I appreciate the praise and sympathy both, hah!

Yeah its... well, in one way, its very, very tragic and sad, essentially just in my lifetime, the US has gone from 'sole world superpower' to 'absolute laughingstock / basket case', to see the massive amount of unnecessary harm this does to ourselves, and to others.

Once upon a time, a patriot was defined by love of one's country, one's countrymen, a broad sense of collective empathy and desire to see the maximum good for the maximum number of them.

But this is no longer the case, now 'patriotism' is, to many, either a dirty word, or a jingoist and fanatical cult that worships at the altar of the God Emperor, who sits senile and deranged atop the throne of a long dead sense of American superiority, doing and believing whatever the mad king says in a vain hope that this will somehow re-manifest a mythical, falsely remembered past 'greatness'.

But, in another way, it is fucking infuriating to people like myself, and many others of apparently uncommon intelligence / insight (for an American), who have been describing the bad trends, outlining how to fix them, then screaming that they need to be fixed soon or essentially all will be lost...

Only to be broadly gaslit and patted on the head and told 'dont worry, its not that bad, you are catastrophizing!' by most of society... as all our worst fears just objectively are occuring in realtime.

People did not realize Carlin was not joking when he said that line, they did not take him seriously enough.

... Its... its like being in a car with an overconfident, drunk or high driver and other passengers.

You ask them to slow down, to be more careful, to stop, let me out, and their responses are braggadocious, then angry, then the car crashes, and they blame you for 'distracting' them.

To give you a non American cultural reference: I agree with David Bowie, I too am afraid of Americans.