Grin & Bear It
The Grin Reaper
 Dear Fellow Grinners,
As an Observer in the Land of the Believers I'm always amazed by the Anglo-American ability to ignore solutions based in facts, preferring to maintain problems in order to keep their cherished beliefs. Observing this behavior in the US is extremely useful in understanding the "meme" of the n-dimensional holographic universe of Anglo-American Denial. Regardless of the problem, US/UK citizens consistently ignore the facts on the ground in order to cling to the dogma that has been programmed into them by the governmental/media/religion complex.
The beauty of the Denial meme is that it is "subject independent" and applied with equal zeal to all aspects of Wesstern cultural and life. Some of the myriad of examples include:
US/UK corporations both large and small enter bankruptcy everyday. But when it comes to banks and insurance companies we are entranced by political appointees at the US FEDsury, or BofE, who prescribe taxpayer supported bailouts for bankster fraud and malfeasance rather than bankruptcy, indictments, trials and jail cells for the guilty financiers. A recent look at the TARP program shows losses to the US taxpayer exceeding $100 Billion dollars. Recently it was announced that major US life insurers are bellying up to the TARP trough, since they bought financial companies last fall to qualify for the taxpayer handouts. British taxpayers are in even worse trouble proportionally as the BofE attempts to bail out their banksters.
The US military hasn't won a war since WWII and haven't learned anything about asymmetric warfare in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan. Americans are convinced to pay for a US Navy that has been floating around waiting to re-fight the battle of Midway, and buy more F22s for $140 million apiece in addition to F35 fighter jets, despite the fact that no fire fights have occurred since the Vietnam war. The British mimic the US as it's lapdog, junior partner. The fact that the entire gold plated monster that is the military industrial complex is brought to a halt by the lowly IED set-up by an Iraqi is universally ignored by Americans dutifully feeding their children into it's maw of death.
Israel and Saudi Arabia are both brutal theocracies that oppress citizens that do not accept either the precepts of Jewish Zionism or Islamic Wahabism. They use their money, arms, and people to constantly stir violence in the Middle East. AIPAC virtually controls US foreign policy throughout the region, and quiets any protest of Israeli aggression and documented war crimes in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, or Syria. While the Pentagon's military contractors such as BAE openly bribe the likes of Prince Bandar of the Sauds, in order to ship state of the art weapons to the Saudi royal family. Nonetheless, the Americans go along with the fact that these countries are our "allies" in bringing "democracy" to the Middle East. The Brits happily play along as the worlds third largest exporters of weapons of regional mass destruction.
See list for details:
http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/facts-figures/top-ar...
That reminds me of a Billy Bragg song that goes something like;
"War what is it good for? It's good for business."
The US spends more than double the next most expensive health care system in the world. This platinum plated system yields health outcomes that fall below those in any of the 17 developed countries. Despite the fact that a single payer system provides health care to elders, Federal employees, and members of CONgress, Americans buy into the idea that somehow the private insurance industry is their protector and savior; Medicare could never cover their children, and that pharmaceutical drugs are safe and should be force fed to their children to manage their behavior instead of parenting them.
It has been 38 years since Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs". The tired Drug War continues feeding the drug cartel violence on the US Mexican Border, with the majority of the weapons being supplied by US gun dealers. Two-thirds of the violent crime in the US is related to the drug trade. Decriminalization would take the profit out of the trade and eliminate the violence, allowing for drug addiction to be treated as a public health problem much as tobacco smoking or alcoholism.
In the UK the drug importation business exceeds $4 billion and attempts to curb it have failed miserably. The UK government have refused to publish embarrassing reports about their efforts, the Birt Report in 2005 was only partially published, omitting crucial elements related to the failure of policy.
Meanwhile Portugal's 2001 drug decriminalization, recently featured in a Cato Institute study has demonstrated itself to be a resounding success. Ignoring these facts, Americans are encouraged to house 24% of the world's criminals despite that America only comprises 4% of the world's population while suffering the ongoing violence in their communities across the nation.
Despite the fact that the US constitution guarantees every citizen "equal protection under the law" and "separation of church and state". Americans buy into the idea of letting tax-free religious organizations deny gays and lesbians the right to marry. Believers are granted purview over the exercise of the civil rights of other citizens, a clear violation of their human rights. Americans let belief salesmen inform them about the world around them.
The true US/UK values have now devolved in to being Ignorance, Arrogance, Dogma, and Gullibility. Rather than thinking for themselves they defer to Oprah, Martha, Rush, The Telegraph, Sun, Daily Mail, Wall Street Journal, the Military Industrial Governmental Media Religion Complex, or whatever issues forth from the mouth of a media-created talking head over the speakers on their plasma electronic sewer pipe, worshiping their electronic idol over the reports of their own eyes and ears.
Until our western culture loses their love of the cherished Denial "meme" the Grin Reaper suspects that the Americans& Brits will be unable to support any change that will improve their lot or save their country.
As Elvis Costello summed it up:
"I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused."
Grin and Bear It.
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