Some well meaning questions and some pissy answers.

I have given you fair warning. I am pretty much against American exceptionalism and our ridiculous notion that we are the center of the universe and therefore the center of enlightenment. I mean, think about what was going on in the USA when the Renaissance was happening in Europe. And that is just one of many examples. Think about our contributions to the world right now; wars, weapons, shitty GMO seeds and chemical foods, pollution and exploitation of natural resources at rates that were unsustainable years ago, guns, bombs, landmines, drones, war, terrible labor practices, global warming, plastics, floating islands of plastic, racism, unhappy religions and so on.

So, that being said, nice innocent questions come my way about whether the people in Thailand know how to take care of the elephants and whether people here know that brown rice and organic foods are good for them. And the implication is that we are the enlightened ones who could teach others to live better.

This is where I fall off the rails. Who are we to talk about things that we are worse at than any other country on the planet (maybe excepting China) I am sure that most of the world laughs when Hillary Clinton wags her finger at China and lectures about human rights. Everyone knows about Guatanamo and Abu Ghraib and all of our human rights stories.People know. What are we thinking? Other countries fight successfully against GMO seeds and crops contaminating them forever and they know enough that we are the proponents of such evil stuff.

Maybe instead of asking about the care of animals in other countries we should ask what we can learn about the care of animals. How can a country that allows the crimes that happen 24 hours a day in feed lots growing chickens and pigs and cattle in America claim to care for animals? Look at some pictures and think about how we are seen from afar. It is so disgusting as to be nearly unthinkable.

We set a fine example of animal husbandry during the eradication of the buffalo. From tens of millions to 2,000 in twenty years. 

The Near Annihilation of America's Buffalo in Pictures

Photo: Unknow  These are buffalo skulls waiting to be ground into fertilizer and shipped east. Tip of the iceberg.

In the journals of Lewis and Clark, not so very long ago, they wrote about having to stop the caravan in its westward movement after they crossed the Missouri River because there was such an abundance of wild life that they couldn't pass through it all. They, of course, had a ready solution. They shot and killed as much as they could to such a degree that they were held up further waiting for more ammunition to be brought from the East.

I think we need to stop thinking we have answers until we clean up our own act. Then people in other countries will look to us for guidance.

Same story for food. We are not a booming success in setting any standards around the world for dietary excellence. The world knows this.

I would like to see us look to others and see where they were successful and learn from them and learn fast. We have a long way to go and not much time to do it in.