For me (not OP) a clear example I can give from a collage of my past three visits: arrive at JFK, get in the immigration queue, heavily armed agents walking around, some ICE agents looking tough surrounding the area, someone is directing the queue like we are cattle.
Get to the immigration officer, answer questions, get a cold stare a few times looking at me and my passport, unpleasantly asked why do I have two passports (I'm a dual citizen), told I don't look Swedish (of course, I'm naturalised), get told to wait, they leave to get someone else to check something, two immigration officers start shuffling my passport, wait while no one talks to me or acknowledge I'm there, passport stamped and I get told to "move".
Get my bags, and out of the terminal, on the walk through the terminal there's another 15-20 officers with rifles strutting around, get out of the terminal and there are two massive armoured cars from NYPD parked up front, more cops looking a bit tough.
It's an overwhelming presence of "security" everywhere, signs plastered with messages about how illegal stuff will be punished (littering, leaving your bags unattended, smoking, every message seems to say something about "under penalty of the law").
I think if you live with that all the time it's easy to filter out the noise but there's an eery feeling of oppression all around, like a boot is just waiting the right moment to stomp on you.
Maybe Sweden is different from every other country I’ve visited in Europe…but having traveled quite extensively in the EU, most countries I’ve been to don’t feel much different than the US.
Very immigration officer I’ve ever interacted with has been chilly, it’s not some uniquely American thing.
Pretty much every rail station I went through in Europe had extremely (to my eyes) heavily armed guards standing around. I was also asked to present my passport on several occasions. At one Italian station, it happed twice within a few minutes. I’ve been on multiple trains where some flavor of police comes on, checks people’s papers, and then grab some guy and escort him off at the next stop.
I don't mind the stern-looking armed security or immigration officers, it just feels different in the USA. Being chilly is different than being told to "move", I have never experienced such attitude getting into Schengen, at most it's a mostly quiet stern encounter.
It's very hard to express in text the feeling of oppression, it's not about just armed security, it's the attitude of those, it's the attitude of the people representing the State, it feels much more adversarial in the USA than anywhere I've been in Europe.
Also, it's not about being asked to present a passport but presenting a legitimate passport and being met with "you don't look Swedish".
Perhaps you are just too accustomed to the feeling of the USA, as an outsider it does feel different, and way more oppressive.
Where are you from? It's weird to me that you on the one hand defend the US, but on the other DID notice all these armed guards everywhere you went in Europe. If you don't feel it's different, then I don't think you should have noticed it so much? Or if you do notice it everywhere, why would you equate the US and Europe without raising a critical stance against these kinds of policies on either side of the atlantic?
> Why the fuck are we so soft on these gutter trash in this country.
If you think it's normal to call people "gutter trash" I guess you're too far gone in some bullshit and should do some soul-searching to come back to your humanity.
It must be nerve wracking to live in your shoes day to day. This is, probably due to flying through an airport like JFK. I'm also not sure what you mean by heavily armed agents. Most MPs at airports just have pistols on them.
Nothing wrong indeed with the sticker that says "I value my life more than your truck". Unfortunately that is not the sticker the OP was talking about.
Lores said that: bumper sticker saying "my truck is worth more than your life."
My point is that that is a very sensible bumper sticker, because it only applies if someone thinks they want to steal the truck, clearly valuing their life less than the truck, proving the sticker’s point.
It’s a common sticker. People who are shot in a robbery (or their kin if they don’t survive) commonly claim “why would the victim who defended themselves value their stuff more than the thief’s life” without failing to consider the thief themselves valued their own life less than the stuff they were attempting to steal.
It’s a common sentiment in free places, those who values abiding citizens more than law breaking citizens.
By that definition, what are the free places in the world then? Because a very, very minority of them allow stuff to possess higher value than a human life.
You should look into positive freedom vs negative freedom for a starter.
Get to the immigration officer, answer questions, get a cold stare a few times looking at me and my passport, unpleasantly asked why do I have two passports (I'm a dual citizen), told I don't look Swedish (of course, I'm naturalised), get told to wait, they leave to get someone else to check something, two immigration officers start shuffling my passport, wait while no one talks to me or acknowledge I'm there, passport stamped and I get told to "move".
Get my bags, and out of the terminal, on the walk through the terminal there's another 15-20 officers with rifles strutting around, get out of the terminal and there are two massive armoured cars from NYPD parked up front, more cops looking a bit tough.
It's an overwhelming presence of "security" everywhere, signs plastered with messages about how illegal stuff will be punished (littering, leaving your bags unattended, smoking, every message seems to say something about "under penalty of the law").
I think if you live with that all the time it's easy to filter out the noise but there's an eery feeling of oppression all around, like a boot is just waiting the right moment to stomp on you.