What Makes the U.S. Unique in the World Today

Putting it simply, it’s that this country is home to Donald Trump and tens of millions of people who are just as mean, crass, and vulgar as he is.
These people are swine with no integrity or honor.

Putting it simply, it’s that this country is home to Donald Trump and tens of millions of people who are just as mean, crass, and vulgar as he is.
These people are swine with no integrity or honor.

Yet I would guess that most of these folks have, in addition, a philosophic take on the matter. Scandinavians in general actually care about the well-being of others, as evidenced by their deep commitment to environmental responsibility, the value they put on education and the absence of poverty. They don’t have hungry children living in the streets, or people dying of treatable diseases.
And guess what? They’re happy. Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are all in the top 10 countries in the World Happiness Rankings. The United States comes in at #24.
It seems that an integral part of being human is the idea of empathy and taking care of others. This is something we all understand innately, as illustrated by the joy we take in giving gifts. It’s not as if America doesn’t have a large number of fine people, but as a society, we appear not to have gotten the memo.

Democrats tend to be:
• Followers of science, and most scientists are atheists.
• Tolerant of the religious beliefs of others, but aware of the fact that fanatical Muslims are far more dangerous than fanatical Christians.
• Admirers of the social democracies that exist in places like Northern Europe, Iceland, New Zealand, Costa Rica, etc., which bear little if any resemblance to communism.
FWIW, I’m deeply concerned that the American republic is in the process of coming undone and disappearing, and I base my fear on one thing: stupidity, as exemplified above at left.

Seriously, Trump was born without a soul.

Of course:
1) That’s today. Yesterday, affordability was a “Democratic hoax,” just like the Epstein file hoax, the climate hoax, the inflation hoax, the E. Jean Caroll hoax, and the national debt hoax.
Tomorrow, the next hoax will be whatever challenges Trump’s authority, and whatever its supporters are stupid enough to believe. Could be the “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal hoax.” Who knows?
2) He knows essentially zero about economics and has less than zero interest in listening to those who have made this subject their life’s work.
His decisions to punish other countries with tariffs has already begun to raise prices in the United States, not to mention destroy the lives of our farmers and factory workers.
Can’t we get him the hell out of here?

The U.S. annual military budget is just under $1 trillion, larger than the next 14 countries on Earth combined. What do you think is the level of threat to your children that some African kids will paddle a boat across the Atlantic, buy a few assault rifles, unnoticed by our armed forces, and kill your son or daughter?
Your kid is thousands of times more likely to die from one of our shootings by a deranged American who bought an assault rifle at Walmart without a background check and opened fire at some school, music concert, shopping mall, or movie theater. Mass killings like this happen so frequently here that they’re like car crashes; many of them don’t even make the news.

They need you to agree with Trump’s anti-scientific claims that climate change is a hoax, and that American energy independence can only be achieved with a “drill baby drill” strategy.
If Exxon is right, and it actually is the future of energy, we will not have an organized human society here by the end of the 21st Century. Are they rich, powerful, and evil enough to pull this off? Let’s all hope not.

Helen Hicks Baker writes, “For several years, it was my honor to serve on a rural health committee with Dr. Doyle. He’s an impressive guy, and absolutely right on health care policy.”
We can keep raising our defense budget, currently just under $1 trillion annually, spent by the Pentagon that has failed seven consecutive audits.
We can provide enormous tax breaks to our nation’s billionaires.
All the while, we’re sentencing the poorest of the poor to short lives and painful deaths.
