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Easier to get a gun here than to vote or drive. You don’t even need to know any English.
A man doesn’t need balls in this country, Captain. The women all have their own.
I might have been just half an Asian, but in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren’t.
He’s supposed to be a reporter. That means to report the facts, not to make things up or interpret them or put ideas in people’s heads.
Ah! The good old days !
The citizenry can’t sift out what is useful and good if there’s too much opinion circulating.
Now a guarantee of happiness—that’s a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it.
Movies were America’s way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defenses of audiences with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and, yes, even the box office bomb. It mattered not what story these audiences watched. The point was that it was the American story they watched and loved, up until the day that they themselves might be bombed by the planes they had seen in American movies.
She, like the General, wore off-the-rack clothing consisting of a mannish polo shirt, shapeless khakis, and the American footwear of choice, sneakers. They wore, in short, what almost every other middle-aged American couple I had encountered at the supermarket, the post office, or the gas station wore. The sartorial impression was to make them, like many American adults, look like overgrown children, the effect enhanced when these adults were spotted, as they often were, sucking on extra-large sodas.
We would all be in Hell if convicted of our thoughts.
After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.
while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.
As a nonwhite person, the General, like myself, knew he must be patient with white people, who were easily scared by the nonwhite.
I need not look in the mirror or at the faces of my fellow men to find a likeness to God. I need only look at their selves and inside my own to realize we would not be killers if God Himself was not one, too.
But when guys like me go and kill, everyone’s happy we do it and no one wants to talk about it.
