Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts

Wednesday 31 December 2008

WARNING: Inciting political statements below

The following is a posting I recently made on a message board in response to a fellow poster who asserted that Australia was not only better than the United States, but in his opinion, the best country in the world. It's a little "colourful", but I tend to do that when writing on politics.

Mr. Furple, Australia is indeed a fine country, but you know very well that Canada has been the best country to live for decades. I say so and the United Nations says so. You have either forgotten, dismissed or ignored the posting I made at the NOSY board which clearly shows that Canada has been rated the number one place to live more times than any other country. In fact, Canada is almost always in the top five, currently sitting in the number three spot, one ahead of your lovely country.

In contrast, the U.S. has never cracked better than the number six spot and is currently rated 15th. They just can't seem to get past that "S-word" (Socialism) that their overseers have convinced them spells doom. Ironically (to Americans), the upper echelons of the UN HDI list is always populated by social-minded nations. We seem to have grasped that taking a little more out of workers' pay checks to help those in need makes for a happy and peaceful populace. Americans are stuck in the hell that allows a handful of born-into-money multi-billionaires to stay rich and for millions to be homeless, millions to languish in prisons and much of the rest staging gunfights in the streets fighting tooth and nail for their sliver of the American pie--a pie that is tainted and well past its expiration date.

Another tenet of "the American dream" is freedom and democracy. This dream is really a pipe dream. It is yet another way that the rich fool the huddled masses into buying into this system that forever keeps a small number of people filthy rich and a large number of people...well, just filthy. According to the 2008 Democracy Index (which measures electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture), the United States ranks 18th in the world. This kind of performance from a country who purports to export democracy far and wide. What they really export is imperialism for the benefit of the elite few Americans.