Yank bashing, a digression.
When I, and I suspect others, whale on the low hanging fruit that is modern America, we do not do so because we hate the US*.
That we do it at all understandably annoys some of its denizens who have been known to react in certain predictable patterns, chief amongst which is labelling us with the jealousy tag (LOL).
Being educated via TV using the vast resources of your entertainments industry is an interesting social experiment that has led many there to believe that the US is the white Knight/good-guy protector of the world and therefore an aspirational lesson. So, when someone from an inferior country (see rest of the world), depicts the US as more like that preternaturally huge toddler that crashed around in pre-school stealing everyone else’s toys, then having no aptitude for introspection or anything approaching a functioning foreign news section, many Americans feel resentful at the lack of gratitude for continually saving and protecting us all from evil, at which point we laugh harder, the resentment increases, and Republicans are born.
So, what is this obsession we have?
Well, it’s not just ours. Because of the above, the rest of the world is a dimly lit room to a large swathe of Americans, dimly lit and populated by backward looking troglodytes, jungles and a few quaint castles. Accordingly, they rarely think about it and figure if foreign people have made it on to the interweb, they probably want to better themselves by becoming Americans.
Also, the big toddler has an axe and is unsupervised, best keep an eye on him.
But for me personally, I see the US as the cautionary tale of how we will all become unless we make radical changes very, very soon.
The acquisition of things is an ancient imperative, if food, then in lean times a life saver, if not then goods that can be bartered for necessities and then comfort and of course the more you have, the further you get from starvation, deprivation and austerity, perfectly laudable but the basis of greed and its child envy, the father and son deities of western civilisations true religion, capitalism.
It is a constant glaring irony to many of us looking in, that the supposedly most godly of western nations holds most of Jesuses teachings in such contempt. Help the poor, fuck those scroungers, all men equal? CEO’s paid on average 670 times the median worker in their organisations, with Amazon’s Andy Jassy, getting 6,474 times the company’s median pay, oh and if you don’t like not having holidays and toilet breaks, fuck off.
As a godless Pagan I know this to be fundamentally wrong, how come as a Christian nation the only missive that seems to have got through from your venerated didact, was the one about loving your brother and sister, and that only in the south and very definitely misconstrued?
So, if I seem harsh in my comments it is not through animosity to anyone here. I hold some of you in high regard but, We are heading towards a precipice in a bus made by China, at the wheel is America who has blindfolded themselves in the hope that the unseen becomes unreal and if it doesn’t the landing won’t be so bad as all the poor are roped to the front as a buffer, I would like the bus to change direction or there be another bus I could catch going the other way.
*Of course, Masalang just hates Americans.