I love this country. I always have. I love the rights and freedoms that living here affords me. For example, this very blog's existence is a tribute to the things that the constitution and Bill of Rights have afforded me as a citizen of this great nation.
But, I get very tired of a few things, and this felt like the proper forum in which to vent them.
I'm tired of hearing people proclaim, generally in voices tinged with rich Southern judgement and hatred, that this is the "Greatest nation in the world." This is a good country, a great country at times, but not the greatest in the world. We've all got value, and our position as a super power is quite limited in its timeframe. We need to wake up and realize that we are only as good as our treatment of other nations and other cultures. Our interaction with the rest of the world is what makes us great, and by that definition, we've been slipping slowly into a quagmire of indifference and ignorance. In fact, by that standard, I think that this country looks anything but great.
I believe in Barack Obama because, during his campaign, and before his campaign even started in fact, I began to feel something for this country I had never felt before. I felt like this country could finally be a force for good in the world. Instead, I've become sad at what I've witnessed.
People have been ranting and railing against these election results in ways that I never would have dreamed of, even when Bush was completing his reign of terror. I was told over and over that my opinions were unpatriotic and told to step down and shut up more times than I can count. And yet, when our president gets elected there are campaigns, protests and a group of people trying to convince us that the man we elected is not an American citizen in order to get rid of him. Ridiculous, low-intelect and ill-informed garbage. It's disheartening.
Anyway, with the latest wave of attacks on healthcare reform, I find myself searching for my UK visa application once again. The truth of the matter is this, folks: All people who pay taxes and live in this country have the right to go to a doctor when they're sick. And not just a free clinic doctor who doesn't care. No. A real doctor who wants to help. A real hospital with good equipment. They have the right to pre-natal care, to crisis-counseling, to get help when they can't see a purpose to getting out of bed in the morning, to findreason to put down the bottle, the joint, the pills, to learn to stop cutting themselves, or throwing up after every meal. Children should not be an individual state's responsibility. I have yet to hear a single argument against this policy that isn't selfish, greed-motivated, or full of ignorant, paranoid delusion about what this bill would really do. We need to stop letting other people do our thinking for us. We need to start reading and watching and listening and forming our own opinions. This country does need to step it up and start caring about each other. We need to stop thinking about everything as "not my problem," and start thinking about what we'd do if it were our problem. Not everything has to affect us directly for it to be "our" problem. Anything that impacts another citizen of this country is "our" problem. I don't care if we're talking about healthcare, gay marriage, or recycling. The lack of social conscience in this country is disturbing and, quite frankly, depressing. This is our nation, our land, and our world. We need to take responsibility and have some pride of ownership.
If we were really the greatest nation in the world, it seems to me that we would have figured this out by now.
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