Foreword
With the war in Iraq, I have been asking myself several questions about the United States of America. Note that the following text is just some thinking I have been doing and some people are very likely to disagree. I welcome comments.
Thoughts
The United States of America is proud to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. However, I noticed while I was leaving there that it was less and less the "land of the free" after September 11. I remember a speech from President Bush right after the terrorist attacks saying that Bin Laden was trying to steal the American's freedom but that he will lose. I actually think that he did a pretty good job at achieving this from my own experience. People's Daily published an intersting Summary of Human Rights Record of the US in 2002 highlighting some of the things that I noticed.
Also, the US is probably considered as the most developed country. Although the CIA factbook 2002 page on the US says that out of the 280,562,489 (July 2002 est.) residents, 97% of people age 15 and over can read and write, the International Literacy Network reports that according to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 40 million adults in the United States have low literacy skills and struggle with reading and helping their children with homework, which is roughly 14% of the population. Considering that it is very likely that these 40 million adults were not exposed to world history and geography or anything else than TV, one can understand better certain point of views, especially in today's context (see Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: The National Media Watch Group).
I do not consider this to be people's faults. The American society just does not provide easy (by easy I mean affordable and useful) access to knowledge. For example, reading Fast Food Nation, The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser shows how what is desired for a part of the American population is to be unskilled cheap workers.
Considering that lobbies rule the US, poor people in the US (Literacy Volunteers of America report that between 41% and 44% of adults with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty) can't really hope for an improvement of their situation.
Which makes me wonder where the US are going... Some random thoughts: more and more poor people, richer and richer rich people, less and less freedom, colonialism of the world, etc. And since the world economy depends on the US, where are we all going?