Confirm Thy Soul in Self-Control

I’m seeking information regarding the accommodations of the auto industry executives visiting Washington this week. I’d like to send them each a pair of kneepads for what will logically be the next hoop through which congress makes them jump in order to receive more government bailout funds. I by no means intend to imply that I sympathize with the heads of these major corporations. In fact I think they’re complete scumbags and rather enjoy seeing them snivel and brown-nose. I love that they cast aside the luxury of their private jets for the chastity of hybrid cars for their second trip to our nation’s capital but–come on. Are we really in a place to criticize them for their preferred method of travel? Us? America?

Here in America we drive our SUV down to the mailbox because it’s cold outside. Our children (and probably teenagers) find Ronald McDonald more recognizable than the president and think that ellamenno is a letter. People think N.P.R stands for ‘Nerdy People Reading’. We know ONE language and would rather drink battery acid than learn another. People are feeding SPAM to their families for dinner so they can still afford a Wii for X-mas. Hawaii is flanked by two floating masses of plastic garbage that cover about twice the area of the continental United States and we STILL carry our groceries in disposable plastic bags. We want to destroy protected areas to get to oil because we would rather bathe in it than get on a damn bicycle once in a while. We would rather build a military befitting Alexander the Great than give our schools the funds to educate our children because dumb kids are apparently a whole lot easier to send to their death. We, if it were legal, would gladly lynch people for criticizing our government yet it is the most patriotic thing a person can do–or at least used to be. I honestly don’t know how to be patriotic in the USA anymore. Nowadays red white and blue just remind me of jingoistic country songs and cheap plastic tablecloths (which will undoubtedly find their way into the Pacific ocean)–tacky and meaningless.

We are a nation of such excess and ignorance that a thousand years from now people will look back and see us as…well, there won’t be any people a thousand years from now. There won’t be anything living that can’t survive in the toxic irradiated pus that will be the Earth’s atmosphere and we, America, are by leaps and bounds the ones to blame. As entertaining as it is to see executives who once thought themselves the gods of American industry humbled like petulant children bereft of Nintendo DS privelages, how dare we hypocritically cluck our tongues and point our fingers? Our melodramatic and superficial embrace of green culture will surely be replaced soon enough by some other fad (probably some kind of bizarre butter diet) and the boys in Detroit will be flying the friendly skies in their private jets again before we can say “A B ellamenno.” That is the American way. Doesn’t it make you proud?