Fear and Paranoia in Las Americas..

 

The United States is a nation of scared kittens, there is simply no other explanation for it, practically everyone is scared most of the time.

 

I'm talking gun control here (which a lot of lawmakers are scared to talk about) I'm not particularly anti gun, I don't hunt but have no problem with people who do, I eat meat but don't have the guts to kill the animal face to face. I do however take issue with the AR-15, extra round clip, RPG toting gun 'nut' type.

 

The public face of these 'collectors' is "Don't mess with me, over my dead body, from the grip of my cold dead hands" but in reality they're terrified. They must be, where's the boogy man coming from?

 

Look, the white man is scared of the black man, the black man is scared of the police, the police are scared of everyone and EVERYONE is scared of the government. I'm telling you, it's a nation in constant fear of itself which is why it feels the need to arm itself to the teeth to protect itself from itself. If you have a gun to protect your family here's a cold hard fact, gun owners are three times more likely to die as a result of a gunshot than non gun owners and five time more likely to commit suicide, have a gun by all means but don't think it makes you safer because the opposite is true. If you don't believe me just google "gun safety in the US"

 

The problem of course is perception, 24 hour news channels have us shaking in our seats and reaching for our pistols. Fed on a Non stop diet of terrible murder and mayhem leads most people to believe it's only a matter of time before the doomsday scenario starts. But take a look around, when was the last time you, or someone in your family or even someone you know was the victim of a violent crime? True it very much depends on your socio economic surroundings but for the most part most of us are pretty safe, except from ourselves.

 

This mistaken perception is a self fullfilling prophecy with terrible social consequences. It leads to more guns which leads to more mistakes and more deaths, our society as a whole suffers when the walls go up around (mainly) white gated communities as the upper middle class retreats and further distances itself from reality further reinforcing the mistaken perception that it's "dangerous out there"

 

 

Here's a few tips on how to avoid getting shot.

 

1. Don't own a handgun.

2. Don't go looking for crack at 4am in suspect areas.

3. Pay prostitutes promptly.

 

It's pretty straightforward, follow basic common sense and you'll probably be ok.

 

Rant over.

 

Your personal responsibility is costing me!

Here in the US there is a lot of talk about personal responsibility, you hear about it all the time and it's a favorite political football. Now I'm all in favor of personal responsibility, I really am, in the UK there is not enough talk about it, it's not something that is instilled in the mind of the young and as a result we have generations of people utterly dependent on the welfare state with no expectations or even desire to stand on their own two feet. I remember when I worked in Portsmouth I would regularly catch the train to London, to get to the station I would walk past the social security crisis loan office, normally around 9am, there was always a motley collection of young girls with baby buggy's and loathsome looking lads wearing the ubiquitous track suit with their hair gelled flat and shaped into a ridiculous sticky fringe that looked like it had been drawn on with a sharpie. These losers would be standing around (not working being the given) sometimes with a beer, always with a extra long cigarette (it's me only pleasure innit?) waiting on a "crisis loan" whatever that is, must be a pretty big crisis though, I mean it's got these useless wankers out onto the street and away from Jerry Springer at the ungodly hour of 9am. I have no time for these people, a complete sub culture of wasters and criminals, we even have a name for them, Chavs, a badge these cretins wear with pride.

So yes, I am all in favor of personal responsibility, but there's a problem, you see when people decide they don't want to take personal responsibility for their actions, there is a cost, and guess who gets to pay? Yep, you got it, the rest of us. You can see this everywhere, here in South Carolina if you live in an un-adopted part of the county (as I do) you don't get trash pickup as a matter of course, you have to pay for a private service, it's not a problem, it's not as if you get it free if you live in the city, you still pay for it, you just get it taken out of your taxes. But out in the sticks you have to make a conscious decision to contract a private company to collect your trash on a weekly basis, it's not expensive, maybe $25 every three months but it becomes your personal responsibility to organize the collection, or not...

If you decide you don't want the service you can either take your trash to the dump yourself, you can burn it or you can leave it laying around in stinking midden piles before dragging it into the woods or whatever, the price is unsightly piles of crap or poisonous and toxic fumes either way I pay, I pay by having my environment despoiled and let me tell you folks, there are plenty who think their freedom of choice allows them to mess up the environment because it's cheap. In the current financial mess there is a huge push by the campaigning right wing to get rid of expensive federal programs and organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Rick Perry is confident that corporations can be trusted to police their own business but I'm not so sure, in fact I would go as far as to say that the bottom line and  upper management bonuses really trump all else.

Of course the big one is health insurance, in an ideal world we would all have health insurance, but we don't, in fact a large number of US citizens are completely uninsured, now the numbers vary but most estimates are around the 45 million mark. A significant number of these perhaps as many as 15 million can afford to take out insurance but choose not to, it's their choice, their personal responsibility, but it's our cost, because when they get treated in the ER the facility has to pass the cost onto those who are insured, this is why when my family had cause to use the ER for a broken arm the cost was in excess of $20,000. The ambulance ride alone was $850, this for a 15 minute ride, I was astonished when I saw what my insurance company was being billed and the county ambulance service actually loses money at those rates, why? because less than 50% of people who use the service actually pay.

I know that a lot of people can't afford health insurance, that's a whole different sad story but we also have a huge problem with people choosing not to exercise personal responsibility because they know that in the end someone else will pay. So we need to make them take that personal responsibility and the only way I know is to treat health insurance like a tax, take a little from everyone and spread the cost, I don't care if it's done at a federal or state level (federal would make more fiscal sense but lets not upset too many people at once) Now I know it's not in the constitution to provide health care to the people but then neither is sending men to the moon, besides we're already doing it we're just not spreading the cost fairly. If we can't trust people to dispose of their garbage properly then we sure as hell can't trust them to pay their fair share of ridiculously high medical costs, unfortunately the U in USA doesn't stand for utopia.

Rant Over

Democracy, it's overated..

Winston Churchill apparently said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others that have been tried" Well I'm a fan of Churchill the wartime leader (as opposed to Churchill the politician) but he was talking bollocks in this case.

Democracy is too messy, give me a benign dictatorship anytime. Democratically elected governments have one major weakness. They are elected by the general population, most of whom are morons. Every four or five years these morons are asked to elect the government for the next four or five years. Four years in the US, five years if you're lucky in the UK, which means no sooner is the new bunch in than the campaigning for the next election starts. The main problem with that approach is that the government is often faced with difficult decisions, they have a choice, do what will fix the problem, often a slow and painful process, or do what will be popular in the short term thus ensuring at least a fighting chance at re-election. The system is designed to fail, simple as that.

But you don't have to look as high as the government to see how stupid democracy is, look at local government, The UK has a central government that hardly anyone understands and a local government at County level that no one cares about. To see democracy taken to the point of crazy you really need to come to the US. We have elected officials in positions as obscure as school boards. Most parents just want a decent education for their kids but what sort of people do you imagine actually go out their way to get elected to a school board? Busybodies, that's who and they're not to be trusted.  busybodies with an agenda can get together and seriously screw with an education system. Hence we have continual battles in various regions between teachers trying to teach science and school boards trying to get teachers to teach nonsense, such as the age of the planet is 6000-8000 years old. We even elect coroners here, coroners? who cares who the coroner is? You're dead for gods sake.

Get this, we elect Sheriffs, this is like electing the chief of police, except they don't have to be a policeman. Wait, what??? So a plumber could be elected? Yep, what about a cleaner, yep. OK so maybe that's not so bad, we could elect an attorney at least they understand the law. No.... what? You can't elect an attorney, it's against the rules. Here's a thing though, jury's although not elected are selected and this really is stupid. Financial fraud trials are notoriously complicated. Months of convoluted complex evidence is sifted through and argued over, some of the most brilliant financial brains in the world are drafted in for both sides and at the end who decides on  guilt or innocence? A bizarre mixture of coffee shop servers and contractors, it's ridiculous, It'll be different when I'm in charge, that's for sure!

Rant over!

Welcome to corporate hell.

You know what I hate? I hate the way it's now considered normal to be "welcomed" into every store you set foot into. A bored chorus of "Welcome to (insert store name here)" is called out to you before the doors have swished closed behind you. This puts me in the awkward position of having to respond or appear rude by ignoring them. You can tell they hate it, their voices give it away, you must be able to tell I think it's stupid by the way I respond. So why are we doing it? Because some twerp in corporate thinks its a good idea that's why. You can be absolutely sure that whoever it was  never worked on a shop floor for $10 an hour with no benefits.

I've noticed another insidious trait creeping into the shopping experience now, not content with welcoming me into the big box home improvement store I'm now pursued around the isles and continually badgered about my requirements, what do I need?, can I find everything?, is everything ok? how's my day going? Look, I'm a man, if I can't find something I'll stumble around blindly looking for it before giving up and going home, that's the way it is, 200,000 years of evolution has finely tuned me to be completely individual shopper, an autonomous, belligerent, miserable master of my own downfall, and that's the way I like it! Leave me alone.

See all this "Have a nice Day" bullshit, you can stick that as well. Don't tell me how to live my life, a simple please and thank you is perfectly adequate and don't get me started on "awesome"  possibly the most overused adjective in the US. However, I have a weapon against this glib overuse of superlatives though, I take them literally. On been ordered to "Have an awesome day" I offer the retort that it's unlikely, this completely throws them off the page, this isn't in the script, I'm supposed to respond with "you too" or something equally inane. But I didn't start this, I was told to have an awesome day so I think it's now within the bounds of the responsible person to either understand what @#$%ing awesome means, shut up about it or, and this opens a world of possibilities, make it so, because if  I'm buying dog food in a grocery store it's pretty unlikely my day is going to be "awesome"

Rant over.

Blueyouth

Now I've mentioned my lack of patience with stupidity in the past but today I'd like to talk about the perfect storm, stupidity and rudeness in equal measure. The epitome of this is the obsession with cell phones in public and in particular those ridiculous Star Trek looking widgets that are popular amongst the criminally dimwitted. Just because you look like some geek at a trekkie convention doesn't mean you've actually been transported to another dimension, WE CAN STILL SEE YOU! and more importantly hear you, your inane babble is of no interest to me or anyone else save perhaps your equally dimwitted partner in crime.

I had the misfortune this last weekend to come across just such a scene in my local home improvement store. Behind me in the line for the register a lady was yammering long and loud about absolutely nothing in particular. When I say loud I mean you could hear every word from twenty feet away, lady it's a phone, they were invented specifically so you didn't need to shout. I don't know why but I find it intensely irritating, maybe because there's no escape and I'm too polite to say anything and she's too stupid and rude to realize that there's a problem here.

We finally left and moaned about the stupid cow all the way to the car, we were convinced that her ignorant burbling probably continued throughout the transaction at the register which I find particularly galling. Picture this, your grandmother is buying her groceries, she gets to the register and completely ignores the teller, deciding instead to talk non-stop to her friend, it wouldn't happen, so why is it happening now?

My wife and I decided to grab a little lunch while we were out and popped into the restaurant over the road, 5 minutes later in comes rentagob, still yacking on the @#$%ing phone! Fills her take out box to the point of groaning collapse and completely ignores the teller again!

I just don't get it, where did this section of society come from? It wasn't always like this, this is not a learned behavior, your parents were perfectly civil. Now you're weighed down with cheap imitation gold, telling all the world your 'business'. You think you look like a rock star but you don't, you look like a fashion faux pas with a big mouth and a learning disability, your rims are worth more than your car and your car is worth more than your house. You have no pride, no future and no idea, pull your pants up, put the phone down and shut @#$% up.

Rant Over

One Nation, Invisible

As a European, I'm constantly amazed at the fractured nature of American society, Europeans have an idea that the US is one country, everyone pulls together and gets great things done. Well it turns out that the US gets great things done in spite of the fact that it operates as 50 different countries. I honestly had no idea before I moved here that so many people viewed the residents of other states with such suspicion and fear. I guess it's a size thing, coming from a relatively small country (the UK is roughly the same size as Florida) I'm used to regional differences but not regional animosity.

There is an internal migration going on within the US, the citizens from the north have finally figured out that the weather up there is terrible, that the folks in the south speak the same language (after a fashion) and the winter isn't nine months long. This has led to a large degree of "Git the hell back to whur ye cum from." Personally I think it's a good thing, we could do with the fresh DNA, shit was getting a little weird around these here parts.

You see evidence of state before country everywhere which is ok I guess, provided it doesn't become counter productive, unfortunately such is the incredible level of distrust in the federal government it has long since passed the point of being counter productive. Added to that we have the on-going civil war. For my European readers I'll need to explain, in 1861 eleven southern states broke away from the rest of the union and declared their secession, forming The Confederate States of America. Rumor has it that the war ended in 1865 but no one seems to have told the locals down here. I live in Charleston which is actually where the war started so feelings are running pretty high. What they don't realize is that they're all yanks.

So we have a federal government that thinks it runs a country and we have 50 individual states that think they are countries, constantly challenging the government and resenting federal interference into state issues such as appalling education, shockingly bad health care provision, unsafe roads and blatant violations of the federal constitution. To make matters worse, each state is fractured to a ridiculous degree and as a result huge inefficiencies exist, here's an example. I work on James Island it has a population of around 40,000. There is currently no Town of James Island, it's been incorporated 3 times and has been taken to court three times by the City of Charleston which is trying to incorporate the island into the city, each time the city has won but the Town is gearing up for a fourth attempt to establish itself. Part of the Island is already incorporated into the city and as such these residents get refuse collection, fire and police protection from the city. The rest of the Island has solid waste (garbage) collection and fire protection from another agency (Public Service District) the county provide police protection for these folks via the Sheriffs department, confused? I know I am. Of course if you drive far enough down Folly Road you get to the beach, which is a town in it's own right with it's own fire, police etc etc. It's pathetic.

Imagine what we could achieve if we all worked together, to the same objective, I blame Ronald Reagan, ironically, one of the greatest post war presidents, he probably did more to foster the idea that the federal government has a minimal role in running the country than anyone else. Prior to this we had "The United States" now it's more like "The Divided States"  In the 1970's it probably would have been possible to implement a universal healthcare system, alas no more. Such is the distrust of the federal government now I fear we will never see a fair and affordable healthcare system in the US. Most people cite government inefficiency as one of the main reasons to avoid universal healthcare, in actuality Medicare and Medicaid are far more efficient than any private system spending only 3% of turnover on administration and marketing compared to over 30% in the private sector.

This ridiculous state of affairs will only continue to get worse while we have separatist politicians at a local level. South Carolina recently refused to apply for over $140m of federal money set aside for the improvement of schools and god knows we need it. But we shouldn't be surprised when it's now a serious political position to de-fund public schools completely! We have a fractured health system that allows people to register with as many doctors as they please thus allowing pill poppers to collect as many prescriptions as they like. We have a school system that allows children to be "home schooled" with virtually no oversight, or just drop out completely and no one notices. We have fire engines rolling past closer stations to service "their" people, have a traffic accident and you can have three different types of police turn up at the same time, don't like the no smoking ordinance in the bar? no worries, try the one next door, it's in another town, what a mess.

Rant Over.

Game of Clowns

I thought long and hard about this blog, I mean it's one thing to tear into someone's religious views, but sport is important and people get weird about it. However, I would be dishonest if I didn't voice my opinion on this particular game, American football. To be frank, it's rubbish and even most of those who profess to follow it, don't really care about it, this becomes obvious when you go to a bar, or someone's house and watch the crowd watching the game. But who can blame them, the game lasts four hours, of which about 12 minutes is action, the rest is posturing and talking on radio's.

To really figure out why the Americans took a perfectly good game (Rugby) and utterly ruined it you have to examine the American Psyche. This is a society that has absolutely zero patience, nil. If you watch TV in the US you very soon get irritated by the commercial breaks which are often and long, after each break as your program resumes you get a recap, this is to bring those who have just joined the channel (having lost patience with whatever they were trying to watch) up to speed. Drive through fast food, pharmacies, banks, dry cleaners etc. All of these institutions and businesses provide this drive through service to try and satiate the endless demand for time saved. This behavior is indicative of  a society that has, for the most part, lost the ability to enjoy subtle nuance and the long term view.

American football is highly skilled, of that there is absolutely no doubt, at least it is for the ball handlers,  because (and this may come as a surprise to non fans) not all the players actually touch the ball, indeed you can go an entire career as a footballer and never touch the ball. A pin point accurate pass thrown over huge distance and plucked out the air by a flying receiver is a sight to behold, it's just that these brief moments of sporting excellence are punctuated by hours (and that's no exaggeration) of tedious team changes and pep talks. And there are two teams, I don't mean in total I mean each team has two teams? So your twelve minutes of action is split between four teams in total, but this model fits perfectly into the American psyche, a long build up, giving you time to chat and eat/drink, a brief spurt of action for a few seconds, long enough to cheer but (crucially) not long enough to get bored and then another long break while the teams change and the coach chats on the radio.

Rugby is a running game, the aim is the same as American football, get the ball to the other end for a try (touch down) or a field goal. It's a game of tactics but all the tactics are decided on the field, specifically by the captain, the game is split into two halves of 40 minutes with a ten minute break. American football has become a series of set plays and the coach calls the shots. The uniforms are garish and the players are padded and helmeted. All this is set to a musical backdrop (in college games at least) provided by team bands that would make a gay pride march seem drab in comparison.

But the one thing that I really don't understand is the lack of consequence for the season as a whole, have your worst ever season, lose every game and no matter, you're back next year, playing the same teams again. One thing I admire about Americans is their "stand on your own two feet attitude", "Sink or swim" except in Football, crap this year? never mind, next year we'll give you the pick of the college crop. Having a bad college season? No sweat, you'll just keep playing in a series of more and more meaningless games until you win something. It's just so un-American, everyone's a winner? it's practically communism.

Now goodness knows Americans love their minority sports, Baseball, Basketball, Women's Basketball??, Lacrosse??? but to take a beautiful game of power, grace and fearless aggression, dress it in helmeted gold skintight lurex, supported by gay bandsmen and say "don't worry no matter how crap you are we'll be back next year" is just plain wrong. It's a classic case of the triumph of style over substance. The football season itself is mercifully short but the lead up to it, the hype, starts just after the previous season ends, there's even a lead up to the draft which in itself is a microcosm of what's wrong with the whole game. Instead of having a draft season, allowing all involved to figure out who goes where, everything is settled within a few hours. This allows the marketing people to build the event up, sell lots of advertising and thus create an event out of what is actually an administrative exercise.

College Football, oh dear, where do I start? I often hear, "It's the true game, they are playing for the love of the game". Nonsense they are playing for an NFL contract and don't tell me they wouldn't take a pay check if it was offered. Personally I think they should be paid because the vast majority won't make it in the Pro's and an average degree in hotel and leisure management isn't going far in Mississippi. There is far too much hype surrounding college football programs and not enough on academics, It's no surprise that Harvard and Princeton don't have famous football teams, they do however produce some of the brightest stars in law, engineering, business and medicine.

Which brings me back to my first point, deep down, nobody really cares, you can buy a package on cable that plays six games at once, I follow real football or "Sacker" as it's called here and when my team is playing that's all I care about. I have zero interest in a any other game, I may be interested in the result of another game because it may impact on my teams destiny, but not the game itself. I am passionate about my team, don't get in the way, don't talk to me. I know when the game starts, when it finishes and what the consequences of every possible outcome will be. I don't have to wait on the outcome of a committee meeting to see where my team is "ranked" (not that it actually matters) because we play for points and the consequences of not accumulating enough points over a season are truly terrible, relegation to a lower division, loss of key players and a huge loss on TV revenue. So when it comes to the last few games of the season, I care, I really do.

Rant Over.