2. The United States of America

This isn’t me ripping on Americans. This is me ripping on America.

Here it is folks, the biggest welfare state in the west, where the working poor literally fights for survival, where children can get sick and are denied access to premium health care, where kids are recruited to fight in a war that doesn’t make sense, and where you can be imprisoned for an extended period of time without trial. This isn’t a police state or an authoritarian regime, this isn’t a third world country or an aristocracy, no, this is the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is the United States, the most dangerous entity to global security the world has ever known.

The States currently sits 12th on the Human Development Index which surveys the average quality of life of a nation’s citizens. Straight up, this can’t be accurate. How can a nation where a mother of four has to work three jobs just to pay the bills be among the world’s elite? How can a nation so far up the list make it’s citizens pay for health care? How can a nation bill itself as prosperous and the greatest country on Earth when it’s total public debt (mortgages, insurance, basically every debt included) is a staggering 59.1 trillion dollars, more wealth than it actually has on hand. Not good. But that’s the American dream, success at any cost, consume, rape, pillage, whatever it takes to get to the top as an individual. The United States has it’s hand firmly grappling the genitals of so many countries it’s sickening, troops deployed in South Korea, they are guzzling oil like a hooker on dollar night in Saudi Arabia, they’ve invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and have installed puppet regimes all over Central America. Their justification for this is global security, when, in truth it is all about global posturing, preparing for the moment where they’ll need to snap off the genitals of these nations and gobble them down their greedy mouths.

Family in Los Angeles, father has a college education.

As I sit nestled in my Canadian paradise, equipped with a working economy and relatively void of a social hierarchy that resembles 16th century France, I can’t help but worry. Worry that the economic ‘powerhouse’ that sits to my south is going to descend into fiscal despair and social revolt. I worry that this country, Canada’s largest trading partner, is heading down an abyss from which it cannot escape. I worry that it’s friendly culture of foot-long hot dogs and milkshakes is going to be the largest third world nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Every time I tune into the American media, I scream at the top of my lungs, I look for the nearest blunt object to bash my eyes out, and can only pray that somehow my television explodes. The whole thing appears to be one massive social conditioning experiment, “God bless America! The American Dream! Patriotism!,” this is a very flawed way of teaching the masses because it simply cannot continue for an extended period of time. Most “Western” countries have moved away from nationalism and individualism and have settled on protecting the common good of humanity. The homeless in Germany live relatively comfortable lives, children in Europe go to school knowing they can attend university for free. The businessman in Oslo or Munich goes to work knowing that he not only is providing for his family, but also families less fortunate than his. Even in Canada, this remains a dream, an ideal that I hope one day I will wake up to. I fear however that this wonderful concept will never even enter the minds of the impoverished families that make up the lower class of America.

Mike earns his money giving blood… eight dollars a day.

What I fear the most however is that America will refuse to right its ways, it will continue to consume and fill it’s type two diabetes belly with the world’s riches. It will drill in Alaska, suck the Middle East dry, and point it’s dirty little terrorist finger of blame at Iran. More teenagers will be shipped him home in coffins and more families will starve on the streets of St. Louis, Detroit, and New York.

If this is the American dream, I don’t want to be there for the nightmare.

Coming up next is the one thing I hate more than anything else. Ninety-nine blogs and then after tomorrow I might never write again. Can I hate what something represents so much that I feel nauseous? Can I place that hate in my heart and let it grow and cultivate into something that causes me anxiety attacks, murderous rage, and a perpetual migraine? Can I live for a moment in that hate, drenched in elitism and patriotism, slathered in extra larges and mass hysteria? Can I take all that hate cultivated in my heart and for one moment, one instant, spew perfect hatred? I can. I hope I can. Ladies and Gentlemen, my heart is full.

~ by thingsifuckinghate on June 30, 2008.