I want to live in America!   Who even says that nowadays?  Surely not someone who was born in the United States and has traveled around the world?  But, yes, there are still many reasons that I want to live in America. By the way, I’d be happy to live in Canada, Mexico and other locales in North and South America as well because they are also part of America.

The America I’m talking about in this article, though, is the United States.

And you could probably throw all kinds of descriptors at my name that would label me with who you think I am in some form or fashion so as to really piss you off and enable you to crawl inside the jury that lives in each of our heads with an under-the-breath-retort of “well, sure, THAT kind of person would want to live in the U.S.  I know I do that kind of snap judging all the time. It’s so easy now with mass media…I’ve thus far resisted the urge to listen to what Rush Limbaugh said; however, information is so pervasive out there that I’ve pretty much gotten the gist of it.  I can just snap, snap away until I become this little sniveling creature holed away in my little world of beliefs with no entry for other perspectives to ease their way in and shift my paradigm.  Hope you’re not suffering from that as well! It’s lonely in here.

We need to remember that the media is here for us to use and not for it to use us (pun intended).

What’s helped me to remember the good things about living in the U.S. A. is listening to people who have become citizens here after leaving their home country behind.  We (Americans) are very insulated from what it is really like to live as a citizen in so many places around our Earth.

So, yeah, I can just almost not stand to listen to the news or read a paper that has anything to say about the primaries going on right now because of the double and triple talk spitting back and forth, but at least I know that it is going on. I have the freedom to educate myself on how to listen better and get to a place where I can find my own understanding of what is happening around me so that then I can then make the best informed choices that I can.

Plug for Dylan Ratigan and his book “Greedy Bastards”….the talking mouths like to say that the media is overrun by the liberals, but actually statistics back up the fact that the media is coming from a place that is more to the center and leaning towards the right than left.  With that said, though, I’m glad to see a talking head like Dylan, out there with a successful show on MSNBC getting is thoughts and opinions out there.  After watching the taping of his interview on “Overheard with Evan Smith” I was impressed with the breadth and depth of his knowledge.

We do have choices out there people of what we listen to, read and where we focus our attention.

Do you want to live in America? If so, why? If not, why not? Back it up.