Well then, here’s my hearty welcome message:
You want to know who’s “stupid” and what’s really fucking “annoying”? Read on.
That a country a grew up admiring has managed to go to shit inside five years. That everything it stood for before my eyes – democracy, personal freedom, innovation, opportunity, fairness, diversity, tolerance…in short, all the things that gave me hope for a better world inside my lifetime, never mind my kid’s – have crumbled like a hastility built house of cards. Sure, there’s was more than a bit of youthful naiveté in my appraisal of the United States, couple that with a fair amount of paranoia vis-a-vis the only “other option” as represented by The Big Bad Bear, the USSR, a Franco-loving, pseudo-fascist Dad, and you get a young man from Spain who was not only one of your biggest fans, but also one of your most partisan defenders. Republicans, Democrats, din’t really matter, politics wasn’t my gig, all was right with the Good Guys for ultimately they just wanted to improve our collective fortunes.
Fast forward two decades – late eighties, early nineties to be precise – and to my own surprise I realize that I am no longer looking at the world in such a binary fashion. But even then, when nuanced views and any number of different hues between black and white had entered the picture, I still thought enough of the US of A, to move my American wife and American-born son there. Why? Well, all those white picket-fenced houses, inmaculate lawns and yellow labs that I remembered fondly from my college days, were quite the Siren’s Call for raising my only child. Hell, that he remains there while I don’t, painful to this old heart as is, still appears, in hindsight, as the right decision. Because despite my increased pesimism – ironically enough, and despite all the protestations here, a feeling now shared by a majority of your own countrymen and women – I hold out hope that you’ll right your course (in a manner of speaking of course, for if you were to lean any further right politically, it’s The Titanic to the nth power) and steer to the percieved calmer seas of my youth.
Note, however, the matter of “perception” introduced in that last sentence. While no country could, realistically, live-up to my idealistic and youthful expectations, my very own ideals have shifted throughout the years. And that’s where you, my dear fans, come in. As many of you have noticed, I really, really, dislike not only the course you’ve taken in the last five years, but many of the things that your society as a whole has, realistically speaking, come to stand for. Naked capitalism, oversized hubris, rampant consumerism and greed, faux piety, and, seemingly, ever-increasing religious delusions that contradict all empirical evidence , are simply not for me.
Now, that doesn’t explain why I come in here and constantly prod and barb you all about it. After all, if I don’t like something, I can simply chose to ignore it, right? Most times anyway. Well now is NOT one of those times. Not with the murderous thugs that are currently running your country. For it’s one thing to as you wish with your own nation, and quite another to take your Romam Legions and actually attept to mold other nations to your liking – reasons be dammed. We are Americans, dammit! No need to explain ourselves to those pesky furreners anyway!
Well guess what? Fuck that! Do as you wish within your borders, but as long as you go trekking on murderous expeditions outside of same, you can forget any amount of sympathy towards your nation that I might have had left.
Don’t like it? Shove it, dear fans. Or better yet, fix it. For your own good and everyone else’s, I really hope you take the latter option.
And sooner rather than later.
Lovingly,
~Red