The new global hype of America.
As a Canadian of Scottish Highland descent, please, let me comment on what news is known to me. I dabble as a newspaper reporter, music columnist, mayoral candidate, Aaronic Priest, social worker, but mostly, as a professional musician who builds his own electric guitars, now patentable. I hope my opinion is considered. It's a given that America is a brutal, invasive and debauched empire, Washington highjacked by Texans, Clinton unexpectedly winning when no senior Democrat thought they could beat Bush. It was the economy, stupid. Clinton made a profit. Again, it's the economy, now global through computer use. I have no financial plastic, no paper investments and gather no interest, so my accounting stance is totally neutral.
There have been two times when American political news made me cry. When I was in grade seven, the P.A. came on and we were told President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Girls stood up, crying, some hugging. Other girls and some boys started crying. This got me crying, and we were told we could go home. When former First Secretary of State General Colin Powell, live, said he was going to vote for Barack Obama, tears gathered in my right eye and I giggled uncontrollably for three to five seconds. I thought about what I would do, if I had my finger on the button, the Senate, the House, and the pulse of the American people. I talk to a lot of American people. They come up to me mostly as tourists in Niagara Falls, so that's a lot of different, usually more wealthy, people. And there are a lot fewer of those these last few years, leading to layoffs here.
The billions Bush wants to give Wall Street, adding $2,300 on the head of every American? Why not give it to the home owners and students, to help pay off their userous debts, preforwarding it to the money lenders and finance benders and computer gangbangers.
Keep paying all your soldiers and weapons manufacturers. Just bring all your covert agents and military back within the borders of your country. Everyone would still be paid as expected, soldiers could be deployed in state for the natural emergencies America still embarasses itself with. The rest of the world would be so happy, we would gladly clean up your irradiated, bombletted and mined outrages. Moving out of Columbian government since 1947 would clean up your coke problem overnight. Moving out of Afghanistan would clean up your heroin problem overnight. God sees the little Sparrow missiles fall, they don't meet his gentle view.
How many Americans got an automotive start with a Volkswagen, the "people's car"? Why? The car and van were designed to be rugged and economical, to help rebuild destroyed Germany. Why are 500 horsepower motors still being put in public transportation? 10% of the American population doesn't know plastic is a petrochemical resource.
If you took the money you spend on the businesses of medical provision, and just used it on doctors and hospitals, everyone would have free medicare, like most other developed countries, and actually have a surplus. If you took the money you spend on creating artificial life and bioweapons, and gave it to orphanages, a lot of hurting people would have a ready chance at life.
It would take a while for the average American to see themselves as global citizens, as the rest of the world does, but it only will add the freedom and foreign acceptance you so proudly desire. A just economy would allow the rise of hand made goods, live entertainment and local manufacturing.
I could go on, but there are other lives to consider. Please, take away your transPacific and transAtlantic sensors and sense-shattering audio weaponry. Our fellow mammals who have bigger brains and hearts than you and I, will find relief. Maybe they will join swimmers on the beach, help adrift wrecks, like they did and some still try to do. A Humpback whale can stun or kill with it's sonic ability, but no human has been known to suffer this fate. How truly wonderful it would be, as an American, to feel that God's nature loves you.
I'm not asking for inspector privileges, to "monitor" your atomic use and weapons readiness. I'm not asking to measure your airborne pollution. I don't have to. I can just look at the acid rain dead lakes up here. I'm not saying you have to stop killing yourselves, or repair your infrastructure. You can drink and get high on your own meth and weed. Partying doesn't have to change, at least not right away. Maybe you will start to follow your own prophets, Joseph Smith Jr., Geronimo, straight and narrow Abraham Lincoln.
A country successed by slavery, divided north and south, now Democrat and Republican, sustained by bleeding the rest of the world, has surely set the template for a global empire. But believe me, when you fall, and great is the fall when you only fall, there is no sane person in the rest of the world trying to duplicate what you are. I applaud Russia for telling it like it is, and walking away from your table.
The American dream we see: sittin' in a strip club wit a cell bein' down wit rippers, doin'a'blunt, nuttin' domestic. It gets better at resorts, and worse overseas. Keeping it to yourselves until you get it together, is always the best advice. Even your hospitals are spreading antibiotic resistant disease through foreign patients. And since you're there already, it's too late. You can debate. You can try to feel good about yourselves. But the truth shall set you free, whether you want it or not.
I write this as a fifty-seven year old Canadian, just a grade twelve graduate, grabbing online time with a borrowed or public computer. What can you say?