It occurs to me that we could benefit hugely from a department to examine how other countries are doing things better than the USA. I am a natural born heretic, I know. But I see a trend that perhaps could use some tweaking one of these days.
I see, for instance, that for a couple of hundred years of European presence in the country, we were pretty singly focused on killing Native Peoples and animals while great cultures around the world were having their Renaissance and creating the great cathedrals of Europe. While we were eating squirrels and wearing deer like cave men, the finest silks ever made were being produced in China. While to Ottoman Empire was cultivating science, we were intentionally spreading smallpox and fitting up slave ships.
I do admit that we always seem to have excelled at killing and environmental destruction with some competition in the past from, say, the Spanish and the English and Genghis Khan. It is a hard competition to qualify because so many creative efforts were utilized. We liked scalping, tar and feathering, lynching, We liked individual enterprise, such as paying anyone to kill Indians, to catch Africans, to slaughter buffalo. We especially specialized in Puritan righteousness which gave a full guarantee that God was behind us. We made our own version of the Inquisition.
My stumping point this morning is this question of how we have come to believe that we are the only act in the world and we are the best at everything and how it is unAmerican to look to successes and innovations from other countries to find solutions that work for our problems.
I guess that pretty much all empires rule by self inflicted Divine Right.We do. We have the Divine Right to invade anyplace on earth to further our needs. We have the right to pollute anywhere, to kill anyone. But what we don't seem to have is the right to say that another country is doing a lot better in medical care than we are or even making better strides with renewable energy or keeping Monsanto from invading their food chain. This causes big trouble. What if, for instance, Iran had a handle on the homeless problem? Could we send a delegation to study and adopt their solutions? Not on your life. What if South Africa has a simple, pure and working voting system such as one person, one vote? Could we emulate that? Are you fucking crazy? We have created the most archaic, most expensive, most surely cumbersome hodge podge of a voting mess that could be imagined, but we know we are the best and some even "know" we are the only democracy.
This is the stuff of decline of empires. The rush to the bottom. The head in the sand. The writing on the wall. And the line that we hear that we can't afford education, feeding our people, housing anyone, well, it is abundantly clear that we have enough. We chose to spend our treasure on incarcerating millions, on insane military invasions, on guns. This is our choice. We, obviously have enough money. How else could we spend trillions of dollars fucking up other countries?
I think we desperately need a department of open minded souls investigating how other people do things right and bringing the safe, sane, reasonable solutions home to us, no matter where they come from. We are not God. The rest of the world sees this. It is time for us to get with it.
And actually, from personal experience, it is a great relief to finally stop pretending to be God. A very great relief.
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