The Chants Could Still be Heard from the Depths Below…

In doing some research to live in another country I’ve come to realize that our country likes to do things that make the least possible sense. Just look around and you’ll see it everywhere. It’s so pervasive it’s almost like a disease.

Examples…..hmmmmm?

Land of the free? Except we demand that you have to sign an oath or lose your job. Incarcerating drug offenders doesn’t prevent drug addiction, so what do we do? Lock up more drug addicts! The death penalty doesn’t deter anyone from committing crimes and has repeatedly proven to have put innocent people to death, so what do we do? “Put in a speed lane” for state sanctioned murder just as every civilized nation on earth is abolishing it! Oil companies like Exxon are making record profits (a billion dollars a day even) while the majority of us struggle just to get by, so what do we do? Give oil companies massive tax breaks!

We say we love the “free market” and while we don’t mobilize to create a single payer, universal health care system that would cut costs, create portability and offer more choices, we instead give all sorts of corporate welfare benefits to highly profitable healthcare companies - gives new meaning to the phrase “free market!” The technology of our military has failed to help us win wars in Vietnam, Korea and now Iraq, so what do we do? Increase military budgets to over $1 TRILLION dollars a year!

We like to believe that we’re #1 in the world in every category and yet most Americans couldn’t find more than 2 European countries on a map. (And it’s not just because “soma people out there in our nation don’t have maps!”) How would we know we’re #1 if we don’t even know where to compare us to? The fact of the matter is that we aren’t #1 in almost every category.

We used to love our GDP numbers but the European Union is now essentially equal. Infant mortality? Not even close, in fact Cuba has got us beat. Government corruption? No way. Freedoms? Nope but it should warm the cockles to know that at least we’re tied with Botswana for freedom of the press. Education system? Are you serious?

But we are at the head of the class for a number of things we might not wanna tell momma about. We top the charts for climate changing pollution and how about military spending. We spend more on our military than the entire world put together! And aren’t we proud that we’re #1 in the number of handgun deaths or the number of people we incarcerate and the amount of money we spend on prisons. Or we could create a plaque and throw it up on the wall for being #1 for having the most amount of deaths due to medical errors or the record setting numbers of uninsured or the fact that we’re #1 in healthcare spending (more than double our nearest competitor) yet we don’t live longer or healthier than almost every industrialized country on the planet and that even takes into account the effects of diet and obesity <-- oh yeah, we're #1 in that too!

The U.S. was once the envy of the world but the legacy of those long lost days still lives on in the hearts and minds of many Americans despite the harsh reality.

So I have a bold new proposition. We'll simply ignore the truth and just chant: WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1! WE’RE #1!

What could be the worse thing that happens?

….And they continued to chant as the once mighty ship slowly sank.

The “Big Dick” Theory

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

While this article is enlightening to the ills of a military welfare state, I think it neglects a more thorough look at what occurs when a nation possesses an abnormally huge military. I like to refer to this idea (sorry, it’s crude) as the “big dick” theory. The theory, which is almost uniquely male (at least at the extremes, see: porn stars), basically says that if you have a unusually big dick you’re going to want to use it, regularly and unusually. I think the sheer volume of incursions of the U.S. military in the sovereign affairs of countries around the globe is ample evidence of this theory. We have an unusually enormous military and we use it regularly and most certainly unusually. Said another way, we don’t use the military in the direct defense of our country, however we tell each other that is being put to good use. The rationalizations for the use of this institutionalized violence have been by various and essentially rooted in irrational fear. This is illustrated in the blunt and overly UN-complicated rationalizations such as the “domino effect,” the “war on drugs,” the “war on terrorism,” the “cold war,” etc., etc., etc.

The magnitude of threat exaggeration in the U.S. is tremendous. In the same time frame (the past 50 years) dozens and dozens of nations around the world have NOT perceived such threats where the U.S. has and where in reality none has actually existed or at the very least the magnitude of the threat certainly didn’t warrant military intervention. While the military postures of these relative peaceful countries have assuredly been steered by their culture, our culture has been directed by what General and President Dwight Eisenhower warned us against in his farewell address, the convergence of “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry,” their pervasive institutional enormity and the very existence of which, as we’ve seen all too well, have encouraged their overuse.

And oh boy how we’ve used our “big dick!”

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