American Life

Doom and Gloom


Scott Brown, former Cosmo centerfold, is now the junior senator from Massachusetts, and more people should have seen this coming and took proper counter-measures, but like so much of what goes on in the lower 48 these days, the idea that the Republicans could have a credible chance to take Ted Kennedy’s still warm Senate seat never occurred to anyone.

Anyone but the people of Massachusetts.

After decades of Kennedy home rule, did no one stop to think that the people wanted change? And would take any change regardless of the form it took?

Brown is not change but for the fact that he isn’t a Democrat, and he effectively used the tools of fear-mongering and the idiot belief of the masses that tax cuts are the cure for everything.

Did you know that during WWII our parents and grandparents were taxed at rates that would make a Canadian gasp in horror? Say what you will about the seniors in the U.S. about their entitlement attitudes, but when the times were tough – they knew how to step up and sacrifice. Their children and grandchildren? Not so much. My peers on either side seem to think that entitlements are things that the lazy (and by lazy they really mean minorities) suck out of the paychecks of the hard-working, god-fearing middle class (why does everyone think they are middle-classed?) while ignoring the fact that tax cuts, Social Security and Medicare are the biggest entitlement programs going.

“We want big government out of our lives! That’s what the Founding Fathers intended!” is their rallying cry as they worship at the feet of Fox News.

But what they mean is “we want to keep our money because we are greedy, fat and need to be allowed to consume at obscene rates”.

They don’t seem to notice at all that the government is telling them where they can travel or whether they can use artificial means of birth control or how to raise their children or what they should think about their neighbors. As long as nothing stands between them and consumption, all is well with the world.

The world. People in the U.S. don’t notice at all that they are reviled by most of the world as glutinous god-freaks who have no concept of civil liberties or human rights and are a nation intent on forcing their anti-community ways on the world by force if necessary. They believe the rest of the world is being deluded by their governments while not realizing that people outside the U.S. have better access to news than they do. The media slants extreme right or extreme left, with the right being the loudest voice, in terms of news outlets in America. They are bombarded with agenda laden information masquerading as news all day long.

It’s depressing, as my friend Sarah commented on my Facebook feed. And I agree. I don’t know how intelligent people down there face the day knowing that each day is bringing a country, that they are essentially trapped in by accident of birth, to ruin.

Scott Brown will head to The Hill and help destroy the only hope millions of uninsured have. There won’t be health care reform in the U.S. and I want to be surprised, but I am not. Most of the adult population in my native land are narrow-minded bigots, and I should cut them some slack because they were raised to be the way they are. I taught public school long enough to know that most people are just too intellectually limited to fight the indoctrination.

When they write about yesterday’s election from a more rational point of view – decades from now – it will be seen as a watershed moment in the decline of a once great idea of democracy as the foundation for a nation.

Haiti was a Tragedy Already


And where were you? Certainly not glued to cable news or Tweeting/retweeting links to organizations looking for donations to aid the Haitians now that an earthquake has heaped insult on the misery of their lives.

In spite of his idiocy, the most soulless Rev. Pat Robertson, a great number of Americans will watch the drama du jour in Port-au-Prince via Fox News, or whatever channel their political ideology requires they watch, feel terrible. Because even if they are unemployed and technically squatting in their yet to be foreclosed homes, they have a sense of “there but for the grace of God, go I” and “at least I am being allowed to squat in comfort, because my bank is too afraid of economic collapse to evict me, and not living in a shanty shack on a mud hill”. Except for those things, they will be could be one of those poor wretches someday.

And they could. Remember Katrina? The Superdome? Thousands of soon to be abandoned strip malls have the names of the homeless of tomorrow written all over their walls.

So the privileged (like Will and Jada Smith who are bravely auctioning off some personal art) and the not so much anymore (who never owned art anyway)  will dig not too deep really or deeper than they probably should to send money via the growing number of aid efforts to line the pockets of the incredibly corrupt Haitian government, who might let a bit of this lottery booty trickle down á la Reaganomics to the crushed and dying in the mud-they-used-to-eat Haitian earthquake victims.

And I know how cynical I sound.

But Haiti was a hell-hole where people were so hungry they ate mud. The hills around Port-au-Prince were stripped to build shanty towns which promoted a topsoil erosion that literally has left a brown ring around the island that probably shows up on Google Earth. The government is corrupt and lest we forget, the Haitians are the ones piling into leaky boats and making the dangerous trek for the U.S. coastline back in the 90’s.

If there’d been no earthquake the other day, Haitians would be filling the empty tummies of their toddlers with mud today while Americans got fatter on fast food all the while totally oblivious to the Haitian plight.

And I am not against helping out a neighboring country in its time of need. We should do all that we can. My late father, for example, sent money every year to a Catholic church in Haiti and left instructions in his will for a final donation from his estate. Haitians deserved help before despite Pat Robertson’s misinformation about them having made a pact with the devil* and if they’d just embrace Christianity they could be as enslaved to tourism as their Dominican Republic neighbors.

I just find it sad, and telling, that we can ignore suffering that isn’t catastrophe based. Americans do love their drama. And a good disaster is better than watching the first rounds of American Idol, which I am assured are too boring to bother with.

This is sweeping generalization, of course. Like my father, there are people who care enough to help even when the in crowd isn’t paying attention.

*Which is Assembly of God-speak for being Catholic as 80% of Haitians are.

Flying into the United States


Seriously rethinking any future flights into the United States in the foreseeable future these days. The Speedo Bomber’s thwarted attempt to deliver a Christmas present to the American people in the form of mangled bodies and jetliner debris has caused the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority to go above and beyond American expectations of reactionary backlash.

The latest word is that no one flying into the U.S. from Canada will be permitted carry-on luggage. There will be pat-downs at the security check-in as well as manual searches of briefcases, purses and diaper-bags, which will still be allowed, and these items will be searched again when passengers are molested again at the departure gate.

Because check-in’s were taking so long (7 hours on Boxing Day in Toronto for example), the RCMP was called in to provide assistance. That’s correct. They called in the Mounties, who have a troubling history of tasing people without cause.

It is no surprise to my dear readers that I hate to fly into the U.S. and that border crossing by air or land put me in a Fox Mulder frame of mind. I see grassy knolls. But the prospect of standing meekly (because they will be watching for anything un-sheeplike) in line for hours just to be treated like a criminal and then packed into an uncomfortable seat where it is very likely that all forms of distraction for me and, more importantly, for child will be forbidden just makes me wonder, what is so great about the U.S. that I couldn’t live without visiting for the next – say – five years.

Okay, family. But they can come here. Nothing prevents them but lack of passport and it’s still possible down there to easily obtain passports. But otherwise?

Empty laps. How does one manage an empty lap for several hours in such cramped quarters? I’ve read reports that babies and books were prohibited from obscuring perfect lap view. No books? Keeping America safe from what? Knowledge?

According to the current administration, it will be up to the pilot to determine what is or isn’t okay. So if the pilot is having a bad hair day or is just a prick normally, welcome to hell in the air? It’s already not that great. And what qualifies the pilot to make such decisions?

I should be more concerned about safety, you say? I am a bit jaded on the safety thing. Speedo Bomber shouldn’t have even made it on the first plane out of Nigeria let alone the second one out of Amsterdam. If I were inclined to get all conspiracy theory I’d say that the U.S. government let the guy through hoping he would lead them to a terrorist cell somewhere. His being in Detroit with a bomb in his undies wasn’t something they considered. They risked peoples’ lives on purpose. But that’s my cynical side talking.

Ben Franklin is often quoted in situations like these because he once said something about people who willingly trade freedom for safety deserve neither. The Founder Fathers, not exactly the greatest group of guys ever, would simply not understand the wimpy people who inhabit the free nation that they risked everything to create. We are like aristocrats bred out to a point that we are barely able to think or do for ourselves anymore.

Next up will be full body scanners. Rob tells me that the radiation they emit can disrupt DNA. Are you going to walk through it when the time comes? It is coming. Or will you opt for the wand, the rough handling and possibly missing your flight for being a troublemaker?

I think we should all just pick a day and designate it for flying naked. Or plane loads of people should refuse to put away iPods. What would happen to the draconian assault on passengers if Air Marshals were suddenly having to arrest every passenger on dozens of flights for refusing to give up blankets and pillows? The blanket thing is funny in light of recent stories about flight attendants coming unglued by breast-feeding mothers. That will be even more interesting in the future. And more ridiculous.

A high school friend on Facebook thinks there should be profiling, and he thinks I am too much of a liberal to agree with him. I don’t see anything wrong with targeting demographics for extra scrutiny except for one thing. It wouldn’t stay in airports. It wouldn’t be implemented in a thoughtful or courteous manner. And eventually, it would be turned back on the average person and we’d be right back where we are now.

Unless it’s the most dire of emergencies, we are done flying into the U.S. Land crossings have the potential to be painful, but at least I won’t be trapped in an airport without clothing, toiletries or a means of stepping outside to scream in an attempt to find my zen place.