{"id":3386,"date":"2010-01-06T00:35:59","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T05:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=3386"},"modified":"2015-03-18T23:26:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T03:26:25","slug":"aside-im-afraid-of-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/06\/aside-im-afraid-of-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Aside: I&#8217;m afraid of Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last decade I&#8217;ve become increasingly cynical about, and frankly afraid of Americans. Not all of them&#8211;I know they&#8217;re not all the same, and there are lots of them I love&#8211;but Americans in the aggregate. I had some hope that things were changing there last year, but when I read statistics like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rasmussenreports.com\/public_content\/politics\/general_politics\/december_2009\/58_favor_waterboarding_of_plane_terrorist_to_get_information\">58% of US voters favour the use of torture<\/a> in gathering information&#8211;specifically in a case where there is no ticking bomb&#8211;I am more scared than ever.  Factor in that the rate is even higher for younger people and I&#8217;m left wondering if there will be anyone left who understands that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Banality_of_evil\">this isn&#8217;t how things <em>should<\/em> be<\/a>. Those numbers about how many people think the US legal system is too worried about individual rights make me despair for humanity, and for the American voting public&#8217;s ability to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Over the last decade I&#8217;ve become increasingly cynical about, and frankly afraid of Americans. Not all of them&#8211;I know they&#8217;re not all the same, and there are lots of them I love&#8211;but Americans in the aggregate. I had some hope that things were changing there last year, but when I read statistics like 58% of US voters favour the use&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/06\/aside-im-afraid-of-americans\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[331,4,2],"tags":[121,179,354,116,263,122],"class_list":["post-3386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-aside","category-head-explodes","category-political","tag-civil-liberties","tag-police-powers","tag-rights","tag-society-of-fear","tag-torture","tag-usa","post_format-post-format-aside","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-SC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3885,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions\/3885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}