The US is fucked. Your welfare is dropping like a brick, the gap between rich and poor is bigger than anywhere else in the Western world, you import FAR more than you export, tons of Americans have debts because they spend more than they can afford to "live the dream", the entire American culture is materialistic in nature to boot, social values are completely out of whack, education is worse than ever causing the current generation of Americans to be the least informed in decades (not to mention writing standards are appalling), American politics are one big pile of steaming shit, etc. etc.

Yes, it has gone to shit. And I fear Europe will follow as it often happens.

While I disagree with some of your points (some of which could be applied to most countries in Europe) I agree that the US is heading towards a direction I don't like. Politicians are getting worse, religion seems to be (wrongfully) playing a larger role in the US and the conservative base which favors the wealthy seems to be growing every day.

Of course, I would love to move to the UK after I graduate, but I also know how much some of you guys hate foreigners as well. That and I have no clue how to find employment over there.

I seem to recall a capital-wide riot in a small island nation not too long ago. We haven't had one of those in a long time.

I honestly wouldn't boast about that. When your fellow countrymen are too lazy to protest even when they're being screwed over in a massive way like they are, it's something to cry about, not gloat about. And those that dare protest, are labelled as hippies *rolls eyes*. Sure, there's freeloaders among them, but they still make a fucking good point. For a country that acts so tough, its people sure are eager to bend over and let them get raped by huge corporations.

The capital is less than 2 miles across thats not much of an achievement ;)

If you think that's psychotic rambling, I pity you. If you want to believe everything is peachy and rosy, I suggest you stick your head back underground like most of your fellow countrymen and shout "God bless the USA" as much as you want. I hope there's smarter people there who realise that things are heading the wrong way and stand up and do something instead of sitting on their couch and pointing at the Wallstreet protesters and laughing when a cop uses pepperspray without any reason.

Someone help me remember: is it the red pill or the blue pill that you swallow in order to believe that OWS is all sunshine and roses? I can't recall which pill it is that makes you ignore the rape, the murder, the theft, the unlawful squatting on private and public property, the public defecation and urination, the communicable diseases, the blatant anti-Semitism...

In most parts of the world, if cops tell you to disperse and you don't, they will use force, often far greater force than a can of pepper spray.

Last time there was a big demonstration here and people refused to disperse, the prime minister's bodyguards threw a bunch of grenades into the crowd of men, women and children, killing a couple of dozen people and injuring hundreds.

Not to say that unreasonable force should be used in the US just because it's used elsewhere, but if cops tell you to disperse and you don't, I don't think pepper spray is the worst thing they could do to get you to move.

Here's my take on the world. About 99.9% of the population are morons of the dumb fuck variety. It has always been this way. This wasn't apparent until the advent of worldwide communication and travel. Ideas can be sent almost instantly to anywhere on the globe, and people can get to places that would have taken months or years in only a few hours.

Since this "shrinkage" of the planet, people can create a collective conscience that wouldn't otherwise be possible. This has great benefits, as people can exchange knowledge and make new discoveries at an exponentially increased rate, something we have seen first hand. Look at the past 100 years and it is easy to understand.

There is a negative part to this, however. While knowledge can be shared, stupidity is also a commodity of the information age. That exponential increase also works for this side as well, so we see these ideas a mentally challenged person would think stupid inflate to out of control proportions.

Also, there is a splinter group of the 0.1% who seem to have no problem screwing people over, which adds to the situation. They generally have the ability to manipulate the masses.

Just to be clear, while I don't think I'm completely stupid, I feel I do belong to the majority of dumb asses. Maybe the upper echelon, as I realize my mistakes and try to set things straight, but I can do some pretty dumb shit.

I think you may be confusing OWS with every hippy movement.

I've lived in several countries and the US is one of the worst first world countries to live in, bar none. I'm one of the employment lottery winners and I'm still saying this.
Are you implying that movements always gather some douchebags along the way? That doesn't mean the movement is wrong. The bullshit the tea party and even the major political parties have gathered along the way eclipses that easily.
Cops murder people here too. Mersele got 4 years for murdering a man laying belly-down on the ground. There's pot smokers serving harsher sentences than that!

People at demonstrations have had the shit beat out of them in the US. You seem to like to say how much worse it is chez toi, I'd like to suggest that not only is it very annoying, I suspect you're terribly myopic.

There has been one murder, as far as I know, and it didn't have anything to do with Occupy Oakland, it just happened to be near the encampment (http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/10/murder-at-occupy-oakland-dont-be-an-idiot/). That article also outlines my views on how theft is not a huge issue - and the friends I have that have spent a large amount of time (including sleeping there many nights in a row) at an occupation (Dewey Square in Boston) never felt in danger, or at risk of having things stolen.

The rape I can find evidence of (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/woman-raped-at-occupy-philadelphia/) also seems to be unrelated to Occupy other than taking place at a camp. It was committed by a person with a history of sexual assault and who used the large number of people as a cover for his attack.

Edit: This video (http://nation.foxnews.com/occupy-wall-street/2011/11/01/woman-describes-rape-occupy-wall-street) shows ways that issues (which are part of society, occupy is a smaller part of society it doesn't mean everything is automatically going to be "sunshine and roses" as you put it) are being handled at OWS. There are dangers, of course, but there are things being done to ameliorate these issues.

"The unlawful squatting on private and public property" is not an issue. You are missing the point of what occupation means and signifies. You can disagree with it, with the methods - but the act of occupation means you have to squat, we aren't going to ask for permits from a government/system which is corrupt.

I haven't heard of any anti-Semitism (are you saying it is because a lot of anger is targeted at bankers and bankers=jewish? because that is just as stereotypical), though I'm sure it exists. I have more problems with the way that Occupy is a largely white, middle class group of protestors. Though the occupiers I have met are awesome people there are serious issues (which carry over from society mind you, they are not created by Occupy!) of racism and sexism in the camps and in the whole process. BUT these things existing does not mean that they can't be combated and fixed. Problems exist in the world, and identifying and attempting to deal with them is the only way to make the world a better place. We cannot hid our heads in the sand and pretend that racism, sexism, classism, anti-semitism, any -ism, does not exist. Instead we need to stand against these things when we meet them.

Fuck that, how about the Pacific NW and CA secede (taking about 40% of the entire US economy with them) and the rest of the country can go implode on their own?

Witness SOPA and how people just don't seem to care. Or the nationwide humanitarian disasters left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the financial crisis. Or the fact that education is in shambles.

What really astonishes me most of all though is that not only are more people seemingly apathetic towards it - they defend or even are enthusiastic about it. For some reason, people would much rather satisfy their own personal biases about "Big Government" or "Militant Islam" than actually doing things like taking care of the poor or trying to protect the environment.

SOPA will pass. As much as I hate it, I get the feeling that it will - and the Conservative GOP get to not only reap the rewards of their relationship with the MPAA and the RIAA, they get to have a nice little legalized ability to censor the Internet as well. The more I think about it, the more it looks to me like the U.S. is fast becoming the next North Korea.