travel and visit other places, I would only call the United States my home. When I was a child, I had to repeat the second grade due to dyslexia. Probably because my mom was a chain smoker and my dad was an alcoholic. "Dyslexia doesn't get better, you simply learn to cope." That is what the public school councilors told me when they put me back. They told me "you will just have to work a bit harder than everyone else." You may find as you read my posts spelling errors, transposed words or letters, and homonym errors. I have learned to cope with that. It does mean that you may have to work a bit harder when reading this post. I hope you are up to it. Taking the advice of those school public servants I decided I would just have to work a bit harder than everyone else to get by. I managed to graduate the 8th grade with a 1.8 out of 4 GPA, and high school with a 2.8 out of 4 GPA. High school would have been worse except I got A's shop class. After high school I went to work in a factory making tractor trailers. After a year of that, I decided working with my back sucked so I went to a trade school to learn to be an electronics technician. I did well and decided to try college. What the hell, the worse thing would be that I would waste a bit of cash I earned and flunk out. Flunking wasn't new to me. My undergrad GPA was 3.8 out of 4. I earned my masters degree while working as an engineer and my GPA was 3.7 out of 4. Those public school councilors were right. Working a bit harder than everyone else pays off, even if it is just a bit harder. I don't know how accurate the IEEE survey on electrical engineering salaries is, but after my first few years working as an electrical engineer my salary has always been off the top of their chart for my years of experience. I have 4 kids. I was married at 21, my wife had our first child at 23 and our last at 30. All of my kids have college degrees and no debt. I have had 53 wonderful years of marriage and counting. No, I don't know how she puts up with me. I know I'm already boring you with my life story while making it sound like I have never had troubles, but like every life, mine has had its troubles as well. Significant health problems for me and family, financial loss, career missteps, addiction, you name it and I, my wife, and my children have had these issues like most people do. I believe my story is very common in the United States. That is what I love about living in the United States. It's the land of a million chances. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try a bit harder. It's been working for me since the second grade. If dyslexia didn't suck so hard I would say it was nature's blessing on my life. Imagine, however, being an engineer who transposes numbers. In my adult life I have seen the United States go mildly insane. I say mildly because it seems to predominately be affecting politics and the media. Neither of those things has ever been very important in the United States. They are just side shows really. I blame this mild insanity on two things. 1) the 24 hour cable "news" channels, and 2) advertising. For the record I stopped watching all TV news six years ago. I recommend that to everyone. The job of every TV news show is to keep you too terrified to leave your house accept to buy the crap they are advertizing. The internet only makes this worse because now you can buy crap online so you never have to leave your house. Instead you can stay home and read even crazier stuff than the TV news is telling you. Things like immunizations are going to give your kids autism. Really? Like polio, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and small pox are a cake walk. Sane people roll the dice with immunizations instead. It seems like my liberal friends have a particular dislike for Fox News. It's been a while since I have watched any TV news but it seems to me that all TV news programs are simply providing advertisers an opportunity to reach their desired moneyed demographic. Based on that, I see no difference in say. CBS News, and Fox News. Both pick and reject news stories based on whether or not the story will increase or decrease their share of their desired moneyed demographic. Increase the demographic, they show it, decrease the demographic they spike it. If one demographic gets locked up by your competition, simply go after a different moneyed demographic. Look at John Stuart as an example. I do like his show because its funny, but John Stuart is appealing to a moneyed demographic that would rather watch fake news because the selected news shown else ware doesn't go far enough. John even boasts that his news is fake. Like I said, mild insanity. Now don't start thinking that I'm espousing some big corporate conspiracy and that their weapon is advertising. I'm not a conspiracy nutcase. Conspiracies take control, and this mild insanity is completely out of control. Imagine some middle level advertising manager trying a bit harder to improve his TV show's share of a coveted high spending demographic so he can get a bonus. Maybe it’s as simple as his current car is a clunker and he wants to buy a new Prius with the bonus money to save the planet. Now imagine a whole army of such people with their own personal motivations. See how easy out of control can be? The worst part of this mild insanity is that all the politicians in the United States have completely bought into the insanity. Elections in the United States are now simply about how much advertizing your party can buy and how well their adverts appeal to their targeted voting demographic. Did a TV or radio add ever convince you to vote for someone? Not me ever. Now you know why I don't vote much either. Mostly I only vote in local elections. My attitude means I don't fit into any demographic well, so I don't matter. I like it that way. If you have read this far you might think I'm a depressed cynic. I'm not. Politics and the media are simply a side show here in the United States. From its founding, the United States has been and is about working hard and living free. I do that every day and love it. I don't care when the media or politicians try to lay guilt trips on me for being successful in an upper middle class way. I never intentionally harmed anyone in my life, and my work has only improved lives. All it took was working little bit harder. Was I lucky? I believe you make your own luck mostly by picking the harder path. It has always worked for me. Try it. What else do you have to do with your time? The United States is a great country for people like me, and there are lots of people like me living in the United States. Just don't expect to see it on TV. Lives like mine don't sell soap.
