Americans are helpless

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
By the way, your reference website is a pain in the ass - takes forever for the advertising and images and stuff to load.

Only if you are foolish enough to browse the web without script and ad-blockers. 😛

With those it loads just fine.

Anyhow, my point was that a very brief google search showed that people starving is
very much a thing that does happen in the USA.

As are riots, police shootings, mass incarceration, torture, coerced confessions including from
minors and people of low IQ, executions including of innocents minors and the insane.
You also have numerous cases of water supplies unfit to drink, and disintegrating infrastructure.

This does cause me to have a hard time including the USA in the 'civilised world'.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
No, I didn't.

Well I also didn't say South Africa was civilized. You loose.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Well I also didn't say South Africa was civilized. You loose.

You said....and I QUOTE:
"In more civilized countries like South Africa" when comparing it to America.
You are a back-pedaling mealy mouthed liar.
It's right there in the first page of this thread.
Damn you suck.

Originally posted by FishHead111
You said....and I QUOTE:
"In more civilized countries like South Africa" when comparing it to America.
You are a back-pedaling mealy mouthed liar.
It's right there in the first page of this thread.
Damn you suck.

Yes. And for those of us with a reading comprehension above the age of about 6,
we know that "MORE civilised" is a relative claim and not an absolute one.

China is more civilised than North Korea, but I wouldn't call either civilised in an absolute
sense.

Maybe you should have tried actually paying attention when you were in school.

Or have you never been?

Originally posted by googlefudge
Yes. And for those of us with a reading comprehension above the age of about 6,
we know that "MORE civilised" is a relative claim and not an absolute one.

China is more civilised than North Korea, but I wouldn't call either civilised in an absolute
sense.

Maybe you should have tried actually paying attention when you were in school.

Or have you never been?

More mealy mouthed back-pedaling.
"Durhhhh..... America is not civilized like South Africa" most certainly DOES make his statement a claim that SA is civilized.
Just can't help yourselves, can you?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Well I also didn't say South Africa was civilized. You loose.

The central meanings of to lose are:

To be unable to find someone or something:
My friend was always losing his keys and his cellphone.
She grabbed Mark’s hand so she wouldn’t lose him in the crowd.

To have less of something:
His strength and endurance will improve if he loses weight.
He said that workers will also lose money by staying away from work.

To no longer have or keep something:
By now O’Brien was losing his patience.
Rosa, who can’t afford to lose her job, is unwilling to take any risks.

To fail to win a game or contest:
In high stakes poker, the first man to blink when bluffing loses.
That night, I was on the losing side.

TIP: if the word you want is a verb with any of these meanings, then you always spell lose with a single ‘o’.

There’s a moose on the loose!

Apart from having two ‘o’s, loose is different from lose in three main ways:

Pronunciation: loose rhymes with goose and moose.
Part of speech: while lose is mainly* a verb, loose can be an adjective, a verb, or a noun.
Meaning: there are several meanings of loose, corresponding to the different parts of speech, but none of them have anything to do with being unable to find or keep something.
You’re most likely to encounter loose as an adjective, with the following main meanings:

Not tied up or shut in:
Suddenly there were six loose horses charging around the yard.
All two thousand pigs broke loose and escaped through a broken fence.

Not firmly fixed:
The farmer had three loose teeth and another three that were missing.
The stones were loose, making it a treacherous climb.

Not held or tied together or contained in something:
A book bag or backpack helps keep loose items together.
Don’t worry about your hair – let it hang loose.

Not fitting tightly or closely:
He wore loose-fitting jeans and a pale yellow jumper.
Paul was dressed in a loose shirt, trousers, and brown boots.

Not strict or exact:
It seems like a rather loose interpretation of the word ‘slave’.
This is a looser approach to decision-making than is traditionally found in right- or left-wing movements.

As a noun, loose mainly occurs in the phrase on the loose, which means ‘having escaped from somewhere; not confined any more’:

Two convicted murderers are on the loose right now.

If you’re into rugby, then you’ll know that loose crops up as a noun in that sport too (it means ‘loose play’ ):

His line-out work was fine and he put himself about a bit in the loose.

TIP: if you know that the word you want is an adjective or a noun, the spelling is almost certainly* loose, with two ‘o’s.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Only if you are foolish enough to browse the web without script and ad-blockers. 😛

With those it loads just fine.

Anyhow, my point was that a very brief google search showed that people starving is
very much a thing that does happen in the USA.

As are riots, police shootings, mass incarceration, torture, coerced confessions including from
m ...[text shortened]... structure.

This does cause me to have a hard time including the USA in the 'civilised world'.

So what country do you live in googlefudge, Magic Care Bear Land with Rainbow Bright and the Smurfs where everything is perfect all the time??

Originally posted by googlefudge
Yes. And for those of us with a reading comprehension above the age of about 6,
we know that "MORE civilised" is a relative claim and not an absolute one.

China is more civilised than North Korea, but I wouldn't call either civilised in an absolute
sense.

Maybe you should have tried actually paying attention when you were in school.

Or have you never been?

China is more civilised than North Korea, but I wouldn't call either civilised in an absolute sense.

I am curious to hear more about this absolute sense in which China is not civilised after all, when so many sources regard Chinese civilisation as among the most ancient and the most rich in every sense - certainly more so than, say, either North American or North West European, both having arrived late in the day by any measure.

Originally posted by finnegan

China is more civilised than North Korea, but I wouldn't call either civilised in an absolute sense.

I am curious to hear more about this absolute sense in which China is not civilised after all, when so many sources regard Chinese civilisation as among the most ancient and the most rich in every sense - certainly more so than, say, either North American or North West European, both having arrived late in the day by any measure.

No country that executes people is civilised. period.
No country that tortures people is civilised. period.
No country that imprisons people without a fair trial and adequate defence is civilised.

There are a couple of others and we could have a more general conversation about what
does and does not constitute a civilised society, but for me, those form a good red line
divider.

China, North Korea, and the USA fail on all three.


I am of course aware of China's very ancient and rich history that as you correctly say is
very likely much longer and deeper than that of 'the west's'. However in discussing how
'civilised' a society is I don't really care how long it's history is.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Yes. And for those of us with a reading comprehension above the age of about 6,
we know that "MORE civilised" is a relative claim and not an absolute one.

China is more civilised than North Korea, but I wouldn't call either civilised in an absolute
sense.

Maybe you should have tried actually paying attention when you were in school.

Or have you never been?

Oh please.
First define civil for us, thank you.

Originally posted by FishHead111
More mealy mouthed back-pedaling.
"Durhhhh..... America is not civilized like South Africa" most certainly DOES make his statement a claim that SA is civilized.
Just can't help yourselves, can you?

Why isn't South Africa civilised?
Did they, or did they not, attempt reconcilliation rather than punishment?

Originally posted by FishHead111
So what country do you live in googlefudge, Magic Care Bear Land with Rainbow Bright and the Smurfs where everything is perfect all the time??

The UK.

Which is far from perfect, I have many complaints about my country and government.
However almost everything I would like to fix about the UK could be categorised as
making the UK LESS like the USA [and probably more like our Scandinavian neighbours
although they have some issues too and I would argue for something that copies their
strengths while covering their weaknesses while keeping what we currently do better].
And most of the areas where I disagree with the direction we are going could be categorised
as making us more like the USA. Our present governments obsession with mass surveillance
and encryption back doors to 'fight terrorism' while actually just making it easier for criminals
would be one example. The almost complete dominance of American neo-liberal free market
economics being another example.

I don't need to live in a perfect country to be able to regard my own as being measurably
better than yours is on a number of issues. And this doesn't preclude me from looking to
other countries that I see doing [some things] better for inspiration as to what is possible
to achieve.

And this isn't to say that there are not inspiring Americans or American institutions,
because there are.

Your government [at any level] is not one of them.

And as the functioning of the government forms the foundation of a civilised society, you
have issues that we don't have, and on a scale we don't see in the UK or Western/Northern
Europe.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Only if you are foolish enough to browse the web without script and ad-blockers. 😛

With those it loads just fine.

Anyhow, my point was that a very brief google search showed that people starving is
very much a thing that does happen in the USA.

As are riots, police shootings, mass incarceration, torture, coerced confessions including from
m ...[text shortened]... structure.

This does cause me to have a hard time including the USA in the 'civilised world'.

No, people are not starving in the USA. "Food insecurity sometime in the last 12 months" is not starvation. Just because you chose a website that uses "starvation" in the title does not mean there is actually starvation. Read the article you posted. Who is actually starving in Memphis?

I never mentioned starvation in the South Africa. I said people can't afford food there. That's because the food market in Africa is all screwed up. In the USA, a more civilized country where food is much more affordable, the government deliberately subsidizes farmers in order to make sure the US population can eat - for national defense reasons!

What do the Africans do? Do they subsidize their own farmers?

No, they steal farms from competent farmers, fail to work the land and whine about how Americans are subsizing food and ruining the profits of these African robber baron farmers.

The result? Food is way too expensive in Africa, a continent that should have NO problems feeding its people. Because they export the food to rich foreigners instead of making sure their own people can eat.

Originally posted by shavixmir
Why isn't South Africa civilised?
Did they, or did they not, attempt reconcilliation rather than punishment?

LOL the black Africans are murdering the whites by the thousands every year WTF are you talking about "reconciliation". ?
I'd put up a video of the blacks singing and chanting "Kill The Boers", etc but you wouldn't watch it and claim it wasn't happening.

Originally posted by FishHead111
LOL the black Africans are murdering the whites by the thousands every year WTF are you talking about "reconciliation". ?
I'd put up a video of the blacks singing and chanting "Kill The Boers", etc but you wouldn't watch it and claim it wasn't happening.

Stuck in that alternate dimension again, are we?