United States
Pros:
- Despite the plethora of issues and problems past and current, the execution of the United States constitution and bill of rights has remained by and large good, with glaring exceptions that to date, are eventually dealt with - no matter how much bitching and screaming that Pure Real and True America Under God is being destroyed each and ever time.
- Despite complaints about "PC" there's a great amount of genuine freedom of speech and signifigant sections of American society are critical about things that deserve a very critical analysis.
- A great history of musical innovation producing a wide range of music, both homegrown and fused of styles from around the world.
- The "melting pot" of the formative years has produced a wide range of regional and cultural variations; reflected in everything from music to food. For all that it may be a "mutt" as far as other parts of the world is concerned, it's a dynamic and unepected mutt that surprises you again and again.
- Great contributions have originated from the US and still do, as the spirit of invention does live despite the image often created by (and in spite of the efforts of) faceless corporate entities.
- The US and those who live here have done a great deal to put the Internet forward as a new communication tool and social environment. While certainly not all, at least a good deal of the best stuff on the Net originates from Americans, across all genres.
- The physical location of the nation is a fantastic one. There really are fewer places to live which have the variety and quality of natural resources and climates. Some of the greatest natural wonders on the planet reside on the North American continent.
Cons:
- Due to the success and profitability of the US, there is much corruption at various levels of government and business, and let's face it: more so than many parts of the world, the dollar is God to a huge number of Americans. Money is great and all, but too many utterly worship it and a culture of incredibly shallow greed has emerged at higher levels which is hurting the profitability of the very substructure which made those huge profits possible in the first place. "Yuppie" culture and its offshoots have made people judge the worth of person by their job status and earning power.
- There's rampant anti-intellectualism in places, with a "good old boys" mentality, reflected in the worship of "manly" sports which are practically a religion and replace academic achievement at high school and college. Many people sneer at anything "intellectual" of a flavor other than the hamfisted, boilerplate "wisdom" of pundits like Rush Limbaugh.
- By the same token, Americans are almost a plague upon the Internet - there's a rampant cultural bias that the Internet is essentially a Playstation game, utterly meaningless, and is basically a big joke for anything other than ordering CDs and videogames from Amazon and eBay. While there's no shortage of junk users from around the world, a certain demographic based in the US does seem to have a field day using the Internet as their personal playground. Fine American "enterprises" such as websites and their fandoms devoted to doing nothing other than tearing other users of the net apart (and sometimes, literally dispatching their groupies to harrass and attack target sites with spam and junk posting of forums) are commonplace and plenty of ironic net-hipsters think this is the coolest thing ever. Of course, this could also be a mechanism for people with no balls to feel like big people online.
- There's a general culture of cynicism in place with seemingly an entire generation of Americans. While some legitimate critcism may come from this camp, it is also frequently a lot of self-indulgant nihilistic, passive-aggressive whining, using things like "political correctness" as an excuse for people to be raging assholes and pretend they're fighting for some bleeding edge rebel cause by being anti-social jerks.
- The government has issues, deepset ones that even a mere change of president won't fix. Many fundimental issues are brewing in the US and ready to boil over - and have been for a long time - but too many people are fixated on a status quo that allows this to continue. There's a "good old days" mythology in place for many, where all that's needed to fix problems is to develop MORE of a stranglehold on society and try to ram-rod it into a mold that a Moral Minority see as a holy grail, and a One True Way.
