What Constitutes a Patriot?

What constitutes a patriot? In my case it meant leaving the USA to live as an expatriate.

For years I have watched government after government - whether Democrat or Republican - stripping away America's infrastructure and transferring wealth first from the economic lower classes , and now from the middle class (at least what is left of it) into the hands of America's real government - an autocratic and largely annonymous beast that cannot seem to feed enough.

Economic crisis - what crisis? This so-called meltdown was engineered from the start - just look at the latest profit statements from the large banks that received billions in taxpayer bailouts. Has anyone stopped to ask the question why the stock market is now rallying even as dreadful economic news (such as rampant unemployment, and underemployment, not to mention dismal corporate earnings) pours through the breech in the dyke? Apparently, all is going according to plan - at least as far as Wall Street is concerned. The transfor of wealth goes on unabated. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is reeling from this unabashed greed, which continues under the present administration at a rate that makes even the previous one pale - all rhetoric notwithstanding. Am I surprised? No way!

And what about health care? Is this debate even ethical? Where is the question, I ask? How can it be right for companies to make a profit from the misery of others?

I now live in a country ranked in the top 15 countries by the WHO (the USA is ranked #37, believe it or not). Here the health care system is financed by a simple consumption tax. Nobody goes without, and everybody more or less loves the system. Likewise, we have no homeless people or elderly people burning sticks of furniture for warmth. The government makes the American people believe this problem is difficult - it is not. It is actually quite simple. Enact a consumption tax equal in percentage to the GDP spent per capita for each citizen on health care. (In America, that is somewhere around 15% of the total GDP and would be collected much the same as sales tax is now collected on each purchase made.) There it is - done, dusted and paid for. No muss, no fuss. The only problem with such a system would be that large insurance companies and drug companies would have to give up their unreasonable profits that are taken at the expense of 50 million Americans now without any care at all, 20 million of them children!

What's more, the States needs to back its fiat currency by something - anything real. Gold... A basketful of commodities... ( I like that approach; I'm a big fan of the carbon atom.) Anything real. Stop borrowing money to finance a pseudo standard of living. Start producing things again. Ever heard of 'work'? What a concept!

Last if not least, leaders need to become real leaders, not just bottom feeders laundering money stolen from wherever they find to steal it. They need to start telling the truth instead of spinning every issue into unimaginable confusion - not to mention creating diversions like Swine Flu epidemics, or imaginary enemies, or scapegoats.

It may not be easy to find (and it is even harder to assemble the bits and pieces into any sort of meaningful package) but the truth is out there. One must dig for it - and deeply! Start digging. Then start crowing! Your future, and even your life, might depend on your activism. It may not make you very popular, because as one of my heroines, Lisa Simpson, once said, "Some people simply prefer illusion to despair" (credits to Matt Groening), but the alternative is, well, unthinkable...

So concerning patriatism, I love my country - so much that I am sick about what has happened to it - all in the name of greed - and so much so that I had to make the difficult decision to leave it in order to maintain my sanity, and yes, even my personal freedom! It is not too harsh an assessment - not at this point in time - to say that we have been sold out - perhaps for good. Will the USA even exist in ten years? Questionable. Will it be bankrupt in five? The truth is that it is already bankrupt (certainly monetarily if not spiritually - just listen to the desperate messages and otherworldly pleas in today's American music!), but America's leaders dare not utter the word. Without money, America has little to offer these days (save the kind hearts of some of its best people) because it has undermined its industry, its once-proud educational system, its artists, its entrepreneurs, and even the health and well being of its people. Is it too late to change all this? Maybe not, if somebody, anybody, is willing to stand up and tell the truth, then act responsibly. Or maybe it is already too late- a culture spiraling into irreversible decline. I repeat: I am a patriot, and I am so saddened as I watch the land I love unraveling from the seams. So sad, indeed!