What kind of country elects the wife of a former President to be the new President?
The easy answers might include Phillipines, Panama, Guyana, or Bangladesh. But those are third world countries, or nearly so. There must be a better answer.
Because America is the greatest country in the world, in every way, it leads every other country.
Anyone who says otherwise is a treasonous pessimist with French ancestry. What kind of a traitor could even think such a thing?
And what is the Renfield Syndrome?
What kind of country is 18th in education, 45th in life expectancy, 37th in overall health care delivery, tied for 15th in literacy, 16th in broadband infrastructure, 22nd in gender equality, just slipped below Ecuador in environmental standards, barely edges out Turkey in acceptance of evolution but first in prison population, and just behind Saudi Arabia and China in executions?
The answers to these questions may never be known. They may even be unknowable. At least by the American electorate.
And what do they really tell us, anyway? One might as well ask about such intangible measures of national greatness as the national savings rate,income mobility, labor standards, pollution, civil liberties, privacy, or respect for International Law.
Such things are as unknowable as geography , historyor science. Whocan saywhat happens to a country when it spends as much as the entire rest of the world put together on weapons, or what mightyempireshave been brought low by excessive militarism.
I used to criticize a friend, on gender grounds, with her crap job and no healthcare, unable to afford her tuition, up to her ears in credit card debt, for her habit of obsessing over the intimate details of Angelina Jolie or Britney Spears' relationship difficulties. "You hardly even know her," I would say.
But she felt like she did. She was part of a celebrity inner circle, in some inner circle of delusion in her head the magazines make possible.
Blinded by my hard-earned misogyny, I overlooked her bi-gender counterpart - bloviating about the military strategies that will lead America to victory in Iraq.
Swelled to the bloating point with Armchair Imperialism. National Greatness for all, vicariously.
We're Masters of the World! And it doesn't cost a penny.
Sitting in a still off-gassing formaldehyde sodden trailer up-thumbing the next victory in the Clash of Civilizations.
What WE must do in Iraq. Like WE have any fucking part of anything that happens.
But all you have to do to be part of it is to slap a magnet on your car - the same car that magically grants that undefined feeling of being a Wilderness Explorer with an Active Lifestyle for a monthly payment and no money down.
Sitting there with 5 million other Rugged Individualist Outdoorsy Types in bumper to bumper traffic, it tells everybody, most importantly yourself, just who you really are.
An American Hero. And we're all heroes now. Bringing democracy, the 'the gift of freedom' to our less fortunate brothers.
You see, you DO have a dog in the fight over which multi-national megacorp ends up with Iraq's oil. One of ours! Course you could just buy stock in whichever one ends up with it, but isn't Exxon way better than Shell?
So if doesn't matter which oil company rapes us, why does it matter which military machine 'wins' and which leaves with 'honor'. Can't I just buy stock in the winner and call it mine?
Mounted beggars race their steeds. Yes, they do. I call it - The Renfield Syndrome.
Renfield was Dracula's groveling slave, who ate flies and spiders, an obsequious toady who worshipped Dracula in the delusional conviction that someday the lordly bloodsucker would reward his adoration by making him a minor leech.
Good luck with that.
Renfields to the rich. People who oppose the estate tax when they'll most assuredly end their lives on whatever portion of SS they don't loseto predatorylendersor sweepstakes swindlers. A nation of Renfields to the rich.
When does Reality Set In? When do things actually change?
Perhaps at that moment when there are concrete consequences for not paying fucking attention. Perhaps when things finally begin to affect one's own life, then Reality Sets In.
When China and the other lenders stop footing the bill.
When yourtaxesactuallygo upor yourservices godown, when you finallyloseyourjoband yourhouse, when your dollaris finally worth less than the pesoyou used to mock...
If it all come crashing down around the nation's ears who can say it will be too soon?
