Uncivilized States of America

Between the ages of 12 and 19, I went to Europe three times with my family. We mainly went to visit my relatives in England but also managed to see Paris, stay in rural France, drive through southern Germany, tour Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria and tour through Wales staying in farmhouse B&B’s. My English cousins, only a few years younger than me, thought America was so cool and always talked about someday wanting to live here. It was the eighties; no one in Europe thinks that way about America anymore. Even at that young age, I advised them that America was not all they thought it was. It was in those years that I formulated the opinion that the U.S. treated its citizens as stupid ill-behaved children that can’t be trusted with responsibility. A sentiment echoed decades later in President Bush’s statement that it didn’t matter if we didn’t support the war in Iraq because he knew what was best for the country.

Why is it, I asked, that at 16 I can pay taxes but I can’t vote? That I can drive but can’t go to a club to see a concert with my friends? That I can go to college but can’t borrow money to pay for it? In Europe, college is free and parents are allowed to determine when and how their kids can drink alcohol. At monuments in Britain, there were no ropes or signs restricting where you can go or telling you how to behave. Their government trusts its citizens to be adults and behave accordingly. If you fall and get hurt, it’s your fault and responsibility. You wouldn’t sue for your mistake. But then, you wouldn’t have to because your medical treatment is free regardless of how it happened or who is to blame.

For twenty years, I have wanted to live in Europe. As a teenager, I made “mood boards” of European villages, small farms and old towns that I wanted to visit. I haven’t managed to spend much more than four weeks in Italy as an adult, four of the best weeks of my life. Lately though, I‘ve been feeling so down on America, so tired of the lies and hypocrisy that seem to be everywhere. Why do we spend more than ten times more on military “defense” than any other country in the world? Are we really ten times safer? Or in ten times as much danger? Our president says it to keep our country safe and yet we are being polluted by industry, poisoned by our food and killed by a lack of health care and campaign of misinformation about what is “food.” Why are we told and why do people believe that this is the greatest nation on earth? Because we have democracy? We have the lowest voter turnout of any democracy on the planet, so that can’t be the reason.

I just watched Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko. All these years I’ve been arguing with people who didn’t believe me when I said that Europeans were better off than us. My cousins all own their own homes, have new cars, little to no debt and have traveled all over the world on their holidays. They aren’t better educated than me and I probably make the same amount of money, minus the five weeks paid mandatory vacation. They’re politically informed and engaged and never have had a problem finding work. And they’re healthy.

Sicko, while focused on the sham that is our “health care industry,” also asks the bigger question of “what’s wrong with us”? Why are we the only civilized nation in the world that denies basic rights and services – health care, time off and education – to its citizens? It’s no wonder Europeans don’t respect us, we put up with the most disgusting abuse and corruption but then wave our flags and tell everyone to be like us. It’s unfortunate that more Americans haven’t spent time overseas to see how other people live. Moore makes a good point about how we’ve been brainwashed to believe that national health care would be socialist and socialism is a bad, scary thing. Well it is to rich people but for the rest of us, it’s the purpose of government and society. As Jared Diamond describes in Guns, Germs and Steel, in a kleptocracy it’s what we get in exchange for those in charge taking the largest portion of goods. This article references the best quote in the film from a Labor Party member of Parliament, a portion of which is that “an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.” Keep us frightened and demoralized and we won’t protest our condition. Bingo!

Look at these happy people, they just had a baby for free:


Moore takes a crew of sick Americans, including 9/11 rescue workers denied treatment, to Guatanamo Bay where the terrorists being held and receiving better medical attention than most Americans. They end up in a hospital, in Cuba of all places, where they get first class treatment in a segment that rendered me in tears much like one of those makeover reality shows. This country is being run into the ground by greedy and corrupt politicians and corporations, who are getting rich of us, and it’s happening right before our eyes. Someday, when people start trying to leave this country and live elsewhere, we’ll be asked why we didn’t do anything to stop it.

A while back someone sent me a video explaining the writer's strike in Hollywood on YouTube. It was a very simple and factual explanation, nothing emotional, just this is what we have, this is what we're asking for and this is why. Underneath the video, there were hundreds of comments. Almost all of them were hateful vitriolic statements about the writers being lazy and untalented. People said I hope you starve. They said, why should you get compensated when the rest of us are screwed by business? They accused writers of being greedy. I couldn't believe it. A friend of mine said she thought they were planted there by studios but I don't think so. I've seen too many examples of Americans slinging hate at each other to know that we're an angry bunch of people who hate to see other people get something they deserve, unless it's punishment. But the anger is misdirected. We should be angry, we should be very angry but not at each other. Moore says at the end of the movie that nothing will change until we starting thinking of "we" instead of "me."