By Andrea (name is anonymized)
I recently finished reading your plea entitled: "America... no...!, no...!, no...!!!" and I found it compelled me to write this letter: I was startled - shocked, rather - at the truths portrayed in your letter. It hit so close to home that I thought to myself, "God, our deterioration is so clear to foreigners, and yet we don't even recognize it ourselves." I am a sixteen-year-old female living in Minneapolis, Minnesota - where the crime rate per 100,000 people was higher than New York City last year. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not whining nor complaining in any way - for I know compared to some I have had it good. However, I - unlike the people who conduct these studies which you reflected in your posting - can identify with the people that are their guinea pigs. When I was young my parents divorced, and my mother and I skipped from place to place - living where we could. A lot of the people I grew up around were smokers, drinkers, basically fucked-up... My mother later remarried and I was uprooted to live in a home like the ones which you describe - my mother worked constantly and my stepfather was physically and verbally abusive. I have two younger half-siblings, one nine years younger than I and the other seven. I practically raised them, I had to make dinner for them, put them to bed, and watch them each day after school. Sometimes they would mistakenly call me "mom." And yes, the TV was on most of the day... I have watched my friends and family deteriorate right along with my country. I have many friends that have tried to commit suicide, and injure themselves. I have watched my friends die. I have even more friends that abuse alcohol and drugs daily, I used to be the same not too long ago... Each day I watch the violence - on TV and outside my windows - you hear the police and ambulance sirens constantly, as a reminder... and compared to some areas this one is clean. I now have to be searched in school, and carry an ID-card just to get in - because of gangs, drugs, and weapons. And as I said, compared to some places - this is nothing. I have many family members with substance abuse problems - and I watched one of my closest family members die of liver failure, due to excess drinking... much excess - his home was littered with vodka bottles and vomit... And still, despite that harsh life's lesson, my father is a member of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). So what is to be said of all this? I'll tell you how my friends and I; America's youth refer to it today -- when asked where we come from, we just say: "Oh, your typical American disfunctional family." It's nothing unique! It's your everyday story here. But do you think the politicians confront it for what it is? Never!! It's not "PC." They want America to look the world power, peachy keen... It's even more upsetting when I see what you said about the intelligence of young Americans - and I see it is true. Yes, I know what Tjernobyl and Apartheid are... but if you asked my average classmate, the likely reaction would be: "Huh?!" I am currently living with my father - after being told to leave my previous home by my stepfather, basically I was booted! Things are better with him, but we cannot afford to move out of my grandmother's house, and no do not have health insurance... If I need to see a doctor I go to a place called "Now Care" -- where you need no appointment, and pay with cash, and some of the doctors barely speak English - and still that is too expensive. In conclusion, I wanted you to know what you wrote affected me - thousands of miles away, here in America-land - and that it meant something. I wish more than anything something could be done about America's current situation, but it seems so hopeless to your average citizen... "What are we supposed to do about it?" is a popular American attitude - most eligible Americans don't even vote. Lastly, my generation - "Generation X" as we are now called, basically we are statistics - is the first generation in the history of America to believe that they will be worse off than their parents ----- if that says anything to support your theory... Thank you for writing what you did, I hope that some of America's upper-class workers will read that and possibly say to themselves "Is it true?" Like I said - I wanted you to see that what you read, and wrote, hits the nail on the head - more than you will ever know.
Appreciatively, Andrea (name is anonymized)
Comment: We received the request not to mention the complete name of the writer. We understand very well why. That is why we have done the writer the courtesy to send a copy of this letter (by e-mail) to the Ministry of Labor (mr. Robert Reich) to plea for the restoration of a civilized social security system, as we know it in the Netherlands and other European countries. If the Americans want their crime rate really down to Dutch levels, and save at the same time billions and billions of dollars on so called "correctional institutions", law suits, judicial procedures, and damage by theft and health injuries; maybe the Unites States should learn something about our system of social coherence, which has been abandoned recently in the US with the new social security (?) act. We also sent a copy to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment in the Netherlands (mr. Ad Melkert) to strengthen his belief to oppose to free market forces in social security. Our liberals - which are right-wing conservatives in the Netherlands, and the meaning of the word is quit opposite to the same word in the US - are trying to create a system of social security (?) that resembles the one in the United States. Greed is the thriving factor for this. Poor people in the US who live on social security benefit in any form (about ten percent of the population) share only 0,8 percent of the GNP (Gross National Product). Anyone with some intelligence can come to the conclusion that the new social security bill will lead to still greater distortion of the social structure, which will sky rocket the crime rate in the US which seems nearly eight times higher than in Holland today. For the Dutch there is a lot of work to do, in order to prevent what is happening in the US. Then people are basically the same all over the world. Political forces however, determine if a nation ends up in a competitive cut-throat economy or not. The press is playing a crucial role in this, just to make people aware. The writer of the letter gives a bit of hope. Comment 2: We received another reaction of someone who didn't understand that the view on the American society was based purely on a report from an American researcher. The only thing the writer did in "America ... no, ...no, ... no ...!" was to compare the social structures. In this case to the one in the Netherlands. You might be shocked (name also anonymized) --------------------------- America has three times rescued Europe in this century from Europe's own folly at great cost in blood and treasure. In this first part of the century we rescued you from the Kaiser; in the middle of the century we rescued you from the Führer; and just recently we rescued you from the General Secretary. Enough said; enough done. Next time we should just let you die. Louis V. S....... San Francisco, CA Welfare and television are proving as fatal to the American Republic as bread and circuses were to the Roman one.
Andrea wrote:
I am gratified at your response to my letter - I would like to see it published. However, could you please not use my full name at the bottom -- maybe just "Andrea" would suffice? The reason being that you never know who is out there! I am not surprised at the reaction you received from Mr. S......, in fact I would be willing to bet you see more of that. I can see where he may have gotten upset - because after all, each of us has a love for our country. I love my country as well, but I do not like what I see happening to it - and we can not turn our backs to the problems that face so many Americans today. On the same note, I would wager a bet that he is a middle-class American and always has been - and I can tell you just from reading his letter, the man is naive when it comes to the problems that are out there. I'll even bet he drives a BMW. Thank you again, I will be checking your web site !
Andrea
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