The Government America Deserves?…Could Very Well Be.

I grew up in a border town in Canada, which means that I felt as American as many Americans did, being exposed to their media and spending a lot of time there.

I always rooted for America, marveled at their ingenuity and gumption and like most people in the world, worshiped JFK and mourned his death heavily.

As I grew older and the propinquity that coloured my view of America changed, I realized that there was a real difference between the American people and the American government.

The American people were decent, hard working god fearing, tolerant and fair minded. They came from everywhere and were proud of their heritages. The government was basically conduit for money that supported the vast military industrial complex that gave America its strength and ‘superpower’ status.

And I got that. And when I was younger, I never really saw anything wrong with defending democracy and all that it entailed.

But as I grew older and started to look at how America fit into the world, I began to realize that a lot of the good intentions of democracy and freedom were really just the varnish that put a shiny coating over what really was economic imperialism on a scale not seen since the heyday of the British Empire.

In the early 70s it all started to go to hell with the US’ participation in the Vietnam war, which killed tens of thousands and divided the country in a way that I would argue it has never healed from.

For the past 20 years the US has been at war in the middle east, trying to stop the powerful force of terrorism, and not really understanding that the terrorist threat they face is really one of their one making.

Being seen as the most powerful nation on earth is one thing and America is very good at sustaining that perception or at least they were. But managing the huge volume of economic imperialism required to maintain that exalted position is a lot trickier, especially when you have nations that despise everything you are developing the capability of going head-to-head with you.

America’s reputation in the world has been eroding since the early days of the 21st century when a devastating terrorist attack took place in New York City.

There are a lot of people, many of them architects and builders, who question how the actual events of 9/11 could have caused the complete collapse of the buildings that were attacked. But nothing ever really came of it.

But what it did mark was a new era of aggression and more justification for military spending to stem the tide of terrorism around the world and keep it from darkening their door again.

But this time things were different. This time it wasn’t just about economic imperialism or safeguarding the world from the good old communist menace…it was about religion, and race, and oil and nuclear capability and, of course, feeding the voracious military industrial complex.

And this time we had the Internet, which was chronicling every single move that anyone made, and which showed the world all of America’s vulnerabilities as much as it did their strengths.

Changing from a Republican to Democrat run government did nothing to alter this situation, other than give the world a US president that they could respect, at least on the surface.

And despite Obama’s valiant efforts to tame the beast that his country had become, it very much appeared that America was starting to flounder.

The cost of keeping the military industrial complex fat and happy had run the national debt substantially up into the trillions. The war in Afghanistan and other places was costing more lives and more money every year. The internal economy of the country was clawing its way back from a complete mess caused by unbridled Wall Street greed. And the people were sick of it all.

This was the perfect scenario to attract a carpetbagger or two. And so along came Trump.

We mostly all know the rest. And the last two years, not just for America, but for the entire world have been a complete shitshow. But this is what happens when you elect a self-serving naracissist. They promise you the world and deliver nothing to the people. And the world order, especially America’s starring role in it, has been pretty much turned on its head.

The once self-proclaimed ‘most powerful nation on earth’ has been reduced to a Tin Pot
despot-run dictatorship, and if you don’t believe me, just turn on your TV tomorrow and watch something never before seen in America. The sad military spectacle of a country run by a president who feels the compulsive need to reassure everyone that his dick is, indeed, bigly.

I know there are millions of good people in America who feel betrayed by what’s going on in their country right now. People who saw what was happening and knew it would not be good.

I also know that this never would have happened if a larger percentage of democratic and independent voters had decided to vote in the 2016 election instead of abstaining.

For this reason, the USA, as much as I admire it, has ended up with the government it deserves. It has also ended up with a country that is more divided than it has been at any time since the Civil war.

So please, enjoy the parade and try to remember what your country used to be before this huge collective brain fart. And make a vow to do whatever it takes to get it back to where it belongs.

You owe it to yourselves and to the world.