Foolish Earthlings

Our country has been labelled "the worst liberal democracy in the world". But the United States is rapidly becoming an even worse advert for democracy. Just when you think that an entire nation, the most powerful in the world, can put its differences aside and reach for the stars, they tap you on the shoulder and remind you that a Real American never looks any further than his own wallet. In case you don't know what they've done this time, this guy got elected for Massachussets. Just when you think they've woken up and smelled the coffee, they go and spill it in their lap.

It might be because I don't live in the "Empire of Liberty" and therefore know nothing about Main Street, that dystopian reality where frenzied soccer moms fight to the death for a can of baked beans. And it might be because I've got an inherently liberal outlook over these sorts of things - but Obama wanted to give them free healthcare. FREE! And there's a hell of a lot of Americans out there, all paying taxes. The cost, split amongst the whole lot, can't be a massive increase. The Republicans are far worse than our domesticated equiavlent (Conservatives are too media savvy to let wingnuts have an actual say) - not just because they pander to every right-wing conspiracy theorist/hellfire preacher, but because they won't listen to reason. Scott Brown said that the healthcare bill had not been given a proper debate. Firstly, it's spent half a year in Congress - proper debate does not always mean a Fox News special - and secondly, how do you hold intellectual debate with someone who thinks you're either a Nazi socialist (don't even begin to try and fuse those two together) or you were born outside of the US (and therefore don't have legitimate opinions). Those people do not deserve the oxygen of debate - they need to suffocate in the cold waste of mutual ignorance.

And apart from slightly different levels of eagerness to go to war with the first third world country who sounds off about you, and varying amounts of propensity to jump into legislative gridlock, the two parties aren't all that different. Both the Democrats and the Republicans, like our own Labour and Conservative, have their own elite cliques, the Blairites and Thatcherites. The policies aren't ultimately different, and America would probably be better off without democracy - at least the leader would be able to get stuff done. And if it was really crap stuff he was getting done, then you can always have an armed revolution or whatever takes your fancy.

Okay actually that's a rubbish idea. But unless the US political system gets some serious reform, it will just wallow in it's own pigswill until the American Empire falls from grace and begins a steady decline. And all the other western democracies will follow, until we finally succumb to the Chinese supermecha war machines that fire lasers from their elbow turrets and enslave our entire earth in a huge, globe-spanning white goods manufacturing empire. I for one welcome our new electronic goods-making overlords.