'merica

hurricane gustav ... made me have an epiphany ....

my new theory is that america is no longer america ... at least not the america that many people BRAND and MARKET her to be (o.k. she never was but it's real obvious now) ... you know that "dream" of america which does include the 'american dream' version as well as this notion that we are a 'first world,' highly developed, super-CIVILIZed, leader of the 'free-market' world... when they took countries out of the 3rd world and put them in the first world, when they took africa, india, and latin america and colonized them the excuse was that europeans were more CIVILIZED ... cuz of, you know, real important things like they wore long skirts and ties and they ate with forks ...


but all that to say america is no longer america ... we are now a bootleg version of our own illusion ... let me explain why i'm downgrading us to business class, to third world, to the bottom of the international pecking order ...

i first thought this cuz of gustav. i mean ... how civilized is it not to rebuild the levees in four years ... but then again the rest of new orleans has also yet to be rebuilt hmmm ... and 85% of the people aint back (not an exact percentage) ... and many refugees still live in trailers issued by the government that turned out to be toxic and cause cancer ... and what about FEMA in GENERAL -- ... a gov. body that is as corrupt as nigeria (NOT an insult to nigeria) ... and then i thought about how the folks would evacuate and gas stations would run out of gas (not very american) and ATMs would be out of money (not american at all)


and supermarkets would have no food or water (so unamerican) and the traffic out of NO would turn a 7 hour drive into 20 hours (kinda american) ...


then i thought .... has the 9/11 destruction been re-built ... no ... there are still craters in the earth and condemned buildings in the bowery ... there is still no 9/11 memorial ...

which led me to think about where our money is at ... oh, iraq ... so if a future disaster or terrorist attack hit ... that shit wouldn't get rebuilt either ...


and this got me thinking about our infrastructure as a whole ... education (is that infrastructure? not sure but it's pretty fucking important) is at an all time low ... kids i taught in philly didn't know what or where the u.s. capital city was ... no bullshit ... and umm the dollar is now valued at less than the euro almost twice as less huh ... our current president is g.w. bush ... and it was americans who voted for him ... health insurance - what's left of it - SUCKS ... jobs that ALWAYS carried health care no longer even offer it ... if they do offer it it's like the cost of college ... and oh that's rising too and gov grants for college are also dwindling ... banks are closing and homes are foreclosing ... is the american dream moving into an apartment?


i would move to cuba but there's a hurricane there. i would move to canada but it's too cold. venezuela and brasil are the last two left on my list ... and ghana is definitely an option ...

cuz as far as i'm concerned this country is now just called 'merica -- it's fourth-world and dropping fast ...(no, i don't believe we can rank worlds it's just cuz i know AMERICA takes their ranking quite seriously.) i told yall ... it's HARD for me to love america with all her pre-occupation with ranking, order, money, materialism ... she always forgets that a country is only as strong as its PEOPLE. and it's only the people that make it a nation.