Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I definitely don't think that the individual citizens of America are in any way inferior to those of any other country, nor do I think that collectively Americans are to blame for their current predicament.
While I don't really understand your point about showing gratitude.
1. Many of the major medical breakthroughs in recent history have nothing to do with "America", sure some of them might have happened there but that's hardly their defining factor.
2. Where in my comment did I imply that it was not disgraceful that American people where not enjoying the drugs we have in the modern world?
In terms of the whole homosexuality thing, no shit. It's also a problem that we are absolutely ruining the lives of the aboriginal population by throwing up barriers to progression and education at every turn and just treating them like second class citizens at best. Even worse that the way we treat our native citizens is how we treat refugees who we send to an unregulated island so we can beat the shit out of them and rape their children.
But just because there are parts of Australia that make me worry for this cesspit of inhumane bullshit, doesn't mean I can't also find it appalling that as a nation it seems impossible that america can't stop killing it's own citizens. Lethal weapons are sold at the local shopping centre, you can't get medical care even if you need it and God help you if your not white, you basically just need to factor "will get shot by police at some point" into your life plan.
Just because two countries are fucked up doesn't mean that you can't notice the stuff about another country and makes it fucked up alongside your own.
It's sad that the GP's post is showing support for Americans by pointing out that they should all have health care, and someone is triggered into believing it was an attack.
Probably should have thought about it a bit more before I put my first point first.
The major problem I have is with the implication that you can make your own drugs at home and it's safe, secondarily it's pretty concerning that there's actually a reader base for this information due to the countries healthcare system.
> gratitude to the Americans who paid for the invention of all the drugs you enjoy
Pharmaceutical companies are paid just as much per unit in Australia. It's just funded by the taxpayer, under the assumption that healthy people will eventually pay tax.
> your country's persecution of homosexuals and aboriginals
I dunno, we've only had one major race riot this century(six total on Wikipedia)[1], whereas the Wikipedia article for 'Mass racial violence in the United States' has eight in the same time period, and quite a few occurrences of 'This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.'[2]
In terms of government action, we had a government apology(from the PM too, not just a motion passed) to the aboriginals before you had one to slaves(again, it wasn't done by a president). We haven't needed to apologise to slaves since they were either repatriated or properly integrated into society(again, one race riot this century).
In terms of homosexuality, Australia has possibly 88 murders of this nature[3], and no Wikipedia article dedicated to it[4], with approximately 150 instances since 1969(including a few mass shootings, which are a uniquely American problem). There has been some recent anti-gay propaganda, but that's due to a public vote on gay marriage, which is the sort of thing that would inflame divisions. Somehow, the argument has been on the suitability of homosexuals to raise children, and the risk of religious freedoms being restricted by poorly written legislation. We haven't had any signs saying "god hates fags" though.
Population Density of Australia: 2 people per square mile
Population Density of USA: 84 people per square mile, with much higher density in some areas.
Your statistics are a little like saying "There sure are a lot more murders in the big city than in my small town!!!" If you aren't making any attempt to look at comparable data like per capita incidents, it is a classic case of how to lie with statistics (an excellent book, btw).
That's true for the massive difference I was trying to show. Let's try to fix the stats, this shows somewhat smaller differences.
The US has 192 rural inhabitants per thousand, as opposed to 176 for Australia.[1] Australia seems significantly more urbanised if anything. According to your logic, we should expect to see more hate crimes. That's not what happens though.
Wikipedia's list of ethnic riots has 134 entries for the US(since 1857, as that's the first Australian entry(there's more US entries in the dedicated article)), and 8 for Australia. That's 0.41 per million in the US, against 0.33 per million in Australia. The modern population should be fine as an approximation.
I'm going to insert mass shootings, because it's always fun to point this out. Wikipedia has 181 shootings worthy of articles[3], or 0.56 per million. Australia has 13[4], or 0.54 per million. As you've pointed out, Australia has a lower population, so this probably means that smaller shootings are worthy of articles. Removing shootings with less than 5 victims(which wouldn't have an article if they were American) gives us 7, or 0.30 per million.
Going back to homosexuals, the US has 148 items in Wikipedia's "History of violence against LGBT people in the United States"[5], or 0.47 per million. Australia has 13 entries(and no dedicated page)[6], or 0.54 per million. I'd almost surrender that point, if Australia didn't have 100% less cults walking around shouting that god hates fags, and 100%(or 6) less mass shootings of homosexuals.
Admittedly, I truncated all my numbers because I'm lazy. Sorry.
According to your logic, we should expect to see more hate crimes.
This amounts to putting words in my mouth. The only point I was making is that the stats you were citing were somewhat disingenuous in their framing. Your framing still comes across as poison pen material.
I'm not arguing that the US has it all figured out. I have plenty of criticisms of my own country. But this kind of venom essentially makes your words hypocritical. It amounts to decrying the hatred here while being hateful.
All of the drugs? Drug discovery isn't solely owned by a single country, I would think. There is truth in the GP's comment. The fact that the country in which the GP resides has its own troubles should not preclude them from talking about that of yours.
And maybe work on your country's persecution of homosexuals and aboriginals before you get on your high horse and point it at America.