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81cec90
|
Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.
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usa
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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8278c6b
|
And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.
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|
war
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
usa
delusions
united-states
cruelty
race-relations
theft
|
Colson Whitehead |
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0ab7cf9
|
You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies--the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects--are the product of democratic will. And so to challenge the police is to challenge the American people who send them into the ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.
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|
racism
america
united-states-of-america
blacks
whites
police-reform
usa
united-states
race-relations
police
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
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076b243
|
I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.
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injustice
bill-of-rights
failed-liberalism
power-interests
first-amendment
radical-politics
egalitarianism
usa
authoritarianism
constitution
democracy
free-speech
police
|
Howard Zinn |
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35cea24
|
Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.
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|
equality
independence
subversive
usa
liberty
democracy
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Naomi Wolf |
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28db6dd
|
What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they'll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough.
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|
grief
usa
|
William Styron |
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e4d787d
|
If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now. Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.
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|
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
white-people
possessions
native-americans
usa
united-states
ownership
race-relations
|
Colson Whitehead |
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295a5ea
|
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...
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sex
wealth
slavery
freedom
reason
life
love
philosophy
causality
individual-rights
objective-law
volition
pursuit-of-happiness
commerce
jobs
usa
economy
rock-and-roll
crisis
economics
law
regulation
force
liberty
society
political-philosophy
constitution
government
atheism
capitalism
tyranny
trade
drugs
|
Ayn Rand |
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5f9bad7
|
And if the word means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.
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|
america
reality
love
us
integration
whites
usa
united-states
race-relations
|
James Baldwin |
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bdaa334
|
I pay more tax registered in Holland than I would in the USA, but better gieing to the Dutch to build dams than the Yanks to build bombs.
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|
tax
trainspotting
usa
|
Irvine Welsh |
|
ac57607
|
Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself moral.
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|
usa
|
Gore Vidal |
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920c4b7
|
Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. [...] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.' I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid. 'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.' [...] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.
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|
irony
humor
reservations
native-americans
usa
invasion
parody
|
Adam Rex |
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d325764
|
"When the president during the campaign
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|
politics
nation-building
foreign-policy
bush
usa
iraq
|
Al Franken |
|
8ce372e
|
The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
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|
slavery
slave-catchers
us
united-states-of-america
jobs
usa
united-states
criminals
|
Colson Whitehead |
|
ba97a54
|
Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself. Well, the rabble could. The rabble would. He would lead the rabble in managing. The thing would be won.
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|
war
america
us
united-states-of-america
lincoln
usa
united-states
civil-war
victory
democracy
|
George Saunders |
|
4f1d28b
|
This whole country's stolen.
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|
usa
theft
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
ccdae90
|
It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American
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|
morality
usa
liberty
constitution
values
|
Naomi Wolf |
|
690d99e
|
rip the prisons open put the convicts on television
|
|
television
convicts
criminal
prisons
prisoners
tv
usa
jail
criminals
prison
guilty
|
Norman Mailer |
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3a750d1
|
It is truly horrible to understand yourself as the essential below of your country. It breaks too much of what we would like to think about ourselves, our lives, the world we move through and the people who surround us. The struggle to understand is our only advantage over this madness.
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|
racism
america
learning
united-states-of-america
blacks
usa
united-states
race-relations
knowledge
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
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721900d
|
"If this were a courageous country, it would ask Gloria to lead it since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart and the National Leaders we've always had are not. When I listen to her talk about women's rights children's rights men's rights I think of the long line of Americans who should have been president, but weren't. Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth. John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo. Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy." Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or Sweet Honey in the Rock dealing with Anything. It is imagining to make us weep with frustration, as we languish under real estate dealers, killers, and bad actors."
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|
politics
leadership
change
us
united-states-of-america
presidents
usa
leaders
united-states
|
Alice Walker |
|
a88f344
|
No curtain under heaven is heavier than that curtain of guilt and lies behind which white Americans hide.
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|
james-baldwin
usa
race-relations
race
|
James Baldwin |
|
c5fa88d
|
We do not admire their president. We know why the White House is white. We do not find their children irresistible; We do not agree they should inherit the earth.
|
|
poems
poetry
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
whites
usa
united-states
race-relations
|
Alice Walker |
|
2a880b7
|
A mob is not autonomous: it executes the real will of the people who rule the State. The slaughter in Birmingham, Alabama, for example, was not merely the action of a mob.
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|
mob-mentality
usa
race
state
|
James Baldwin |
|
e6efe78
|
[ob amerikantsakh] -- Ia ponimaiu, oni -- turisty, ne otlichaiushchiesia ochen' uzh razvitym voobrazheniem. Vspominaiu, kak uchilas' tam v shkole. Rebiata tam kazalis' mne gorazdo bolee otkrytymi, po krainei mere v tom, chto kasalos' lichnykh pristrastii. Vsegda rasskazyvali, chto chuvstvuiut. -- Da delo vovse ne v tom, chto oni ob etom ne rasskazyvaiut. -- A v tom, chto nedostatochno chuvstvuiut? -- Da i ne v etom tozhe. Nedostatochno znaiut. Ne pozvoliaiut sebe mnogo znat'. Kak s etim Gramshi, o kotorom ty govorila. -- On pomolchal i dobavil: -- Vsio vsegda delaiut po pravilam. Dzhein pomolchala nemnogo. -- Piter pisal o chiom-to vrode etogo v odnom iz pisem. Kak vnachale tebe nravitsia ikh priamota... a potom nachinaesh' toskovat' po izvivam. -- Ia ispytal to zhe samoe. Prozrachnost' -- prekrasnaia veshch'. Poka ne nachinaesh' ponimat', chto ona osnovana ne stol'ko na vnutrennei chestnosti, skol'ko na otsutstvii voobrazheniia. I eta ikh tak nazyvaemaia otkrovennost' po povodu seksa. Oni prosto ne ponimaiut, chto utratili.
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|
sex
uk
usa
|
John Fowles |
|
5dd96c2
|
OBAMA'S FRUSTRATION WITH HIS critics boiled over during a lengthy trip to Asia in the spring of 2014. In the region, the trip was seen as another carefully designed U.S. effort to counter China. We'd go to Japan, to bring them into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)--weaving together twelve Asia Pacific economies into one framework of trade rules, environmental protections, and labor rights. We'd go to South Korea and discuss ways to increase pressure on North Korea. We'd go to Malaysia, something of a swing state in Southeast Asia, which we were bringing closer through TPP. And we'd end in the Philippines, a U.S. ally that was mired in territorial disputes with China over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea.
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|
foreign-policy
international-relations
usa
china
|
Ben Rhodes |
|
89ecd73
|
It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what effect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one another.)
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|
politics
trust
usa
united-states
politicians
americans
distrust
contempt
|
James Baldwin |
|
fb43a76
|
Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.
|
|
family-relationships
india
immigrant-experience
literary-fiction
usa
suspense
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
d3ed4d2
|
I've come to believe that the function of torture in our society is not about getting information, in spite of what we might want to believe. It is merely about power. It tells the world that there is now no limit to what we will do when we feel threatened.
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|
usa
torture
|
Nick Flynn |
|
c38eac9
|
"It is interesting that a guy like W.E.B. Du Bois, who actually did very little, I should imagine, with his hands, wrote about "I am the smoke king." Without the labor, both free and slave, of African Americans this country would still be a wilderness."
|
|
america
poetry
us
w-e-b-du-bois
usa
labor
united-states
race-relations
race
|
Nikki Giovanni |
|
433722e
|
"One South Carolinian who grew up early in the twentieth century "did not learn that the South had lost the war until he was twelve years old. 'It was one of the saddest awakenings I ever had,'" he recalled. Similarly, Margaret Mitchell remembered that she "heard so much about the fighting and hard times after the war that I firmly believed Mother and Father had been through it all instead of being born long afterward." [141--42]"
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|
myth
usa
|
Paul D. Escott |
|
35c7689
|
"Wait till Buzz takes charge of us. A real Fascist dictatorship!" "Nonsense! Nonsense!" snorted Tasbrough. "That couldn't happen here in America, not possibly! We're a country of freemen." "The answer to that," suggested Doremus Jessup, "if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is 'the hell it can't!' Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical--yes, or more obsequious!--than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio--divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees? Could Hitler's bunch, or Windrip's, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the--well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimee McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy?... Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution?... Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition--shooting down people just because they be transporting liquor--no, that couldn't happen in ! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!"
|
|
dictatorships
us
united-states-of-america
usa
fascism
democracy
hysterics
|
Sinclair Lewis |
|
2c4d405
|
"When someone makes a spectacular ass of himself, it's always in a French restaurant, never a Japanese or Italian one. The French are the people who slap one another with gloves and wear scarves to cover their engorged hickies. My understanding was that, no matter how hard we tried, the French would never like us, and that's confusing to an American raised to believe that the citizens of Europe should be grateful for all the wonderful things we've done. Things like movies that stereotype the people of France as boors and petty snobs, and little remarks such as "We saved your ass in World War II." Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos were born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are "We're number two!"
|
|
humor
usa
french
|
David Sedaris |
|
f4514be
|
What we are seeing today is a new iteration of that very old impulse in America: the quest of some of the propertied (always, it bears noting, a particular ideological extreme --and some would say greedy-- subsection of the propertied) to restrict the promise of democracy for the many, acting in the knowledge that the majority would choose other politics if it could
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|
politics
usa
|
Nancy MacLean |