America on the Ropes

I hate to be the one to tell you this but the dear old U.S. of A. is the biggest shop of horrors on this planet. For all the greatness spawned here in the past -- and still some things to this day -- we are also the major producers and purveyors (and exporters) of guns, war products, alcohol, air pollution, water pollution, chemical and biological weapons, raped and empty-calorie food products, sugar-fizz drinks, aspartame-fizz drinks, filthy and violent music and movies, war toys, pharmaceuticals for children, pornography, mind control programs, government surveillance (domestic and foreign), tobacco products and Eddie Murphy films.

But none of that stops people from looking up from reading their Better Homes and Gardens or Maxim magazines and saying things like, “Is this a great country or what?!” (I'm starting to lean towards "or what".) Or putting all those stickers and flags on their cars. Or voting for the politicians who most shamelessly push their patriotic buttons.



To the extent that a country's people is gung ho "My country right or wrong," that nation is susceptible to making grave errors of judgment, especially in its foreign policy and actions abroad. The best example, as in many things, is Nazi Germany, but virtually all national leaders of powerful countries have the grand egos that are requisite to evil adventurism (to have gotten to the top in the first place) and without the restraints of a soberly discerning public, their most rapacious objectives might graduate from temptation to deployment.



There's an old expression, "It's a free country." This was never more than a half-truth but nowadays, between an overabundance of laws and regulations, perpetrated by a many-layered law enforcement structure, a litigious society (squeamish, whiny citizens and voracious lawyers) and the damn PC police, it's more like a quarter truth.



The upper middle class suburban population, which has quite a bit of clout politically, socially and economically, lives in a kind of fool's paradise, a pseudo-reality island of green lawns, sparkling malls, modern office buildings and pro-active schools. This is their world — and a good world it is, one that they deserve to enjoy — but they often (as in almost always) lose sight of the fact that, while they're living on their 30 square miles of well-kept civilization, not all that far from them is a city with 20 square miles of urban crime and grime, with vermin-infested housing, and crumbling schools.

What should they do about it? Well, that's hard to say, as the first step toward action has not even been taken, which is the acknowledgment that this problem — the deprivation, degradation and desperation of millions of fellow human souls — even exists as something of importance.