F*** the USA

It seems so long ago I was what a modern ‘red’-blooded American would consider a patriot. When I joined the army when I was 18 (and for the better half of my military career) I was a Republican, I believed in the rule of law, I believed in the country’s elected officials, and I believed that – all things considered – the United States was a country every other country should be looking up to because her citizens warranted that respect. Three decades later, I could not have been more wrong. While I have figuratively renounced my U.S. citizenship years ago, this morning’s news item finally caused me to spit, “Fuck the USA.”

Various news agencies reported that the owner of a Massachusetts ice cream parlor decided to close his door one day after re-opening during the current pandemic due to the harassment of his employees because…because people had to wait in line to get ice cream. (Please read that again, pause, and let it sink in.) Apparently his best employee quit at the end of her shift due to the harassment. It is absolutely unbelievable that this happened because, again, ICE CREAM was at stake. Although the operation basically returned to ‘normal’ soon thereafter, what with a renewed emphasis on safety and ordering procedures, it cannot be dismissed that people simply forgot their manners after weeks of being in quarantine.

It’s a common criticism by the alt-right that the alt-left hates America and I dare say the alt-right is not totally incorrect. But the alt-left also has a point insofar is that a love of the U.S. is simply not warranted and in fact perhaps should be hated. Donald Trump’s favorite saying ‘Make America Great Again’ really gives a thinking person a moment’s pause as it is not known exactly when America was so great. (Perhaps briefly upon entering WWII?) While many of you reading this right now may think ‘hate’ is a bridge too far, let us not forget the very recent history in which a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was peacefully jogging until he was hunted down by apparent white supremists and shot to death, and then his assailants went free for two months until a video of the incident surfaced. To be certain, the assailants were not arrested because Georgia law enforcement saw the video but because the rest of the country saw the video. So is this the ‘great America’ the current U.S. president thinks the country should be? If it seems like I’m digressing, I’m not.

The Polar Cave Ice Cream parlor incident is indicative of almost everything that is wrong with the U.S. (By the way, this happened on the same weekend a group of white men carrying large-caliber weapons went to a Subway sandwich shop in North Carolina in an apparent attempt to protest lockdown orders.) Because Americans are not particularly well known for their intelligence, I will briefly enumerate what makes the U.S. such a terrible place to be these days (assuming you’re a non-white, unarmed, non-male person, though, the alt-left is certainly not without problems given their philosophy).

·       The Polar Cave Ice Cream parlor incident reveals the utter entitlement Americans feel they have to everything they want and to have it immediately. (Surprisingly, Americans haven’t yet stormed Amazon warehouses because they have to wait two whole days for their Prime shipments to arrive.) Americans feel so entitled to everything – including ice cream – that to too many people it was acceptable to harass ice cream shop employees for having to wait too long (a few minutes?) with language that would embarrass a sailor. Americans feel so entitled to what they want that involuntarily celibate men think it’s okay to shoot up college campuses because they shouldn’t have to do anything to get laid. And naturally Americans feel entitled to the guns they use in such incidents because they are part of a well-regulated militia. FFS, these days, Americans even feel entitled to their own facts. And when Americans don’t get their way, the play the victim card.

·       Being entitled to their own facts demonstrates America’s now nearly complete war on intellectualism short of killing university professors. A friend recently posted a blog (here) on the intellectual dishonestly so often associated with memes that is, of course, so completely on point we should be thankful Americans are able to communicate through posting memes at all and not still smashing rocks together to make crude music. Can a country that made the Kardashians, creationists, and flat-earthers famous and can’t answer basic questions about how their government works but is somehow mind-controlling them really be considered great? The U.S. is a country whose citizens can’t be asked to wear a facemask for a few months for everyone’s protection. It’s not like these people are being asked to go off to war to fight Nazi’s – which they wouldn’t do now anyway – or suffer a famine ala The Great Depression or stop taking selfies. The U.S. is a country that elected a president that cannot maintain a train of thought for more than two minutes, which no one should have sought to do because most people should not be electing people like themselves to high office seeing how unqualified the average American is for such a task. Exerting power by fiat has never worked out well for anyone, but the average American has no idea what I mean when I say that anyway. America is the same country whose Republicans foam at the mouth when the word ‘socialism’ is spoken but gladly took their pandemic stimulus checks and think big businesses and farmers deserve government bailouts.

·       Anti-intellectualism and racism go hand-in-hand, so it’s no surprise that hate crimes increased dramatically after Trump took over the U.S. presidency. True, it’s not like many white Americans weren’t already racist, it’s just that the person they elected to high office emboldened them to act on that racism. While we probably didn’t have too many incidents during the

Obama Administration in which the police were called on a black cop searching for evidence in between houses, but today it’s basically the norm. White people are so willfully oblivious to what black people go through, they dare not take a moment to figure out what Black Lives Matters really means. Does that sound ‘great’ to you? America is simply an evil place for allowing racism to go unaddressed and unfettered. It is an evil place for what happened at the ice cream parlor. If Americans cannot get over the frustration of not having ice cream in a ‘timely’ fashion, then how are they great?

·       America no longer appears to adhere to any rule of law. Just this past week, the Trump Administration’s DOJ dropped charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, a man who admitted to lying under oath twice. There are various reasons for this which have nothing to do with Flynn being an honorable man, but as it is for many in the Trump administration, being legally accountable is laughable. (Yes, Bill Clinton lied under oath, too, but at least he paid for it.) Meanwhile, President Trump has routinely said he is above the law as president…which would mean all the crimes he’s accused Obama of committing in office are irrelevant. Meanwhile, white men are walking into capitol buildings and sandwich shops with guns in an attempt to intimidate elected officials, but they are not charged with domestic terrorism because white. Meanwhile, in the 1960’s the Black Panthers were charged with domestic terrorism for doing exactly this. Meanwhile, a white salon owner in Texas openly defies a court order and judge and is hailed a s hero while the people hailing her as a hero keep telling black people that they wouldn’t get shot if they just did what they are told by law enforcement. What officials in high office and white people get away with, to say nothing of corporations, is reprehensible, to be polite.

·       Not surprisingly, the current pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of capitalism, that weakness being that it cannot survive something like a pandemic without the aid of socialism as I mentioned earlier. The strange thing is, not even liberals are questioning the fundamentals of capitalism. I expect such a thing of Republicans, but not Democrats. Even Bernie Sanders is mostly silent about the recent turn of events. I’ll say that capitalism may be the best monetary philosophy going, but that is not the same as saying it’s good at all.

·       For those of you who have forgotten, the U.S. consistently lags behind other Western and some Asian countries in math, science, and reading. You don’t see the Trump Administration doing anything to rectify that situation. No, instead Trump installs a completely unqualified person (because that’s what he does with his cabinet) to head the DOE because she’s a campaign donor with a vested interest in college students repaying their student loans. No, trump doesn’t see to it that Americans get an education because that would disrupt his base, that being uneducated citizens. As we’ve seen from China, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries, an educated population is in a country’s best interest. That simply cannot be allowed in a country held hostage by mega-corporations, though.

So we’re left trying to figure out when the U.S. was great and deserving of being loved. Was it when it institutionalized slavery and even fought a civil war to preserve it? Was it during Prohibition when the government was poisoning beer so it could use the dead as propaganda? Was it during the Trail of Tears? Was it during the McCarthy era? Was it when it dropped TWO nuclear bombs on Japan? Was it during the Tuskegee Experiment? Was it during the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam? Was it when it lied its way into invading Iraq post-9/11? Was it when the wholesale spying on Americans by the NSA was greenlit? Was it when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people or ruled that super-PAC money didn’t have to be transparent anymore? Was it when the employee of an ice cream parlor quit her job because of the harassment she received because people couldn’t get their ice cream on demand?

It might be argued that many countries behave reprehensibly but this means nothing more than the U.S. being a country no better than any other. Yes, the U.S. may have a higher standard of living and all the money and goods it could ever want (gotta have the latest iPhone!), but U.S. citizens seem to equate these enviable qualities with some kind of moral high ground. That is how stupid Americans are. That’s how undeserving of America’s status it is.

Is it really such a big deal to be an American, to live in the USA.? Not when your job at an ice cream parlor entails threats to your life. Not when it’s more important to re-start the economy than to save people’s lives. Not when Americans are too stupid to see that capitalism cannot survive without socialism. Not when a black man cannot go jogging without being hunted down by Trump supporters. Not when the alt-left has ruined any sense of fairness on college campuses (they’ve turned out to be almost as bad as their alt-right counterparts). Not when you’re considered a lower form of life because your credit score is terrible.

The next time you see someone post “We’re better than this” on social media in response to the next example of human depravity, please remind them that the U.S. is not and never has been. Given history, both past and present, you might even want to say to them, “Fuck the U.S.A.” I sure do.