#united

What did “good government” really mean? Langlie and his brotherhood promised an end to political corruption. (There’s no evidence that Langlie ever even took a drink, much less a bribe.) The days of “honest graft” were over, at least for a while. But seen from another perspective—that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and Abram’s elite network—Langlie didn’t so much end corruption as legalize it. Langlie wasn’t opposed to a government organized around the interests of the greedy; he just didn’t want to have to break the law to serve them. ↗

— Jeff Sharlet

#bribery #government #legality #political-corruption #united-states

An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#humour #joke #united-states #united-states

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#greatest #poem #states #themselves #united

In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. ↗

— Dave Barry

#sat #united-states

I'd like to see a flag made not out of stars and stripes, but rather fingers and knuckles, so that it could really wave in the wind. It would be the most welcoming flag in all the world. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#fingers #flag #global #globalism #patriotic

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#social-isolation #sociopathy #united-states #united-states

Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#decadent #u-s #united-states

Extrapolating from the statistical growth of the legal profession, by the year 2035 every single person in the United States will be a lawyer, including newborn infants. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#united-states

The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don't understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#usa #united-states

The problem with the Tea Party is they're all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too. ↗

— Jon Stewart

#politics-of-the-united-states #humor