Author: R J Adams

I have escaped.

Well, in truth, not quite. I’m hopeful of winging my way out of this madhouse they call America in a matter of hours. We’ve made it to Detroit airport without being apprehended. Our flight leaves for London, England at 2218 hours. From there, a car to France – and sanity!

Sadly, it’ll only be for three weeks, but even that short duration will be heaven, and there’s hope we may one day return there for good. This trip is a recce of the housing market and the delights Brittany has to offer. I hope to convince my good lady that life can be better elsewhere than America.

Until later…

Au revoir et bonne journee!

The recent expose of Scientology by HBO (based on Lawrence Wright’s book) leaves many unanswered questions concerning human society and the way it is organised and regulated. Perhaps a more appropriate phrase might be, “…how it is disorganized and unregulated”.

The marketing of snake oil has never been an entirely American invention. Conmen and tricksters have been around this earth since time immemorial but it’s taken the United States, with its twisted Constitutional ideals of “freedom”, to really hone the art of snake oil marketing into an art-form so perfect it’s allowed Scientology to evolve into a multi-billion dollar entity sufficiently powerful to force the Internal Revenue Service into capitulating to its demands.

I know of no other nation in the Western world where Scientology would have been allowed to blossom as it has in the United States of America. It’s so obviously not a religion that a levy of taxes would have rapidly put paid to its leaders’ aspirations, as would have been the case in America had the First Amendment of the Constitution not been so successfully twisted as to allow this monumental confidence trick to take on and win its case against the IRS.

We are living in a world where the violation of religious principle for political power is only too evident. Scientology bears no more true adherence to a religion than Star Trek or Game of Thrones. ISIS has as little to do with true Islam as The Unification Church has with orthodox Christianity.

Everywhere, religious belief is under attack from those who would use violence and brainwashing to gain power over others. And, who is to blame for this situation? Can there be any other fault but our own?

The human ego has long refused to accept its mortality. How can we possibly be just another animal? After all we have intelligence, and abilities impossible for any other creature on the planet. We put great store by our intelligence. We’ve built civilizations – but, so do termites. We’ve learned to farm and harvest our food – but, so do ants.

We’ve studied the Universe and discovered our beginnings – while systematically destroying our only planetary home. We’ve harnessed the power of the atom – primarily to subjugate and slaughter our fellow beings. We’ve learned to manipulate the minds of our brothers and sisters – to possess power and riches at their expense.

Animals do none of the things mentioned in the last paragraph. They helped maintain the balance of nature, until we came along and disrupted it. They hunt only for food and will rarely kill their own species. They know not riches and power, for they have no egos.

Maybe our “intelligence” is not so beneficial as we like to think it is. Perhaps it’s no more than a quirk of evolution, a branch on that great tree of life destined to wither and die for no other reason than it just doesn’t work.

Scientology could be considered a pinnacle of human intelligence. After all, it’s persuaded hundreds of thousands of human beings to part with their money, give up loved ones and friends, and devote themselves to making the cult’s present leader, David Miscavige, a cool $50,000,000. And that takes some doing!

Of course Miscavige is not alone. There have been far too many so-called ‘pastors’ of mega-churches, TV evangelicals, and even tent-revivalist preachers living in million-dollar mansions, flying around in personal Lear jets, and enjoying a lifestyle that’d cause their Holy Benefactor to spin in His grave, had He not already left it and flitted up to Heaven.

Our intelligence and ‘superiority over the animals’ doesn’t seem to have done us much good long-term. We continue to prey on each other. We seek out and exploit the weaker in society for our own gain. After all, riches don’t come from Heaven, they’re the result of one man (or one group) coining in the hard-earned gains of thousands, sometimes millions, of his fellows.

We are, in fact, our own worst enemies. Our self-centered greed, fueled by the power of our egos, prevents us from working out a future for the whole of mankind. Instead, we work only to further our own individual needs and desires. We may believe in climate change, despite the ravings of lunatic politicians and fossil-fuel wealth creators, but we bury our heads in the rapidly-heating sand and choose the latest Ipad rather than a solar panel. Filling the tank of our gas-guzzler produces cries of woe whenever prices rise, and the glee of affording that new 70-inch TV screen when they drop.

Meanwhile, the pastors, popes, and Imams cajole us into believing their god will make everything right and lift us up to his/her bosom when our life on earth is over.

We think we are intelligent, yet the majority of humankind still believes such gobbledygook, and is prepared to take often violent steps to not just perpetuate, but forcibly propagate these ancient, twisted, myths.

If the human race is the pinnacle of evolution, then “God help” evolution. It has nowhere to go but down. But then, neither it seems has the human race.

Though, in all probability, the egos of David Miscavige and his ilk probably wouldn’t allow them to agree.

“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president [Obama] loves America. He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

This was the recent quote of Rudy Giuliani at a ‘private’ dinner in aide of Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker.

There’s little doubt this speech was a pre-election spin designed to fire up the Republican base, in particular those whose in-bred hatred of President Obama is based on little more than prejudice -either racial or political, or both.

It does, however, beg the question as to whether loving this country is a foregone prerequisite of being an American citizen. Having lived in the USA for nearly thirteen years as a permanent resident, but foregoing any desire to swear allegiance to something I consider slightly distasteful, I find Giuliani’s comments somewhat disturbing at best, and at worst, downright threatening.

Being born in America automatically bestows citizenship. That’s the case in most countries, and certainly in my birthplace, the United Kingdom. I’m sure there are many like me, worldwide, who feel no allegiance to their place of birth, wherever it may be. So is this one of the many ways Americans are propagandized into believing their country is somehow ‘special’?

Let’s examine why Rudy Giuliani considers the incumbent president remiss, assuming he’s right and President Obama does not unconditionally ‘love’ his country.

After all, what is there NOT to love about America?

Well, time alone prevents me scripting a tome of Biblical proportions, but there are a number of reasons why America’s president may be less than starry-eyed about the nation he’s attempting to lead.

His efforts to provide a public healthcare option, similar to those maintained by the more civilized nations of the world, was cast out like the Gadarene swine, only this time by the demons themselves – masquerading as the well paid lackeys of the healthcare industry. The remaining piss-pot of relative uselessness, now derisively coined “Obamacare”, is still under attack, as those same lackeys work tirelessly to banish any prospect of an efficiently functioning healthcare service for all Americans, to the dustbin of history.

Another reason America may prove a difficult lover to woo is her innate desire to stick a gun in your face at the slightest provocation. Not to put too fine a point on it, America is a psychopathic killer and many of her citizens love her for it. After all, a trip to the mall is way more exciting when one can’t be certain a nutter with an AK47 won’t suddenly appear and blow you away. (I believe that’s the correct idiom?).

Despite numerous school massacres, multitudinous daily killings that never make the headlines, and a plethora of brainwashing by that firearms manufacturer’s bastion, the NRA, the good people of America are led blindly to believe the Second Amendment to the Constitution is their inalienable right to stock their living rooms with lethal firearms and pretend they’re being “Oh, so responsible”, as they “teach” their three and four year olds the rudiments of “gun safety”.

Perhaps most amazing of all is the look of surprise when their little darling shoots them with Mommy’s prize Glock.

It’s a sad fact that, while America refuses to satiate its desire for lethal weaponry, it can never stand alongside those nations that have, and call itself ‘civilized’.

Who can truly love a boor, whose only idea of culture is – the gun culture?

President Obama gave up any hope of introducing gun control to America long before his first term ended. It was made clear to him there would be no support whatever in Congress for such a matter.

It could be argued that while American culture is somewhat lacking finesse, the geography of the country is the best in the world, with its Grand Canyon, National Parks, vast deserts, plains, and three great mountain ranges – the Sierra Nevada, Rockies, and Appalachians. Surely, enough for any citizen’s heart to burst with love for ‘this great country of ours’.

However, with eighty percent of the nation only too well known as the “flyover states”, the negative side of the argument is at least equally strong. The vast majority of America is frankly boring in the extreme. Add to that the fact that most Americans will never get to see any of the ‘sights’ mentioned in the previous paragraph, and for most people their country of birth is flat and uninteresting, with vast areas turned over to the production of corn, soy, and other crops, stretching from horizon to horizon.

Is there anything worse than a lover who is at best boring, and at worst extremely violent, and likely to leave you to die if you become ill? It’s not my idea of a happy marriage.

The fact that President Obama made an effort to change some of these faults, shows he cared. Though, after six years in the marriage, with no success, who could blame him for wanting a divorce?

Maybe, after all, Giuliani is right. Any love President Obama once had for America has, perhaps, slowly ebbed away. If so, the Giuliani’s of this nation must take some of the blame. One has to ask whether, despite the flag badge worn prominently on his lapel, he truly ‘loves’ America, or has he just used it to become rich and powerful?

If so, he’s not alone. Frankly, I don’t believe for a moment the wealthiest who live in this land have any love for the country that helped them get that way. If they did, they’d pay their taxes to the US Treasury and not keep their millions in untouchable foreign investment accounts. They may pretend, but it’s a false love, for theirs is a love affair based on rape and pillage. While such acts would be considered disgusting and illegal for most people, they have made it legal and acceptable by cloaking themselves in an aura of respectability while robbing and abusing the less well off to attain their elevated positions.

One has only to study the plight of those once known in this country as the ‘middle class’ to realize the truth. We can all conveniently forget the lowest class, living hand to mouth in appalling, third-world, conditions, often in shacks, or even housing themselves in vehicles for a modicum of shelter. They deserve no better. In this country they’re regarded simply as ‘the losers’.

I have refused to become an American citizen for one reason only. I’ve never pledged allegiance to any nation, and I never will. I was born in the UK. I lived in Britain for fifty-four years. I was never asked to take any pledge.

What does it mean exactly – to pledge? To what is one swearing allegiance – the rocks and dirt of which this nation is composed? No, it’s a solemn promise to support the political system in power at the time, and those that grow fat from it. After all, no country can ever be better than its government, and one that’s spent the last six years quarreling and bickering, while holding the people to ransom for political gain, with threats of withheld wages if they fail to get their own way, can hardly be considered lovable.

This has proved the quagmire of President Obama’s tenure. Despite two landslide elections in his favor, the man has been hog-tied by a Congress unable to support a black president, so much so it has brought the nation to its knees time after time, rather than rally round a leader who, a few decades ago, would not have been allowed to drink at the same water fountain.

Thus, yet another reason not to love America raises its ugly head: racial hatred. Has much changed since the 1950s and 1960s? No. One has only to witness the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, to appreciate how little America has progressed since the days of the Klu Klux Klan.

President Obama may not be in a position to admit his love of America has dwindled somewhat since his inauguration in 2008, but while he may remain steadfast to the ideals of the nation’s founders (or, at least, some of them) his affection for the political system he’s tried to lead must surely be at an all-time low.

Personally, I wouldn’t blame him if this were the case. While the honest folk of America are no different from honest folk worldwide, the politicians and corporate greedmongers who now own this country continue to drag it through the gutter of international esteem.

Rudy Giuliani must surely be considered one of them.