Red Essex
I’m back in gloomy old Essex and wish I could be back in Sunny old Arkansas. Yet something has changed in me. My stay in America has had the off-putting effect of making me despise the nation with the very fibre of my being. Not so much because it is the worse place in the world, but simply because it is one the best places in the world and therefore has no excuse for toying with Christian fundamentalism, war crimes and a blind patriotic rage.I think it is only testimony to how few real worries I have in my life right now that I am letting US domestic policy frustrate me (which is amazing since this is the least of their recent crimes…).
I think my efforts to keep this Blog from becoming anti-American have failed. I have tried. Really I have. I keep searching for good news stories. I even have the embryo of a pro-American article sitting in my mind. Only it is tempting to abort it simply to enrage the American pro-life lobby.
For those of you that are interested see the attached comment for my grand assumptions on one of the great pillars of American freedom. For everyone else, I suggest we watch celebrity big brother and remind ourselves that politics and popular culture simply don’t mix. Isn’t that right George?
Meow.
posted by Benjamin Nakizo @ 7:51 pm
1 Comments:
America is a great place. Don’t get me wrong. On paper everything is secular and race isn’t an issue. On paper a US citizen is freer than an EU citizen because their government doesn’t interfere as much with their lives. America is also devoid of intrusive CCTV unlike the police state of England. Their constitution allows for greater access to information than in our sometimes-shaky constitutional monarchy. America is also a land where justice is still served, no kid is sent to prison without trial or jury just because he violated an unwarranted ASBO order. All in all America is a place where freedom does reign in many valuable ways in which it does not in the UK. They should be applauded.
But.
America has this great belief that central government and taxation are evil. In a very textbook sense they are absolutely right, it is a form of oppression to have to finance government programs that you don’t want to fund. But I think they have got this one wrong.
Katrina is my pet hate and is a blatant example of what happens when you have next to nothing in regards to a welfare system. When it comes to helping out those in need Americans believe it should be up to the individual to decide whether or not to devote their money to the cause. How commendable. Just a shame none of them like blacks hey? New Orleans should be rebuilt by around 2500, if its African American inhabitants are lucky. If it was a white city that had been hit you can bet your bottom dollar that donations would have already hit the ten trillion dollar mark and the streets would be paved with gold.
This is the glaring weakness in the American system. It is not a new one either. The depression of the 1930’s is also a great example here. President Hoover knew the poor had to receive help ASAP but couldn’t tax people to do it, so desperately went around ‘encouraging’ rich folk to dig into their pockets. In large numbers it was these rich folk that didn’t. So in steps Roosevelt and decides the only thing to do is to actually ‘tax’ people to improve the lot of the poor. This of course went down very badly with the northern rich folk and pretty much everyone white guy in the south.
For half a century the USA was also engaged in a Cold War against a communist power. Music to the ears of all rich men everywhere since it meant that any law designed to give the black man a helping hand was shot down as being a socialist plot. So the Americans plodded on sowing inequality in their wake. Out of sight out of mind, no one need ever know… and then there was Katrina.
America needs to learn from its mistakes. It needs to have more faith in central government. If it doesn’t it is going to end up with a lot of racial/class conflict in the coming century. The rich have got a lot richer in recent decades as the poor have sunk into political irrelevance. Things are only going to get worse, Katrina should be learnt from. Not covered up with patriotism.
As admirable as it may be, the American faith in human nature is causing only misery for its ethnic minorities. This surely needs to change if America is to retain (regain?) social cohesion.
Europe in this case isn’t always a prime example to follow; we have our fair share of ethnic poverty too. Yet for example in Paris the riots were caused by a bottleneck of young immigrants being denied access to welfare and jobs. This is surely only another example of why it is essential to provide support for all your citizens, whether the white people like it or not.
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