GOD BLESS AMERICA

GOD BLESS AMERICA!  GOD BLESS THE CIA!  GOD BLESS AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE!

Poor Americans go without food while the CIA funnels millions of dollars to middle eastern war lords.

There is no public transit for the poor (and Black) people in Detroit, but lots of money for diplomatic junkets.

We have no money for decent public schools, but billions of dollars for daily military training flights.

Obama can have a dinner party for fancy people, at a cost of several million dollars--which might have been spent on feeding starving American citizens one decent meal.

The United States of America is a strange thing.  In some ways it is like the United Cantons of Switzerland, in its catering to the filthy rich.  But Switzerland has neither an overwhelming national debt nor an absurdly expensive and infinitely dangerous military.

The United States thinks of itself as in some way like the European Union.  But the European Union is a society, and the United States is an anti-social competition.

I live now in Germany.  In the aftermath of the two world wars it had caused, and out of the ashes of its defeat, Germany built the European Union.  Not an empire, but a union.  And the union began as an economic union, and became a political and social union.  Not just a nation, and without any of the nonsense of "God Bless the European Union" or "the rockets' red glare," or now seventy-five years of constant war.

I was five years old when the United States entered World War II.  I am now eighty years old.  And the United States has been at war  for almost all my life!

Nations apply for membership in Europe.  It began with six states:  Western Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Italy.  Five economically stable states, and Italy.  Then it accepted Denmark, Britain, and Ireland:  a small but economically prosperous state; a large, proud (or vain) and economically weak nation; and a third-world state.  Then Greece, Portugal, and Spain:  all three states   which Europe would have to fund.  And now Poland, and the smaller Eastern European countries.  Maybe Russia will be next.  I hope so.

Europe doesn't have an army.  Or a navy.  Or an air force.

And the murder rate--not just in Germany, but in all of Europe--is almost zero!

Can there be a society in which everybody has a gun, and one half of the nation's wealth is hoarded by 10,000 rich people and the other half spent on what is called "national defense"?

I can't understand people--my friends, many of them--who "believe in" the United States--who accept, support,  identify with and emotionally or intellectually or morally defend the United States.

I don't ask for a perfect world--and given my moral, social, and intellectual limitations probably wouldn't be able to recognise a perfect world if I saw it.  But I know very well that this world we live in is not perfect, and that for all its self-glorification and self-praise and military might and murderous use of that military might, the United States is not in any way qualified to lead this world.  It is not qualified to lead anything more important than a bully's fight on a bad school's playground.