The FAT of the Land

I’ve been putting off this journal entry – might be something I’ll put on the KilltheWeb.com blog in the future but I don’t know right now…

I was flipping through Sports Illustrated and it’s current issue with Mia Hamm on the cover and got to Rick Reilly’s Op/Ed piece that is stuck on the last page of the magazine. He started talking about kids and obesity problems and it started making me think of this whole weight issue that keeps coming up with Americans.

As my friend Keith from Calgary noted to me after his trip to Seattle — Americans are fat! The question is WHY are we fat? Looking at the world (and even the current political conditions in the US), it’s easy to see why we are obese.

Americans do not sacrifice when we come up with hardships, and the powers that be push that in order to gain extra support — don’t make sacrifices with things you love, keep doing it just as you did it and we’ll make do! What we’re making due with, however, is increased risk of heart disease, of heart attacks, and other health problems brought on by too much. It’s gluttony and it’s not just a food measure.

Anyone remember the current Energy Bill that Herr Dubya has tried pushing on America the last few years? Dick Cheney stumped for this bill early on and he talked about MORE, MORE, MORE when it came to producing energy. He didn’t talk about conserving energy, he didn’t talk about alternate means of energy (or if he did, he talked about how they were unrealistic). He just stressed the Republican preamble: Enjoy thing sto the fullest and lets deal with the problems only after they have screwed us to the moon.

Gluttony.

What happened to conservation? What happened to making sacrifices? I mean, we are footing a huge bill on a war in Iraq and we haven’t been asked to cut back in any way to make funding this farce any easier. In a hogwash move, instead of trying to find the money to fund this thing in Iraq, we’ve cut the amount of money the government has to play around with and started wracking up even MORE debt on our United States Credit Card.

At one point in the near future, creditors are going to demand their money and when it comes due — all hell will break loose.

We’re a fat nation because we don’t compromise, we don’t make shared sacrifices in order to do things as a country and achieve things… Instead we sit on our asses, watching NBC Must-See Thursday and wondering who else Rachel will end up fucking before the Series Finale this year. We don’t think of the people who can’t afford a TV – can’t afford health care, can’t afford a domicile (home or apartment), can’t afford health insurance… We don’t even WANT to think about it. We want what’s ours and don’t see the reason why we should let any of ours help their cause. That includes having our food or other things rationed off at wartime. We don’t sacrifice in times of trouble – we just keep going at the same rate. That’s how it’s been since the end of World War 2.

Here’s another example of the greed/glutton of America. Pinellas County, the county I live in in the Tampa Bay metro region, wants to raise the gasoline tax six cents in order to pay for new roads and road maintenance. How did people react? 70 people spoke and they all said no. How much would that tax be? 12 cents, total, on a gallon of gas. I know, with gas prices skyrocketing, having 6 cents added on to the current tax level seems like a stiff increase… but when you consider 6 additional cents in the grand scheme of things – it’s really sad to see that no one is willing to cough up just a few pennies more at the pump.

And this goes for everything in America — who wants to pay for schools when you can have a tax cut and have a few bucks more in your pocket? Who wants to pay for health care for others when it’s your own health that matters — and you never need to use your health care options anyway?? Who needs it? Who wants it? You need MORE of this and MORE of that and god damn it – you will get more.

America isn’t the land of the free and home of the brave any more — it’s the land of the greed and the home of the lame. Unless we take back America from the fat cats and special interest groups, the prophecies i have been reading are going to start coming true and things are going to get bleak — especially when Herr Dubya realizes god wasn’t on his side when he started wars.