The following is a rebuttal to an essay that’s been traveling the Internet for the last two years, often known as “Jay Leno… Hits the Nail on the Head.” Each time I read it I find myself disagreeing more and more and chose to respond in kind. Since I have a tenancy to be overly-verbose I’m splitting my response into several posts; but I think anyone interested in politics and the state of the world in which we live will find them interesting. Enjoy.
I love my country and all of the luxuries which it provides me. But I see things a little differently than the author of the essay to which I’m about to respond. He sees we “malcontents” who complain about life in America as spoiled, ungrateful brats who take our freedom for granted. I think those who view the world through rose-colored lenses and pretending that the last six years of our nations history have been it’s most glorious are the one’s that don’t appreciate their freedom. Let me explain myself.
Since September 11, 2001 the Bush administration has used our country’s most devastating tragedy to push their own agenda and approve legislation that limits our freedom as Americans. This is all done, of course, in the name of National Security, and of course the nation has had a long history of suspending our basic rights during times of war so it’s occurrence now should come as no surprise. Does our past make these actions justified? Is it the American way to give up our most basic beliefs when some cave-dwelling religious zealots threaten our lifestyle? I don’t think so.
What follows is the original article followed by my own rebuttals. I think the author (and my friend that posted it) have some good points, but you can’t just blame the “discontent” in America on the media. Admittedly many American news outlets have turned into partisan shills, but there is still some truth to be found in what they report.
(Coincidentally this article has been circulating around the Internet under the false assumption that Jay Leno was it’s author. He was not. According to Internet myth busters Snopes.com, the actual author is a political commentator named Craig R. Smith. His essay was penned in 2005 so the statistics are outdated and the state of the union has changed considerably since it’s writing.)
The original essay appears below in red. My own thoughts are written in black.
The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?
The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3s of the citizenry just ain’t happy and want a change.
If Newsweek was the only magazine offering these statistics they’d hold little merit. After all, you would expect to see these numbers in the magazine labeled the “most liberal of the major newsweeklies.” However many independent sources confirm these numbers, not just Newsweek. Pollingreports.com displays the poll results from a variety of different sources including both Newsweek and Fox, which are surprisingly in complete agreement. The trend seems to show that Bush’s approval rating was dropping from from the beginning, bounced upwards following 9/11/2001, and has been slowing plummeting to it’s current state since the beginning of 2002.
So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ”What we are so unhappy about?”
Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?
Sure, we do have all of these things and I’m pretty sure we haven’t heard anyone complaining about them. Even Mr. Al “Global-Warming” Gore is an energy hog. Consumption and comfort is the American Way. In fact America has been doing the opposite of complaining about our consumption for quite some time now: we’ve lied to ourselves about the scientific fact that our way of life is not ecologically sustainable without making some changes.
And Speaking of Darfur, I think it’s interesting that we’ve poured an estimated $400 billion into the War in Iraq so we could hang Saddam, a war criminal posing no threat to the U.S. nor with any connection to 9/11 or Al Queda. Yet there are currently living, breathing war criminals in Sudan seeing to it that an entire ethnicity is starved, raped, and brutally murdered. We spend a pittance compared to Iraq and pass some feel-good legislation. If we’re going to police the world, shouldn’t we do it right?
Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.
Currently we can drive across the country without having to present identification, but that’s about to change. By slipping the provision into a must-pass war spending bill, the federal government has approved something called the Federal REAL ID Act. This new federal identification card will contain more information about you than your drivers license and be “machine readable,” likely by including an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip in your card.
What does this mean for you? Because the REAL ID is required to be “machine readable” it makes identity theft a breeze. If RFID technology is used, a thief need not physically scan your identification; it could, theoretically, be stolen out of thin air the same way I used to steal my neighbor’s wireless network signal (that’s illegal now too, by the way).
What’s more is that it means the federal government can track you anywhere in the country which you make a purchase requiring identification and, if they decide to use RFID, literally anywhere you take your ID. RFID scanners could be positioned at key points in roadways, cities, and anywhere else in order to track the movements of all who pass through. Personally I find this frighteningly Orwellian, but I suppose you don’t have anything to worry about so long as you obey the law. Of course the difference between a patriot and a traitor is only a matter of dates.
About that helicopter that flies you to the hospital when you’re in danger of shuffling off your mortal coil: that’s the most expensive flight most people will ever take. According to one website (opposed to the construction of a Helipad at San Francisco General Hospital), the average cost of emergency air transportation costs between $15,000 and $20,000. Of course if you’ve got great health care coverage this isn’t a problem, but not everyone does. In 2005 approximately 16% of Americans had no health coverage at all. I for one have survived the last four years without health insurance through a combination of youthful resilience and dumb luck, but in times of pain and illness it was no walk in the park.
