The following is a hypothetical situation:

You are part of an organization of businesses. Your business is the most successful and you host the meetings of this group at your lavish company headquarters. One business in your organization is treating its workers badly and is employing slave labor. There are also allegations of fraud within that business. You want to take over that business and liberate the workers from the tyranny of the business owner. Other businesses stop you and say, “Let’s try to do this through discussion and see if we can’t get the offending business to sell to us.” You’re not enthusiastic about that suggestion and damage the reputation of the businesses that suggested it. Against the wishes of the leaders of this organization (who exist to ensure fair practices), you engage in a hostile takeover and liberate the workers. The owner of the offending business is forced to sell and you acquire the shares of the company and claim that you will help the workers to rebuild the company rightly. You then lead a charge to disband the organization that you are part of because you didn’t like its criticism of your (possibly illegal) actions.

OK boys and girls, raise your hands if you think this is a ludicrous and completely selfish move for the most successful business to take. *multitude of people raise their hands* Wonderful. You all get gold stars. Now… how many of you understand why I’m putting this hypothetical situation forward.

*sees raised hand*

Yes Johnny?

Ms. K-M, could it be because there are seriously deluded people who never paid attention in their History classes who think that the U.S. was right to launch a smear campaign against France and suggest that the U.N. be disbanded because they don’t agree with us and criticized us for going into Iraq on charges of WMD that are yet unproven?

Very good Johnny. You get a cookie.

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This is the foolishness to which I am referring:

OK… it looks like this person slept through U.S History because they have obviously missed the ball on this. Evidence? Well… they didn’t know that the U.S. *does* have allies — the group is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (a.k.a. NATO). Membership *is* a privilege as many former Warsaw Pact countries are having problems gaining admission. It was started to combat communism and the former Soviet-bloc nations formed the Warsaw Pact.

Another thing: since when are we automatically “right” because we happen to be the wealthiest nation? I have many issues with this as our culture has replaced elements of other cultures and much of our pop culture is damaging to the cultural mores of other nations. We have 5% of the world’s population yet control over 50% of its wealth and consume 60% of its energy. Does this really sound like the kind of nation you want running the show? I seriously think NOT!

My point is this: did 9/11 teach us nothing about how the world views us???? I mean, countries were saddened that 3,000 people died in the Twin Towers bombings and all but… we also saw that there is a force of people out there who hate us because of our business practices, our presumption that we are the best country on the planet, and because we really don’t seem to care about the rest of the world.

I know that the second one of the right-wing fascists who slobberingly affirms Dubya’s appointed rule reads this, I’m going to get comments saying “But Jen… we give money to countries all the time to help them out.” My response: yeah… but our GDP is also the size of the 100 lowest GDP’s of world countries combined — NOBODY comes close, which means that we really only give a small percentage of our national funds. We might give $10 billion to [insert poor country] to help them with AIDS prevention as does New Zealand. However… it’s a much larger chunk of New Zealand’s GDP than ours. They also don’t have the problems of poverty that we have because they take care of their people.

Anyway… the assertion that we should lead the charge to disband the U.N. is simply asnine at best — the U.N. exists to keep peace in the world. We signed the U.N. charter, which means that we really should be bound by U.N. laws diplomatically. In other words, we defied the rules of the organization we helped start because our president felt his (UNPROVEN) intelligence mandated the move. The U.N. clearly should sanction *US* for this because we demonstrated a lack of regard for the rules we helped write and that we agreed to 50 years ago in San Francisco.

People like this make me ashamed to be American because they perpetuate the stereotype that we are all arrogant and gauche and cannot accept that we are not the rulers of the world. For the record, countries like France and Germany do a heck of a better job taking care of their people than we do and yes, their taxes are double ours, but the money is used much more efficiently. Their governments are partially socialist… but it’s socialism that works a heck of a lot better than our democratic republicanism.

For those who still are stupid enough to think that bin Laden hates us because we’re a democracy, *IRAN* is a democracy and they haven’t met bin Laden’s wrath. *CANADA* is a democracy and hasn’t been bombed. In other words, the “they hate us because we’re free” excuse died around December 2001. Do the world a favor and let it rest.

The scary part: people like this are the people that the world hears, not people like me who give a damn about other nations and the state of the world and the planet. Unfortunately, THEY have the ear of our appointed puppet in the White House.

Maybe I should wait on seminary and just pay off Jon’s student loans ASAP so that we can haul butt to Canada. Their environment is mostly untouched, their people are nice, and their government actually *KNOWS* something about foreign policy. If nothing else, it gets me away from the utterly deluded people in the USA.