Uh Oh. . .

We're Not The #1 Nation Anymore?!?  [Except In Military Imperialism]
by The Old Hippie because I Remember When We Were The #1 In Almost All Of The Right Areas. . .

China has surpassed us as the top CO2 polluter, even though we've increased our own level of this pollutant, and are still the #1 per capita. We used to be #1 in health care.  We now rank 37th.  Plus we are now the only industrial nation without free healthcare for all of our citizens.  We are #1 in infant mortality, and dead last in longevity.  Over 45 million of our citizens have no healthcare protection at all.  I strongly suggest you watch “SiCKO” when it is released in your town.

We used to have the freest press.  We now rank 52nd.  And you allowed it.  Didn't you?

We used to be the #1 fighter against military tyrannies.  Now we are the #1 aggressively military imperial tyranny.  Currently over 40% of our budget goes to the military-industrial corporations.  We now spend more on military than all of the other nations on the planet combined.  And increasingly more and more of “our” military needs are being out-sourced to private for profit, un-regulated, “Christian” corporate military forces, (mercenaries,) like Blackwater, et al, that are even being used within the United States - Like in New Orleans during the aftermath of Katrina.

We used to be the #1 defender of habeas corpus.  We are now the only 1st or 2nd world nation that has done away with this law, that almost all nations have held sacred since the Magna Carta of 1215.

We used to be the #1 “land of the free.”  We're now the most incarcerated nation in the total history of this planet, in raw numbers, and in percentage of the population, plus now most of “our” prisons are under the control of for profit private corporations, not the government.

We used to be a secular nation with a strong protection of religious freedoms.  We now have become a “Christian” nation that actively and politically suppresses any other belief, exactly like in all other fundamentalist theocracies in history, including the Nationalist Party of the Nazis, and the current radical Islamists.

Our students used to rank #1 in all the areas of academics.  We now rank at, or very near, the bottom of almost all other industrial nations in almost all areas, especially in science, mathematics, and reading.

We used to have a strong and involved middle class, and a strong and productive industrial base that supported that healthy middle class.  But that has now all been destroyed by the manipulative greed of the corporations, their sycophants, their collaborators, and your allowing.

Depressing isn't it?  But hey, don't fret. . .  It was you who has allowed it all.  Aren't you?  In fact, you are still actively allowing it to continue, and you are still financially supporting the very corporations that are doing this to you, and to our nation.  Aren't you?  What a sad waste of potential.  What a dangerous lack of courage.  Have you never studied the history of what happens to collaborators, whether from sycophancy, or apathy, after an angry reactionary revolution by the citizens of all failed tyrannies...???  Maybe you should.

I think the coming 2008 national election may be our, and your, last chance.

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