Please go back to ignoring me
I agree with a lot of the things you say, but god you're such a bitch sometimes.
Reality >>> perception.
I don't give a **** what people might think about it.
Foreign perceptions of America give us a needed perspective on our own country. I say this a lot but, I'm strongly of the opinion that every person (Americans especially) should, at least once in their life, go and live on foreign soil for an extended period of time. 4 or 5 years in a foreign place with a different culture, if you can handle it, will inevitably change people, usually for the better.
Many of us don't realize that we have a very America-centric view and it's hard to be cognizant of it until you get out.
I used to go to church when I lived in South Korea, and there was a particularly opinionated man as the Branch President. Sometimes during his weekly talk he would go on a diatribe about American gun culture. He described a place where people were toting guns all over the place and walking outside could mean death at any moment. He saw it as equivalent to a war zone. Clearly the perception is somewhat warped abroad because there is a giant filter and only the biggest of news stories will reach a place like South Korea unless they're paying real close attention to the US. They don't. They don't give two ***** about America for the most part. The average citizen doesn't even care all that much about what North Korea does.
I remember being defensive about it. I never got shot at personally and most definitely never will. But, if you think about it, living in a place where guns have never been legal, it sounds absolutely nuts that normal people can just walk around with instruments of death. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. It's a wonder that people don't kill each other even more than they do in this country.