Spain is now a country where gay men and lesbians enjoy equal rights under the law. A friend of mine is a professor and Barcelona, and tried to explain how amazing the gay pride celebrations were after this historic victory. Living in the USA makes it so hard to even imagine what it would be this happy. Can you imagine the new president saying, “Everyone in this United States is equal. No Exceptions!” That would be a truly amazing day, which I fear we will not see for quite some time.
If we look at Spain, there was nothing radical done. No new laws were created, just the present law was amended to more inclusive of everyone. Today many of us will celebrate the Fourth of July in America, myself included. I think this is an important day to celebrate, because the American Revolution was an important moment in History. We successfully discarded the shackles of colonial rule, a truly noble and revolutionary moment for the world. Alas, we succumbed to the enticement of imposing the imperial subjugation we once hate on others for wealth and power.
And this is what we should remember today, we are not a bad country. I love this big bulldozer of nation, but we do a lot of fucked up shit. We don’t discuss slavery, equal rights for all people, or our class consciousness. Let’s wake up and start cleaning out the closet, instead of smiling and pretty fireworks. This is a real tribute to the birth of our nation.
I’ll remember the revolutionary spirit that swept through the alleys and farm lands in 1776, and I commend our Spanish Comrades for starting down a path we should have stepped upon ages ago.
The U.S. is a bad country.
It is bad for it’s own citizens. They are not afforded a minimal decent standard of living. The disparity between the rich and the poor is huge. Basic health care is not a right in the U.S. Minimal nutrition required for maintaining health is not a right in the U.S., not even for children. Reasonable environmental standards are routinely sacrificed to shore-up the profits of rich corporations. Racism continues to exist in the U.S. Sexism continues to exist in the U.S. LGBT people are denied basic rights available to virtually everyone else. The U.S. addresses the problems of poverty by building prisons at an increasing rate. Human rights are a joke in the U.S.; just read the latest report from Amnesty International.
The U.S. is bad for the rest of the world. The U.S. exerts its military might to force its ideology on other countries. The U.S. exerts its military might to enable large U.S. corporations to thrive. The U.S. has a long history of killing innocent civilians in other countries when they interfere with U.S. interests. Iraq is only the latest example. The U.S. touts “democracy”, but that’s a joke. The U.S. has a history of supporting dictators who are willing to serve U.S. interests. The U.S. is the biggest environmental polluter in the world; yet the U.S. will not cooperate with the rest of the world to protect the environment, claiming that it might “hurt business”.
Saying that the U.S. is a bad country is not to say that all the citizens of the U.S. are bad. But a majority of U.S. citizens are seemingly unwilling to use their voting power to force the U.S. to abandon its evil ways. So there are a lot of citizens who have to share the blame for the evils that the U.S. does both here and around the world.