Jack of all tirades

Hellloooooo, my infidels!

We decided to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of our nation by advancing our groundwork-laying for our eventual expatriation. This isn't intended to stir any pot or ruffle any feathers; my grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the most important battles of World War II, and our family is proud of its rebellious and patriotic history. Indeed, my ancestors were the chief developers of the repeating rifle, the weapon that helped the fledgling colonies win the revolution, achieving independence from Great Britain.

No, my displeasure and disgust arose from the fact that this country is not what it used to be any longer. We used to stand for certain values and focus on certain priorities, and it was that which made our nation--and its people--great. Unfortunately, this no longer applies. North American society has succumbed and denigrated to something I no longer want to recognize or admit to, and I can no longer stomach being any part of it. In part, some of this is happening in other parts of the world, but it seems as though we're the epicenter of it. We spearhead dangerous trends and policies and we follow those of the rest of the world like cattle.

I have decided that I am sick of most things contemporary American and I want to seek to find something better. I'm sick of the forced conversion to fluorescent light bulbs from my comfortable mercury-free incandescents. I'm sick of the huge concentration of electromagnetic radiation, the irritating compression of radio station signals, the tailgaters on the freeway, the house-flipping locusts moving from area to area all the while driving prices beyond the affordability of the locals, the passive income enthusiasts, the stockholders, the stakeholders, the American football domination, the obsession with Escalades and Excursions and Hummer H2's, the prescription drug advertising, and the constant living under the threat of a lawsuit from anyone at anytime for any reason. I don't want to live in a society who thinks it's actually OK to send a text message or carry on a cellphone conversation while supposedly in control of a 2-ton hunk of metal moving at 50 to 80 miles an hour, or zip without warning across four lanes of 70 mph traffic because their exit is *right there* and they couldn't be bothered to pay attention and plan ahead for that fact a quarter mile back. I don't want to live where it's common practice to pump the volume on the TV commercials, push drugs directly to consumers, get up and leave in the middle of class, or treat perfect strangers rudely or with contempt and without a shred of understanding or compassion, call holistic and alternative medicine providers quacks without having any clue what it is they actually do or know, or give the guy in a white coat God status because he holds the almighty authority to push potentially-addictive and almost always-harmful drugs onto children and their parents - drugs whose molecular structure is an atom away from something deadly and/or illegal. I don't want to live in a place where to "opt-out" of toxic drug treatments constitutes "neglect" and gives strangers the authority to remove a child from a competent and loving home.

Dead are the concepts of family, respect, and civility toward your fellow human being. Neighborhoods are dead, having slowly been replaced by dues-paying dictatorial enclaves where transients live beside each other as strangers and threaten each other into uniformity via the all-powerful homeowner's association, strutting their stuff with puffed out chests because they have money--or at least good credit. All logic, decency, common sense, manners, good citizenship, higher decision-making, and thinking beyond oneself have left the building. How sick does a society have to get before it takes perfectly good ideas like morals and values and turns them into targets of ridicule? Really, what is so wrong with simple, common-sense decency?

There is no more creativity. The work ethic is completely unbalanced (we either work ourselves to death 80 hours a week such that we barely know our families, or we don't want to work at all, preferring instead a "passive income" which then somehow allows us to forget the value of time and gives us license to waste other peoples'). Our priorities are inverted, our kids are neglected, and these are the same kids we're going to rely on and expect to take care of us when we're old and refuse to die, deceiving ourselves into thinking we can--and have the right to--live forever, and expecting others to change our diapers until the day we die.

I know what you're saying. The grass is always greener. Sure it is. Especially when where you are, you barely have any grass. Screw it, I'm out. It's done, stick a firework in it.