Cultural Survival Skills

America Is Nuts!

This description of someone; a group of someones; and yes even, an entire socioculture as being NUTS is a harsh pejorative sometimes wrongly pointed at those who would benefit most from kind and supportive assistance. In my professional work with individuals and families, I would consider the use of this term to be demeaning and unprofessional.

On the other-hand, it can be a wonderful American slang-invective, used as a vehement  denunciation or censure of general behavior patterns that destroy all that is precious and irreplaceable.

This is my intended use of this insulting term as I apply it to stupid, self-defeating, self-destructive, and suicidal, perceptions, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors that now typify America.

America’s psychological functioning is clearly incoherent, confused and stunningly conflicted. I could use a bunch of technological “psychobable” (as many would  it call). Or, I can say it like it is:

America Is Nuts! 

How else would you like to describe the following?

• Politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising events.
• People claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a black Attorney General and roughly 20% of the federal workforce is black while only 14% of the population is black; 40+% of all federal entitlements goes to black Americans — 3X the rate that go to whites, 5X the rate that go to Hispanics!
• Two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner (the head of the Treasury Department) and Charles Rangel (who once ran the Ways and Means Committee), BOTH turned out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
• We make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, while  we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’ become American citizens.
• The people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country’s Constitution are  thought of as “extremists.
• We demand that people present a driver’s license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
• People demand the government investigate whether oil companies are “gouging the public” because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. Oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).
• The government collects more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spends a Trillion dollars more than it has per year —for total spending of around $7-Million PER MINUTE, and then complains that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.
• Only in America could the rich people —who pay 86% of all income taxes — be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any income taxes at all.

America Is Nuts!

VTM, 3/27/14

P.S.  America is still the greatest Nation and Culture on earth. Don’t get me wrong! But, America cannot contiue to be so if  “WeThe People” do not manage it more effectively.

The bulleted information above is based upon one of those Emails that travel through cyberspace with no authorship identified. I have “plagiarized” most of this, making small changes, and have fashioned it to my own purposes. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the statistics that are reported, however, the examples of each absurdity listed are certainly as true as they are absurd.

Thanks Lee Hornack for sending the original Email to me.

Tags: America Is Nuts!, Lee Hornack, V. Thomas Mawhinney Ph.D., VTM

This entry was posted on March 27, 2014 at 4:46 PM and is filed under Boiling the American Frog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.