When you hear foreigners complain about Americans for being cocky and arrogant, you should not be surprised, because they are not wrong. According to the Pew Research Center, U.S citizens will say that the United States is one of, if not the best country on the planet at least 85% of the time. Many critical thinkers who question this blindly accepted fact will get kicked off the internet, but I will attempt to express my love and distaste for this place that I call home.

When I was asked this question by a peer in my American History 1 class, I was on the verge of giving the standard fist-pumping, egotistical response that I have been programmed to do my entire life, but I drew a total blank. This seemingly straightforward question had literally stopped me in my tracks during a heated debate and made me think “Is it?” It occurred to me that I have built this sense of nationalistic ideas that had no sound structure, so I being the loner I was, spent the rest of the day looking up essays, wiki pages, and various other forms of media about the state of this country and the attitudes we have about it, and in one week my mind was changed. I now know my response. No, but yes at the same time. Let me explain:

I am a Generation Z kid. I was born a few months before 9/11 shocked the world, which left me to grow up in a world of media hysteria and vulnerable masses which seek power to protect them. I remember playing Army as a kid, pretending to shoot the terrorists who were trying to blow up my local water tower, which I’m glad to say succeeded since ISIS has not yet poisoned the water supply. I was brought into this world a Grade-A Neoconservative, and that has changed after a long period of critical thinking that is ignored by the current system in place.

For the case that it is not such a great country, I will be blunt and honest, our Federal Government is a slow and ineffective service which leeches off the people they are sworn to protect. I will argue that most governments are sloppy when centralized, but for the sake of making this readable I will discuss the U.S. Status Quo alone. We live in a two party system, which divides Americans into classifications by gender, race, wealth, sexual orientation, and a continuing list of traits that do not determine your individual worth to society as a whole. This is comparable to having two hungry wolves fighting over the individual pieces of their recent kill. The parties divide us by utilizing our fears to gain power off of us under the guise of protection and making our lives better than they are, which they never accomplish. It is just a carrot on a stick, nothing more.

Of our two parties, we have crooks and criminals on both sides who are insults to the very principles of the ideas this nation was founded on. The Republican Party, whom I used to be an avid supporter of, insults the ideas of our founders and the small-government principles they supposedly advocate. Our military is so overly funded, that President Trump has proposed a literal Space Force, which I personally believe to be a bad description for a space version of the Air force, but that is besides the point. If we are looking to make Starship Troopers nonfiction just because we can, that should be a huge red flag. The GOP is plagued with corporate interest, their annual CPAC looks like NASCAR. The supposed champions of the Free Market are shills who just want to put money into their backer’s wallets. It is also notable that they aren’t fond of your personal choice of what you do with your body, such as ingesting substances like cannabis or sleeping with someone of the same sex. This, however, will likely change as the newer Republicans differ from the Old Guard on this. Only time will tell, but this process will be a long one which is uncertain.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is no better than their “Right” Wing opponents. They too are corporatists, and just because they say they are anti-corporations doesn’t mean that they won’t drop their pants whenever a large donation comes rolling through. These regulations that “harm” these corporations are tailored so that these corporations can thrive while small businesses drown in a poor economy that hinders their attempts to make a successful, productive company. They will use a much more Pathos-like way of reasoning to get their point across, since for them they view the death of kids in a mass shooting as a partisan issue that Republicans somehow support. If anything, the powerful elites are the ones using these dead children to advance their powers and personal interest. If the DNC cared about stopping the gun violence, maybe they’d address the economic hardships in the major cities that they control, which has caused gangs and organized crime to flourish in such areas. If they could not stop the violence in their own communities that has happened for decades, why could they stop it on a national level? The power that comes from our hysteria is too irresistible and has dirtied this great nation.

Okay, now that I’ve given reasoning for why I firmly believe the establishment sets us all back, I will explain why I love this country. This is the land of opportunity, it has furthered humanity for the better by allowing mankind to prosper and advance in ways that were never thought to be possible. The potential for the individual to flourish in this land is what makes it the best place in the world to me, but the dark shadow of the establishment endangers everything our founders fought for. We, the people, must band together and recognize that we are being played. We must resist the tyranny from the parties which leech off of us all. This is not a bipartisan issue, it is the case of the individual being destroyed by two collective entities that do not care about you whatsoever. Time will unveil this to more and more people, and hopefully me publishing this will open people’s minds to how we are all being screwed.