Not Different... Special

After listening to last week’s apolo-fest, where everyone who was anyone got a chance to say how sorry they were, claimed responsibility for everything, and drew a diagram like one of those shopping mall ‘You Are Here’ maps, with the arrow pointing to where the buck stopped – and consequently removing any and all actual accountability from the exercise – I began to wonder if maybe (just maybe) the American president got it wrong.
Maybe Americans aren’t all decent, honour-bound, true-blue saviours of human rights, as capable of the horrific acts alleged in the Abu Grhaib prison as they would be of taking photographs of them… Perhaps a very few Americans are somewhat… different… in their approach.
So instead of declaiming, hand on heart, that the actions of the few in torturing - excuse me – in abusing Iraqi prisoners was inconsistent with the morals and the values… the way of life, the ‘true nature and heart’ and ‘the way we do things in America’, perhaps the President should have emphasized the flip side of the argument; turned the beat around… changed a negative to a positive… made lemonade out of the bitter tears of wimpy, Liberal apologists.
Exchanged the image of the compassionate, moral, value-laden American everyman into that other icon of American lore – the ‘Rugged Individualist’.
After all, what’s the point of freedom if everyone’s going to end up being exactly the same? That’s commie talk!
It’s time to start appreciating that the great thing about being American, is a constitutional guarantee to be free to be whomsoever (within certain strict bounds of reason) they like – unlike, for instance, the poor pathetic citizens of other countries like Iraq and Russia and Cuba and China; do those sad sods even have constitutions by the people and for the people to protect the people? God, no – they even dress the same if the stock photos of millions of heathen Chinese bicycling in to work are to be believed… (and is it just me or do they all look somewhat the same too? And the brown people – come on… no one can tell them apart!)
Americans are good, wholesome, decent people not because they’re all the same, but because they’re allowed to be different.
It’s a fact - when you’re free to be you and me, you have no need to lash out against those weaker or less powerful than you; people who don’t deserve all the natural resources God mistakenly saw fit to bestow upon them.
But to be honest, freedom has a price; there are just a few things you can’t do if you’re fortunate enough to be American – and they’re really mostly insignificant things you wouldn’t want to do even if you could. In fact, they’re pretty awful things, come to think of it, things it would probably be pretty good to stamp out, so as not to trouble people bent on rugged individuality with having to be exposed to things which aren’t just individual and unique, or special and personal, but sick and just plain wrong.
There may not be any loopholes in the constitution that allow for eradicating these things (yet…) but any rugged individualist with an ounce of sense knows that once a man has won the Presidency of the United States fair and square, that man ought to be able to make a few changes - a few adjustments – after all, if he doesn’t know what’s right, who does?
So the following are a few (a very few, really) things you actually can’t do and be a good rugged individualistic American. (You really can’t.)
1. Love someone of your own sex.
Is that so hard? And it’s not even an absolute rule. Come on: you can love your same sex children and your same sex family members and even your same sex brothers in arms (fighting brings people together in a beautiful way) but no matter what the lunatics in Massachusetts and Canada are doing, you really shouldn’t marry them (or in some states, commit certain disgusting sexual acts with them) because it’s against God’s will – and everyone knows God is on the side of the good guys – and who’s the good guys? Us (I mean the U.S.) that’s who!
2. Control your own body.
This rule actually applies only to women, and for a short time anyway, it seems it will still be legally possible for them to control their bodies in such a way that they are allowed to be murdering bitches from hell who deserve what they get; because let’s face it - we can’t trust God to give ‘em what they deserve on Judgment Day. (No one’s saying he isn’t a great God and all that, but bless Him – he’s pretty big on this ‘forgiving’ thing – and we all know that certain filthy disgusting whores don’t deserve forgiveness.)
This isn’t so much a bypassing of the Almighty’s dibs on judging, as it is an insurance policy that by the time they get to him, they’ll be – by force if necessary – washed free of all sin and he won’t have to trouble himself with passing judgment on their disgusting characters. Let’s remember: We’re here to help.
3. Voice an Opinion Counter to the Government of the Day.
And to be perfectly candid, this is really just a common sense rule. I mean, everyone knows that when the Government of the Day declares war (or even liberation) on someone, they must be pretty mad and have a pretty good reason – or they wouldn’t be the Government of the Day! (Talk about obvious…) So everyone also knows that you have to pick sides; you’re either with us or against us – almost goes without saying doesn’t it? – and this applies to other countries too. Anyone who didn’t see the sense in attacking Iraq after the attack on the World Trade Centre by Afghani terrorist extremists, is just being like the little girl with the curl. (When she is good and agrees, she’s very, very good, but when she chooses to judge the situation based on her own values, morals, beliefs and intelligence and comes up with a different answer, she’s horrid. And she doesn’t deserve any dessert – or re-building contracts – either.)
And that’s it; perfectly simple and really, when you think about it, three little rules aren’t so very much when you understand all you get in return:
1. You get to fight for country in wars that will save you from going to war. You get to kill people who by God, if given a chance would probably kill you first. That is, they’d probably kill you once they had scraped together something to eat for themselves and their children and fought against the elements and their own wickedly individualistic regimes to create a small safe home to raise their children and set aside some time to worship in their own – obviously wrong and wicked – way. But the minute they were able to sustain the bare necessities of life, you better believe they’d be coming after you, if you weren’t already there first bombing the crap out of them… so it’s best to just get on with it. The best defense is a good offense as everyone knows, no use arguing – get out your gun and start shooting! Check out the constitution – it isn’t just a delightful privilege, it’s your right!
2. You get to be identified as an American.
No matter what people are saying in the communist rags
passing as newspapers these days, everyone knows that America is the greatest nation on earth, peopled by the greatest people, and led by the greatest leader... that is to say, President, the free world (really just America now) has ever known. It doesn’t matter than you can’t really go to Europe without angering the denizens by your arrogant, know-it-all presence and your habit of sneering at everything that isn’t American, or at the very least pronouncing it cute; everyone knows that without our permission, Europe wouldn’t even be Europe – it’d be a nasty foreign place with strange tasting food and people speaking foreign languages and wearing different types of clothes and thinking different kinds of thoughts and even questioning the moral superiority of America. There are dark corners of the place where that’s happening even now. But we’re keeping an eye on them – don’t you worry! How else do you think you can get a decent hamburger in almost any city in the world? If not for America and Macdonald’s…
3. Finally, being a Rugged Individualistic American means you’ll get what you deserve.
And like it or not, everyone else will get what you deserve too.