North America is a beautiful country with it's vast sweeping landscapes. I for one would relish travelling across the US.
It's a highly distressing fact that the white man decimated the indigenous native American population via disease, slaughter, and 'schooling' of Indian children. :sad: Stanley Kubrick alluded to these themes in his film 'The Shining'.
I've met a few American 'year abroad' students in my time. The ladies were charm personified. The fellas were opinionated, friendly, and good company. They were great ambassadors for their country. They were all aggrieved that much of the world associated America with Bush, because they didn't feel Bush represented them at all.
Personally, I think America, like all other countries, is controlled by those who control the money. In Britain, we have Blair; in the US, you have Bush - they're both puppets, and they play their parts very well. Psychopaths are brilliant actors.
While people constantly direct venom at Bush, and berate his inadequacy, they are depriving themselves of the energy to delve deeper in to (for example), systems of power, think tanks that shape national policy, the psychology of mass manipulation, and the history of empires that have risen and fallen. These kind of topics aren't 'entertaining', or full of positive soundbites, but they are the naked reality of the world we live in.
What is the money system, and how does it work? Why are there only about 13 families who control the entire world banking system?
Who sets up these think tanks? Who funds them? What's their motive?
Carl Jung, Machiavelli, George Orwell (to name a few), all wrote about mass manipulation, and the methods used by the big boys to keep the public docile so as to make domination easier.
There's no exciting rollercoaster with high drama where people are fighting, or having affairs, or robbing banks, etc. This is human nature at its most depraved.
I was amazed when I watched the news today. The anchors reported something which is very disturbing (4 British soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq), immediately followed by the 'Keith Richards snorting his Dads ashes' story. The Richards story is so bizarre and surreal, and to my mind, rubs off on the seriousness of the story before, therefore manipulating the viewer in to perceiving the 4 deaths as bizarre and other-worldly; thereby not contemplating them in the cold light of day.
) statement to make. 
