FREEDOM’S JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR…OH HELL, I FORGET!

Image by Let Ideas Compete via Flickr

So, America is the greatest country on earth! Oh yea? Well, let’s talk about that for a while shall we?

Just what is that makes America so all-fired great? What gives us the edge on the rest of the industrialized western world? Why are we better?

Ask that question to anybody on the street in Anal Fissure, Kansas or anywhere else in Heartland America for that matter and the likely answer is gonna be, “Well, cause we’re free…stupid!”

Just what exactly “free” is can be a little more complicated for them. Free like how?

“Well, you can say and write anything you want,” our imaginary Kansas Republican will answer.

Sure…You mean like that asshole Ward Churchill maybe? You know what happened to him, right? Or maybe you mean you can scribble any bullshit onto a blog that nobody gives a shit about and won’t even threaten the smallest gopher on the snob-ass golf course where the gangsters that run this country go to lower their cholesterol. (Of course, I’d trade Freedom of Speech for health insurance any day of the week, but that’s just me.)

“Worship,” our man on the street shouts. “Worship…We can practice any religion we choose in these here United States, the greatest county on earth!”

Okay…so? That and $3.75 will get you a small latte. Go out and worship a tree if you want Mr. Druid, for all it will get you.

“Okay crap-bag,” Mr. Middle America there (getting mad now) shouts! “Guns…the Right to Bear Arms. God, Guns and Guts! There in our holy Constitution. Written down forever, so long ago. One of our most inalienable cold-dead-hands-down rights!”

Sure, you and your neighbor on the next farm down the road, with his deer rifle or semi-automatic version of an M-16 is gonna keep the government honest and working for you under the threat of your sacred Right to Revolution. Oh yea!

Yes sir! You bet!…You and Bubba and Billy Bob can suit up in your woodland cammo solider outfits, paint your faces to look like an ad for one of the Rambo movies and stand up to one of (I have to admit) best trained, most well equipped, seasoned, fighting forces in the world; who can bring to bear heavy weapons, ordinance, air support, artillery and all the ammunition there is. (How many rounds you got stored up in the basement there Bub?)

Yup partner. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do! You can stand up all right. But, you’re better make sure you kissed the kids goodbye and your old lady’s got a black dress.

We can go on with this nonsense forever. And I suppose some backward tribesman with a bone in his nose and hair all done up in cow shit, sitting on an atoll in Micronesia somewhere, would argue that his country is the greatest in world too.

Not that I’m saying he’s wrong necessarily. But, I kind of have to think that some of those places in Europe that we singlehandedly saved; without any help at all from the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Russians, Kiwis or anybody else for that matter; from the fascists in the forties…Those places. Well, they seem to be doing pretty well, all-in-all, and would be okay places to live.
And the people there are free….And hell…they all have health insurance too.

And so would we, if that cretin we’ve been talking to out there in Kansas would just get the fuck outta the way. And quit pretending to be the Marlboro Man standing in the dust of the past, in the center of the street in some frontier town that never existed; feverous, cancer-ridden and consummative; holding in one hand his Bible and in the other his trusty .45 with one shot left; just standing there, blocking the way forward for the rest of us.