Does the US deserve to survive?

The question arose as I wondered if America could do its part to win another war like WWII. Well, no. Then, we were lean and Depression hardened. Now, we’re waddling diabetics with telephone earrings. Then, we were physical laborers. Now, we’re clerks and service representatives. Then, we could convert heavy industry to making the weapons of war. Now, we have little heavy industry to convert. As the realization of our inadequacies came to me, the question changed from whether we could survive another such war to whether we would deserve to survive.

Americans commonly describe their nation as “number one,” “favored by God,” “leader of the free world,” and “greatest nation on earth.” All this is, of course, true. No nation comes close to us in conspicuous consumption, and no nation can match us in waste (many a Third World family would be the envy of their neighbors if they were allowed to clean out just one of our dormitory dumpsters at the end of the school year). We’re also the fattest nation on the face of the whole entire worldwide world—yay! What’s more, American ingenuity enables us to lead every other developed nation in poor health while also leading them in the cost of health care! Beat that, you smart alecky foreigners.

Then, of course, there is the matter of our moral authority. YES, we lead the world in that too. That’s why our secretary of state is constantly having to travel around the globe to chide other countries for their ethical shortcomings. Oh, I almost forgot bankruptcies caused by medical bills—yet again, we’re number one. Gratuitously violent films? “USA! USA!” Church attendance? But, of course, we’re the leaders, at least of the developed world. That’s where we get our moral authority, and that’s why we’re “favored by God,” and you’re not.

“Ah, ha,” you say. “How about torturing prisoners or at least locking them up without a trial and throwing away the key? You don’t lead the world in that.” Well, no, not if you compare us to the whole world, but our last president was making great strides in that direction until another guy took his job. However, we do lead the world in the percentage of our population that is behind bars—prison maintenance and construction stocks are major traders on Wall Street. And don’t forget that we’ve started two completely unnecessary wars in just eight years, and that George Bush even intimidated a few other countries into joining us with his post 9/11 threat: “…it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You’re either with us or against us.”

Talk about leadership—what other world leader can compete with that? And if our presidents weren’t effective enough all on their own, our Congresscritters would fill the gap. Even though they are unwilling to provide government healthcare benefits to any but the poorest of their fellow Americans, they themselves enjoy premium benefits for life after serving a single two-year term.

We might very well lead the world in other ways too, but we don’t brag about them because we also lead the world in modesty. For instance, we spend tons of money on scientific research, and then tell everyone what we found out for free. And despite the fact that our educational standards drop lower every year, we still lead the world in the number of foreign students who attend our universities. And even if we don’t have the world’s highest standard of living for our average citizen, we still do pretty good; after all, thanks to government subsidized Big Macs, the poorest Americans are the fattest Americans. In fact, if every poor American were able to donate 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of his body fat to starving foreigners, there would be no starving foreigners, and most poor Americans could easily donate more than that, many of them 250 pounds (113 kilograms) more than that.

We also give a lot of money to you foreigners (although it’s rather oddly distributed, some might say), and it’s not money we actually have either; it’s money we borrow from China. We now owe so much to China, and they now own so much of us, that they don’t dare nuke us, so at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore. If we didn’t give so much to you guys, and if you didn’t force us into all these stupid wars, and if our government wasn’t bought and paid for by the super rich, we might be able to pay our medical bills, or at least fill our potholes.

So, would we deserve to triumph in another WWII? What do you think?


Footnote: When I wrote that Big Macs are government subsidized, I meant indirectly. Because my country’s minimum wage is not enough to live on, and because McDonalds—and many other companies—doesn’t provide health insurance to its rank and file workers, the government has to support these people. This enables such companies to sell their products far below the actual cost of producing them.

Ghosts I have known and sometimes had the hots for

I made one of Julia Jackson’s pictures (Julia Jackson was Virginia Woolf's mother) into my computer background, and even started talking to her. Peggy didn’t exactly insist that I get rid of, “that awful picture of that depressed looking dead woman,” but I nonetheless replaced it with one of Peggy smiling broadly. When I turned my computer off for the night, Julia Jackson reappeared just before the screen went blank. I was considerably taken aback, but didn’t really believe—despite my desire to do so—that Julia Jackson was inhabiting my monitor.

I remembered a walk I took in the desert ten years ago during which I heard the ghost of Katherine Mansfield talking to me. I challenged the voice to present me with a gift to prove that I wasn’t hallucinating, and I immediately found a large, jeweled, feathered, brightly painted stick in the sagebrush. If the object had been a gaily wrapped first edition of one of her books with the inscription, “Best wishes to Snow from your dead friend Katherine,” I would have been more impressed, but I couldn’t connect the stick with anything I knew about her, and since I was at the bottom of a mile wide volcanic crater during an era when small groups of New Age men were running about the desert trying to get in touch with their primitive selves, I suspected coincidence.

Several observations keep me from believing in ghosts despite my very great desire to do so. For starters, they are seldom said to do anything worthwhile unless moaning, rattling chains, knocking over lamps, and otherwise scaring the hell out of the living, can be considered worthwhile. Secondly, on those rare occasions when they decide to actually say something, they don’t say it to the person it is intended for, but to a stranger who charges money to repeat it.

When I was a teenager, I used to visit country cemeteries hoping to see a ghost. One night I saw a red light slowly arise from my Granny’s grave and move in my direction. I ran like a dog with its tail on fire. I went back the next day, but didn’t see anything to account for the light. I even returned several times after dark, but never saw it again.

Granny died when I was eleven, and I was afterwards afraid of the room in which she spent her last years. It was separated from the rest of our large old house by a long hallway, and I wouldn’t venture into the back portion of that hallway in the daytime much less after dark. Yet, I had a very great curiosity about whether ghosts were real. One night, my mother sent me to the store on my bike. I had two routes by which I could return. One was by a path that ran alongside the house, and the other was around the block.

I chose the first because it would take me directly beneath the window behind which my Granny sat rocking for her last few years. When I passed under her window, I looked up, half hoping and half dreading to see her looking back at me. At that very instant, my bike stopped. It didn’t veer, it didn’t fall over, it didn’t slide, it didn’t tumble; it just stopped. I somersaulted over the handlebars and got up running. Fortunately, I was carrying the bread in a backpack, because I don’t know how I could have found the courage to go back for it.

The next day, my bike was still standing there, a sight that spooked me considerably until I realized that a horseshoe stake had become wedged between the chain and the back wheel.

Peggy’s grandmother was a great believer in ghosts. She told of hearing her bedroom door open one night, and footsteps crossing the room. She anxiously poked her head out from under the covers and saw a sallow figure in antique clothes standing at the foot of her bed staring at her. She drew her head back in, and spent the rest of the night saying, “Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus…”

And, of course, there was my dear demented, departed father who became convinced that he was being haunted by my mother’s ghost. He was notoriously forgetful about where he put things, and she had been able to point him in the right direction. When she died and could no longer do this, he became convinced that she had returned from the grave, and was hiding important papers, stealing money, and even rearranging the furniture.

He went from being annoyed to becoming absolutely livid, and the situation climaxed one night when he felt her pull back the covers and sit on the bed as if to join him. He said, “Kathryn, you’re dead, and I expect you to start acting the way someone in your situation is supposed to act.” She left the room, never to return. Since his death—in this house—Peggy and I often have a good laugh when we can’t find something. “Tom must have taken it,” we say.

If I really were to see my father’s ghost, I would only be worried if he should be as crazy dead as he was alive. Oh, I know, I just admitted to talking to not just one but two women who died long ago, but surely there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that, now is there?