Goblessamerrka

Or something. Man, do we need blessing right about now. I mean it. I've been watching the news on CNN and the broadcast networks, reading Time, USA Today and Newsweek, and following as closely as I can all the commentary from talking heads and NPR's All Things Considered, and I have come to the only possible conclusion: we SUCK.

There's no other way to look at it. As nations go, we are doing a terrible job. Greatest nation on earth? Haw! We can't run a regular bus service to outer space without killing astronauts, we can't put a president in office who will consistently please the people who voted against him in the last election, and, for all of our supposed power, we can't seem to move the whole country a couple of hundred miles one way or the other to avoid a hurricane.

Well, that last one, I may be out of line, there. I'm not clear what the government should have done to avoid the hurricane thing. The response was faster than any of the last five major hurricane strikes, involved more refugees, greater damage, and over a larger area than ever before in US history, but dawgonnit, Bush should have been standing on I-10 handing out bottles of Aquafina the day before the storm, or something. Hey, it's important in this country to first assign blame, then deal with the trouble.

Why can't we force peace in Israel, with seven nations surrounding them who swear to wipe them off the face of the earth? It seems like, if we were as powerful as everybody says, we could just go knock some heads together and make them all play nice, wouldn't you think?

Wasn't Iraq better off before we started freeing all the oppressed majority there? Saddam didn't build Abu Ghraib prison as a day care center for misunderstood teenagers, he fed political enemies alive into wood chippers for laughs. But-- he was pretty strict about that No Flash Photography thing. We could learn from his example, it pays to have a few firm policies that everybody understands.

Let's see, what else? Oh, yeah... in the last week, I have listened while learned men and women proclaimed that we are not handling our relations properly with every country on earth who is not at war with us. The ones where we have soldiers are a big mess, but there is even more trouble brewing in all the countries where we are just importing their goods and giving them stuff in return. We're too soft on dictators, we're too hard on harmless fascists, we're not doing enough to encourage everybody to hum a few bars of I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke, or something.

Among the essential things that we are, as a nation, screwing up:

• poor people are still having to pay for stuff in this country.
• children are being forced to go along with No Child Left Behind.
• we're spending too little to support the arts.
• where's our @#&*! flying cars?!?!?!
• there's still people out there who haven't had an abortion yet.
• our government is in the hands of people who believe in Jesus Christ. No telling what crazy thing they'll do next. To whom can we pray to save us from that, I wonder?
• There is no constitutional amendment supporting a woman's right to change her mind.
• You can still legally own guns here.
• We can't find a way to stifle the free speech of those who disagree with us.
• It's high time we let the minority decide who gets to be president and stack the Supreme Court with froot loops.

It wasn't a total loss, however. While I was listening and making notes, some things that we are doing right came to light. A sampling:

• We are spending just the right amount of time, money and energy trying to find some legitimate reason to impeach the president, damage his supporters and advisors, and obstruct his goals for the nation.
• we're making sure that tiny island republics know that they can't keep on raping and killing our pretty, blonde, teenage girls.
• we're doing a fine job of keeping fingernail clippers off of domestic flights.
• Oil prices are finally at a level where we can afford to destroy Arctic wildlife to find more.
• people who have more money and stuff than me are going to jail for doing the stuff they do that makes more money than me.
• we will soon have a chance to elect a woman president who will make sure that we all have just what we need to have a good life and all the people in jail who didn't do anything wrong will be let out and the descendants of slaves will all get a big, fat check, and nobody will have to pay for health care or anything ever again.
• either that, or we will be over-run by the Chinese who will kill everybody who doesn't join the Communist Party, and nobody will have anything to pay for, or with, ever again.

So, see? As messed up as we are, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. Maybe we are worth saving, after all.