Andreas is a German blogger known for his rants and railings against, well, just about everything. This article, in which he tears the USA a brand-new asshole, was originally posted on his site, Mir platzt der Sack. (wozu einen die Welt so zwingt)

What the fuck, America? by Andreas

This is the first article I’ve written in English on my blog, Mir platzt der Sack, because I am really confused about the United States and some of its decisions.

First off: Like many Americans, I love America; it’s just that I love it for completely different reasons. I love its pragmatism, the hospitality of the people, the beauty of the country, etc. But every single time I visit, I have some trouble with „the way things are“ in the US, and I really need to keep telling myself not everyone in the US supports this crap; that it’s just a few people — and of course the government — responsible for some of these idiotic decisions. So, let’s get things started shall we?

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Power Lines

Seriously. Every single non-retard country has subterranean power lines. For obvious reasons. Walking the streets in California you can hear capacitors humming and, knowing what it’s like in Europe, you find yourself realizing that this is a recipe for disaster. If a car hits those things and knocks one of these stupid-ass wooden poles over, the chance of the driver getting electrocuted is a completely unnecessary risk to take. Not to mention storms, fires, earthquakes and all that shit California is known for. Why the hell is that stuff above ground?! As an American, you might never notice, because you’re used to it. But seriously, if that’s the case in Africa, I get it. But in a wealthy country? WHY?! This is just cheap shit and nobody really seems to care about safety. Go fix it.

Door Knobs

Did you ever consider introducing door-handles? In many countries I’ve seen stupid fucking door-knobs and they open into different directions sometimes, some of them have a pin that you either push in or pull out to lock, some of them have a little turn-lock on them, etc. – This is screwed up. The cool thing about door handles is, that you can open them with your elbow, especially if you are carrying a bunch of groceries or something. And there’s only one option. Push down. No need for any sort of explanation, not to mention that those are a lot more accessible. You don’t need to hold and turn, just push down. It’s also ridiculous that someone actually needs to spell that out and explain the advantages.

Showers, Sinks and Bathtubs

Similar to the door-knobs, same here. The faucets. What the fuck? Do you guys have anything standardized? Pull, push, turn, squeeze, right, left, up, down, weird combinations of all of them? Why can’t you just have ONE simple joystick-like system that works the same everywhere? Too much of an effort? Check out hotels in Germany. None of them will have a confusing system like yours. One handle. Intuitive. That’s it. To be fair, the British are even worse. Having a sink with two separate warm and cold water valves. Still, not a good standard. Just make things simple and unified already.

Advertising-Optimized Sports

American football and baseball have such a huge learning curve and are hard to explain to others. Now look at baseball for instance. Or at the UFC. Or at American football. Or at ice hockey. Do you realize that the US are one of the very few countries that are not crazy about soccer? It’s a simple and fun sport, and the US created their own kinds of sports, that are a lot easier to market. All of those sports have so many interruptions for advertising. You can’t really do that with soccer, so the media try to keep soccer off the channels and mock it – for whatever reason. Still. What you should realize is that you’re the ones being fooled. You are being conditioned to not like soccer, because it’s hard to sell advertising when a single half-time is 45 minutes. Everybody complains about being controlled by the media. It’s about time to do something about it.

Sales Tax Omission

Do you realize that the US are the one country that tickets prices of stuff in stores without adding the tax to it? Why don’t you just put on the sticker what you actually have to pay for it? Nobody gives a rats ass about what part of it is tax and what isn’t. If something is ticketed $99 and you have a $100 bill in your pocket, most people from literally any other country would expect that they will be able to pay for it with that bill. I don’t know any other country which does that. It’s moronic and unintuitive. Please fix it.

Prostitution

So let me get this straight: Porn is legal. Getting paid for sex isn’t? So technically, there’s a loophole in the system and you could just get a hooker and pay her to be your porn-actress slash escort and you’re in the clear, but if you just pay her for sex, you can go to jail for that? Prostitution should be legal. Do you even realize that many hookers don’t carry condoms any more because those can be used as evidence? This is so incredibly stupid and hypocritical. Please legalize it and let people sell stuff that is perfectly legal to give away. If an 18-year-old porn actress can make money with that legally, so should a 35-year-old woman, if she’s in desperate need of money or not. None of your concern. Just let people be. Which gets me to the next weird thing.

Drinking Age

Even more ridiculous. 21 years?! Every teenager drinks and you fucking know it. And where’s the logic in that? 18-year-old girls can get fucked in the ass and being videotaped doing it, but they can however not have a beer after that? That’s not fair. People who get fucked in the ass should be allowed to have a beer in exchange. They deserve a beer for that. One more fun fact: Did you know, that in California, you may serve beer if you’re 18 years old, but you’re not allowed to drink it? However, a 16-year-old kid can get a drivers license. Because that age is widely know for ‚responsibility’… Seriously. Lower the drinking age to at least 18. Think of the poor girls in porn.

DUI and Drinking While Driving

I get the law on drinking under the influence of alcohol in general. You shouldn’t be allowed to drink and – after that – drive. I’m cool with that. Same in most countries except maybe Russia. I guess you need to be above a certain intoxication level to be allowed to drive in the first place. But then again in the US the law is kind of moronic on that. How is it illegal to have a beer while you’re driving? How does that make any sense? Same law in Canada by the way. You can have a soda but you can’t have a beer. If the law would be strict on that it wouldn’t allow any food or drinks while you’re driving because it’s a distraction. I’d probably not really agree with that either but I could follow the logic. But: You’re allowed to have a beer or two, as long as you stay below the permitted level. However, the first sip of beer while you are driving is illegal? I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit.

Guns and Ammo

…and all that crazy shit that comes with that stupid amendment. Again: drinking age is 21, but you can get a shotgun when you’re 18? Funny, because the minimum age for pistols or rifles with pistol-grips is 21. Still – what the fuck? Why is it such a big deal to make people apply for a gun license first instead of letting them just get one as long as they have ID? Even convicted felons can have their gun-ownership rights reinstated? And you guys wonder why people are killing each other on the streets? This is ridiculous. You don’t need guns for protection. Period. It doesn’t hurt to have people at least prove that they know their way around a gun, take an exam on it and make it a bit more of an effort than just getting one at a fucking Big 5. You want the cops to be the ones armed and everyone else shouldn’t be. Americans trust their firemen and policemen and that’s good. Why not let them be the ones with the guns? You don’t live in the middle-ages any more and you’re not at civil war, regardless of how much you love to reenact that. You don’t need a weapon of any kind for your own protection. Speaking of ‚the old days‘, it makes me think of…

The American Electoral System

Much like the power-lines, the gun laws and all that crap, this is stuff from the old days. America elects people like some third-world-country. Do you know how the electoral college works? It’s based on an obsolete idea.

This video explains it very well. It’s kind of ‚funny‘, but unfortunately it’s the truth. This is what you guys are using and it’s ridiculous. If you still didn’t get, why this is stupid, you need to watch this:

Enough about elections. It’s ridiculous enough that the US only have either democrat or republican candidates and nothing in between, but that would really lead me off-topic. Just to be clear: We’re making fun of those high-court british idiots with their wigs on, and yes, it’s ridiculous. But this is just as much tradition as the stupid electoral college is. Americans should be allowed to vote directly for the president. Counting votes is a lot easier than the crap you’re doing right now. Speaking of crap that you’re used to but that’s no longer up to date in any way. Why on earth do you use…

The Imperial System

Seriously? This stuff is every engineers nightmare. Did you ever wonder why so much great engineering comes from Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland and many other countries in Europe? BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Audi, VW, Skoda, Saab and many other brands come from european countries and I’m only naming car manufacturers for now. I didn’t even mention Siemens, Nokia, Miele, Bosch and all those others known for great manufacturing and build quality. So why is that? Why do these countries produce so many good engineers? Why can’t the US do that? It’s simple. You create ‚the horror‘ for your kid when you try to get your kid hooked on physics or chemistry. Why? Imagine this: Your kid likes math. That’s kind of rare. And your kid is good at it. Even better. Now try to get him (yes, him. Female engineers suck most of the time) hooked on physics. Ah yes. That stuff where you have to re-learn all the units and not work with what you’re used to. Your kid is not going to like that. So there’s your reason. You would have a lot more great engineers if you taught the metric system in the first place. It’s stupid to use a system which is based on comparison if you need arithmetic accuracy.

Just to get things straight. In case you don’t know. All those units in the imperial system are completely unrelated and totally moronic. Inches, yards, feet, pounds, degrees fahrenheit, miles, ounces, etc. don’t have anything to do with each other. None of them. However, a box that is 10cm high, wide and tall will hold – here it comes – exactly one liter (!) of water which will weigh exactly one kg. And guess how much energy you need to heat that liter of water up by exactly one degree centigrade? You get the idea. And you see why this is easier and way better for calculations than your system that is actually based on the size of the kings foot from the 17th century. Even theoatmeal.com mentioned the imperial system a few years ago. Go check it out: The Imperial System. And finally, for my final what-the-fuck:

Religion

Why? WHY? It’s part of sports, politics, simply every single thing. I totally get that this is a very sensitive subject in the US, but seriously: How is it, that so many religious morons are still so present in the US? You can’t even watch a fucking UFC Fight Night without hearing at least once the sentence „I wanna thank my Lord and savior“ yayayah just shut the fuck up and stop talking about your imaginary friend. I get that people need religion to hold on to something. Some people need that for their own personal motivation, some even do a lot of good because of it. But do you realize that religion is one of the main causes of death on this planet? People kill each other over bullshit. I am really looking forward to the day when some documentary states: „this is what people used to believe – we know, it’s ridiculous, but people actually believed that there’s this invisible man in the skies…“ I won’t get into that in detail, it’s just also one of the outdated things that Americans do because „that’s just the way things are“.

Conclusion

I still love America, and it’s going to be hard to change that. I haven’t even mentioned that people actually refuse Obamacare and don’t realize that it’s good for them. Still I think there is a lot of room for improvement. America is so pragmatic about so many things. If there’s not a law against it, just do it. There are countries that are way more complicated, bureaucratic and picky about every single change that they should make. However, many of those countries are way ahead of the US and I can’t see how this is possible. So just please wake the fuck up and do something about the things I mentioned above, even if it means changing a few of your habits. It’s been this way for too long. Let’s see the pragmatism that I love so much about the States.

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Read more from Andreas on his blog, Mir platzt der Sack.