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.

PHILOSOPHY: DEADER THAN EVER

Be wary of certainty; one’s degree of inaccuracy is often inversely proportional to their insistence of accuracy. – Theory Parker

I find myself needing to leave social media. The question is not why; it’s a waste of time if you don’t have an undying need for people to like you. If there’s any question about leaving social media, it would be why not? What do any of us get out of social media? Yes, there’s the dopamine boost we get from people ‘liking’ something we post – that undying need again – but this simply amounts to one of the many drugs we could all do without. Among its other uses, social media is used to announce the ongoings of our businesses, which really is just 21^st century panhandling. (Worst among this trend is GoFundMe, in which everyone begs for money because somehow their situation is unique and deserving of the rest of us throwing our money at it. On a rare occasion, special circumstances do arise or an actually useful invention come along, but spare me your need to raise money for your classroom.) Perhaps social media gives us a chance to congregate with other like minds, albeit in the most superficial way because really, who has time for an entire phone call, an entire conversation? I know I don’t because I’m too busy working, working all the time, with people, and when I’m done with that I don’t want to deal with more people. This is not to say I don’t like my family and friends; I’m just exhausted. And I’m more exhausted by what I see on the internet. We look at posts from family and friends and it’s never too long before something – some kind of train wreck often political in nature – catches our eye. Noooooo, I often say to myself of some headline before being forced by curiosity, amazement, or (usually) disgust to delve deeper. This cannot be the world we are living in. It just can’t.

The internet is without question one of the worst things to ever happen to mankind. Yes, it has allowed us to connect on an unprecedented level with people far and wide. And yes, it has allowed us access to an unprecedented amount of information. Both of these things is what has kept the world from turning away from the insanity it has always known, instead using the internet to strengthen beliefs and tribal ties. Instead of using the access to information to study different cultures and perhaps change archaic ways of thinking, people dove headfirst into the concrete pool of confirmation bias to strengthen their ties to whatever community it is they consider themselves a part of. The internet gave people access to others of like mind and hence we have been given a world that instead of getting any better* has given new rise to authoritative governments around the globe. Militant Islam would not have nearly as many members as they do now if not for the internet. Vladmir Putin controls the internet and all other media in Russia to keep himself in power. China and North Korea likewise control what can be accessed through the internet. And you simply cannot go on the internet in America without catching a glimpse of the alt-right and the regressive left frothing at you and each other. Even if you somehow avoid that, there is sure to be someone who has something nasty to say about something no matter how innocuous the post.

Given an unfettered path to confirming one’s bias,’ philosophy became roadkill along the way. The last thing you’ll ever read on the internet is someone beginning their post with, “I may be wrong, but…” There is simply no reflection of thought, no self-analysis of ideas or one’s beliefs. Social media has become nothing more than a game of saying how right one thinks they are about whatever bullshit they want to believe. And surely if one uses ALL CAPS to say it, it becomes all the more true. There is simply no reasoning with anyone who uses the internet on a regular basis. Try to think of the last time you actually changed someone’s mind – difficult isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve done it myself since 2010 when I showed a college freshman the data on CFC’s and how it affected the ozone layer, thus convincing him that human activity can have an effect on the environment. This was a rare and exceptional case perhaps because the young man’s mind was open to new ideas. But this is not the case for most people of any age. Entrenched belief is difficult to dislodge because people hate to be wrong; most people see being wrong as a defect instead of a virtue, something to learn from.

Philosopher’s themselves are also to blame for the death of philosophy. Physicist Stephen Hawking declared that philosophy was dead back in 2011, making note that today’s philosophers have not kept up with or have failed to take into account the data emerging from the sciences. And why would they when most philosophers’ views can be ‘confirmed’ by others of similar thinking on the internet? You can search the ‘pros’ of communism with at-the-ready counter-arguments against its detractors within seconds, nevermind any lack of objectivity. Unfortunately philosophers are people, too, and like most people are typically not above confirmation bias. Despite real-world evidence that communism simply doesn’t work in practice, many young idealists still think it can. (Ah, ah, ah –Like every other attempt at communism, China is only communist on paper.)

The failure of philosophers to ‘keep up’ combined with the effect the internet has had on people has given Americans a country hijacked by the regressive left and the alt-reich. You read these people’s comment’s on the internet every day, whose typical comment is usually rife with some false assertion and/or unblinking hypocrisy. False assertions are one thing – we don’t typically have time to fact-check everything – but the hypocrisy is breathtaking. For example, Putin and Russia were basically enemies during President Obama’s tenure but because Trump is friends with Putin, Russia was somehow never our enemy after Trump’s election. Or take Sarah Huckabee Sander’s attack on a business owner for booting her out of a restaurant while agreeing that a bakery had the right to refuse gay people service. But the regressive left is no prize either, who can’t see its own policy of denying anyone with a difference of opinion to speak at college campuses as fascist. You also cannot bring up the atrocities of any other race throughout history as only white people have committed crimes against humanity. Anyone who dares think is either dead or is dying in the middle.

All of this is why I’m a misanthrope. We can’t have discussions anymore, as if we ever could. For fuck sake, female scientists have had a historically rough time being taken seriously even though data should speak for itself. If scientists can’t be rational, what hope is there for everyone else? There is no hope. We’ll die by our own hand having never learned from the Roman Empire even though their collapse was well-documented. And if any philosopher hasn’t given up yet, they will eventually be hunted down and murdered by whichever side ultimately wins the culture war. That is what authoritative regimes do, after all. The U.S. is dealing with two right now that are engaged in an ideological war that will ironical kill nothing but ideas.

Depends on their PR person.