OpEds: America the Most Selfish & other ruminations by the The Rational Radical

From our archives—

By The Rational Radical

AMERICA THE MOST SELFISH

We are the most selfish country ever to have existed.
This conclusion is inescapable if you compare our potential to our actions.

In the past, before the advent of modern technology and medicine, there was a limit to humanity’s ability to reduce suffering on this planet. But given our present advanced technology and unparalleled wealth, the United States could, had it the will, go a long way towards literally creating Heaven on Earth. Then we truly would be the nation on the hill.

We could, if we chose to, wipe out all childhood diseases by a worldwide inoculation program. But we choose not to.

We could, if we chose to, ensure that no human on earth goes hungry. But we choose not to.

We could, if we chose to, provide potable drinking water, sanitation, and shelter to all the world’s people. But we choose not to.

We could, if we chose to, do a host of other specific good works that each reader can imagine. But we choose not to. (We could save, for example, ALL endangered species around the world, beginning with Africa, where constant wars, corruption, habitat destruction, and brutal poverty conspire to threaten the lives of millions of animals. Some charities work there on a pittance to remedy these ills, but with what the US spends on one advanced fighter plane we could fund just about every animal relief program in the African continent today.)

What do we choose to do instead?

We choose to spend our money on, and use our technology for, a myriad of frivolous, often environmentally destructive consumer goods and services: massive SUV’s, giant screen TV’s, countless changes of clothes with every passing fashion, cosmetic surgery, and so on ad infinitum: an endless mélange of gadgets, widgets, and other doodads that no one ever thought they needed until advertising convinced them that they did.

Americans even complain of feeling put upon. Their taxes are too high. They can’t buy a new car often enough. They don’t have enough leisure time.

Please.

The average American has a wider choice of safer food, more material comfort, more personal safety, and an overall easier life than 99.999% of all the humans who have ever lived on this planet.

And we could still have it and at the same time also embark on the Heaven on Earth effort discussed above.

So each one of us needs to look in the mirror, and for whatever setting each of us believes our Final Reckoning will take place in, practice our speech about why we and our society made the choices we did.

••••

Originally run on Sunday, November 10, 2002
Well, I want to thank all the many people who have told me to “Love it or leave it” all these years, starting back in the Vietnam era and continuing to the present day. Back then they demanded to know “Why don’t you go to Russia?” and now they ask “Why don’t you go to Iraq?” Of course, these logic-challenged question-askers would actually themselves be happier in a place like Iraq or the old Soviet Union, since they would not have to be challenged in those countries with hearing dissenting views. But pointing this out is not why I write.

I write because finally, the hidden-to-them logic of their question struck me the other day: I will leave, but not to go to Russia or Iraq. And I won’t leave alone. How about I take New York, California and a few other states with me? That’s right, how about the Prime Blue States secede, and leave all the Red Bushian wasteland expanses to their own devices!

Who needs them? Besides growing our food and providing some other natural resources, what good are those places? Populated largely by morons who continually vote to screw themselves, I don’t want to be associated with them any more.

They’ll still sell our new country food and resources, because who else could buy them? But the rest of us won’t have to be stuck with their fundamentalist-inspired, imbecilic social claptrap and their bellicose, kill-them-all foreign policy that bloodies our name and besmirches our souls more and more with each passing year.

The brains, money and creativity are in the Blue States. Argue with me on that, if you dare.

So citing irreconcilable differences, a select group of us Prime Blue States should amicably separate from the Dunderhead Nation and call ourselves, oh, how about the United States of New America, or USNA?

I like to think outside the box. This may well be thinking outside the entire paper mill. But the inexorable logic of the secession idea just strikes me as so perfect.

A million questions naturally arise, the four main ones of which are:

–There are Constitutional means to add states to the union, so are there — or could there be enacted — Constitutional means for states to leave?

–Which states (or even counties within states?!) should be included in our select departing group?

–What’s the easiest and fairest way to allocate Federal government land, property and debts between the two new political entities?

–What about population transfer issues prior to the secession date, since no state is monolithic, and even hard-core Bushian states have some decent people in them, and, God help us, even we Prime Blue States have some Bushian Neanderthals who I’d love to see permanently cross over the border into the Red Nation.

I guess I need to take out the law books, as well as analyze that 2000 election Blue-Red map while cross-referencing with state population and economic data. (Anyone having any relevant legal cites or economic date please send it!)

Even if there are no established procedures for secession, shouldn’t the Red States want us to leave and make it easy for us to do so? Listening to Limbaugh, Hannity, Lott et al blast liberals, let alone anyone further left, all day and night, 24/7, we would only be giving them what they really want, wouldn’t we?

But just imagine the wonderful feeling that you and I could have if the likes of George Bush, Newt Gingrich, Anton Scalia and Trent Lott were in another country that was now incredibly weak. We wouldn’t have to give a damn what they thought, or what the cretins who considered them their leaders thought either.

It’s just too sweet to imagine…