It’s the anniversary of the war and I’m constantly reminded that I was raised with a war raging on, only in Vietnam, not Iraq. Its too bad that we aren’t faced with the horific details on TV every night, but I guess speculating on Anna Nicoles’s death is more entertaining. Our country thrives on war and I’m sorry to say that most of our populace don’t understand this fundamental business strategy.

Bush never served in a war and that was also missed by the voters who succumbed to Republican mind games. Well their sons and daughters are paying the price right now.

The whole election fraud thing and the second bundled event has led me to be embarassed to be an American. As I travel around the world - I have to apologize for my country and its business model. But its our lifestyle that I’m proud of.

Not the gluttonous, drunken sprawls of urban miasma, or the endless strip malls - but just the sheer refinement and safety of suburbia. Where I live we can leave our doors unlocked, the wild trukeys come clucking up to my doorstep and all sorts of wonderful stores, resturants and parks are within walking distance. I can hear the BART off in the distance, so I’m :45 from San Francisco by automated train, yet I have Mt. Diablo as my backyard.

There’s no place like America. This was crystalized when Arvind - one of our programmers from India - came to visit this week.

Arvind got to eat Olives for the first time yesterday. Imagine eating an Olive for the first time. Mmmmmm - yummy! And it was also the first time he had a Ceasar Salad - so I got to tell him the story of that guy in Tijuana.

Today he asked me “what’s mayonnaise?” and I got to tell him about Tofu, Falafel, Passover and the history of the SEC.

As we drove to his hotel - he stared in wonderment at American strip malls, suburban housing and asked “do all American cars drive his fast?”

So now matrix these two factors together.

America will continue to wage war, it has to - it makes too much money from War. Its baked into our country’s DNA. And a Indian vegetarian roaming through the hallways at Whole Foods gets to see how our abundance, standard of living and conciencious concern over our health leads to a litanie of organic and ‘healthy’ foods. We don’t live by meat alone, but it sure seemed that way as I tried to figure out how I was going to ‘feed’ Arvind - since he wouldn’t touch any kind of meat, fish or fowl.

Is this global divide the price we pay? Will there always be this push-me - pull-you balance between safety and distruction, wealth and poverty, happiness and misery?

On one hand I was all worried about feeding our vegetarin programmer, while on the other hand he has found himself living in the midst of the most glorious splendor of healthy, nutricious food the world has even seen - Central Valley grown, organic Whole Foods shopped fresh vegies and health food. Arvind instinctfully headed for teh salad bar and he was fine.

I atempted to get him to try the marinated Tofu, Potatoe Latkes orVeggie burgers, but he opted out for salad and when faced with too many choices for salad dressingm he siply asked for “lemon”. Arvind’s fascination and humble learning experience are tempered by the fact that his country just cut a ‘nuclear’ deal with the US and its neighbor Iran is starting to flex its muscles.

The U.S. is learning AGAIN that waging war is not as simple as rolling out the tanks and bombing strategic targets. War is about killing people, man by man, street by street. And even after they clear out a street, those dam ‘insurgents’ come back and they have to start all over again.

Sound like the Viet Cong?

It should. It is almost exactly like Vietnam.

But the wonderment and education that Arvind is having almost makes it all worth it. As we shopped at Fry’s today, everyone we ran into was a Pakistani, Jordanian, Brazlian, Swedish, Mexican. I explained to Arvind that in every restaurant in California - regardless of its ethnicity - a Mexican is working there.

Mexicans stand on the street in California - looking for work - while ‘Help Wanted’ signs hang in the local McDonalds who can’t or won’t hire illegal aliens. All the small grocery stores are now owned by Koreans and just about half the folks working for TSA at the airport are Fillipino.

We are a country of immigrants - always have been - always will be. The cultural differences which make our lifestyle the most attrractive commodity on the planet earth - also brings with it this horrible, greedy, gluttonous culture - that I’m embarrassed to say I belong to.

Being an American is a confusing and discourgaing experience nowadays. I meet people all the time who have never been outside of California let alone outside the U.S. They don’t even KNOW of the hypocrisy that is our government and miliary industrial complex.

The way our country works is that we go out and reak destruction and havoc, call it “helping to foster democracy” yet we can’t even afford to help our own people in New Orleans. We spend a few $$billion$$ a month on waging war, but we can’t afford health care of our wounded veterans.

The profound hypocrisy I see going on is stymied by this incredible lifestyle, abundant store shelves stocked with incredible foods and products and an economy that helps to define the future.

Meanwhile China has a couple of trillion in cash, our cash - and the global economic unbalance continues.

Where it leads is anybody’s guess. Maybe Dubai.

I wouldn’t be storing my wealth in dollars though.

And me - well - we’re moving to Italy this summer (for June and July), setting up shop in Japan and charging all our clients in Euros.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.