The U.S. Self-Delusion Of Superiority Will End

How many times have you seen, heard or read these grandious American claims:

1) "America is the most powerful nation in the world." Really? How powerful is any nation when it goes so deeply into debt, that it needs much of the world to loan it money to pay its bills or it will collapse. This is what wasting ones resources en masse on an endless war time economy of costly military weapons and war can do. Quietly the U.S. is now pleading with the industrialized nations for financial support.

2) "America is the richest nation in the world." Really? America is by far the biggest debtor nation in the world. It owes money to practically everyone who has the resources to loan it. It's debts are now so big, it can't borrow enough money any longer, it has begun to print it - a path to financial disaster.

3) "America is the most generous and compassionate nation in the world." Really? Invading Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq in violation of the Geneva Convention and the United Nations charter, the U.S. helped to write is quite a breach. It also flouts the moral values Americans claim to hold dear. And what about America's secret drug wars in Columbia, Mexico and elsewhere?

3A) Yes, America used to be very generous. But today many people across the globe view the U.S. as the world's biggest terrorist, as it seizes and tortures and indefinitely imprisons or kills or threatens to kill "militants," "insurgents," "extremists" and "terrorists" in its "war on terror." Children and others are also killed in what the U.S. military calls "collateral damage."

3B) Meanwhile America ignores Darfur where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or forced to live in refugee camps because the Sudanese government doesn't like the color of their skin. America ignores the intense pain and suffering it has caused in Iraq, where people struggle to survive with little food, clean water, medicines, electricity and sewage treatment. Doctors and medical staff are also in short supply as most have fled the country.

3C) At least 40% of the Iraqi workforce is unemployed and vast numbers must home school their children because there are no longer public schools for them. Millions of Iraqis have fled their nation, which the U.S. military runs like a prison lock-down.

Conclusion) Illusions don't allow the solution of reality's problems. And with the collapse of our economy, reality is overwhelming the illusions. Stimulus plans, corporate bailouts and an endless wartime economy won't solve it either.

We must slash our expenses in line with our revenues and redefine our priorities so that we once again become a compassionate and productive participant in the world. This is our day of reckoning and there is no soft landing.

We must willing help one-another as people did during the Great Depression, we must end our wars and close most of our military bases and apply our vast intellectual resources and abilities to create many of the 21st century's new industries.

And we must re-establish our Constitution and its Bill of Rights and respect, love and help one another, for to do as we have recently done and are doing will lead to our own destruction and take the world with us.

Dick