No. I don't mean the overpriced retail clothing store.
I mean Banana Republic. The real kind. Where, if you get pulled over by a cop, you simply offer cash and get on your way. Where, if your corporation wants to pollute by dumping tons of cancer causing crap into the rivers and streams, the company pays off a politician and proceeds as desired. Want to be president? King? Pay off a band of militants, overthrow the current government, make sure someone else test tastes your food for you, and then torture, terrorize and humiliate citizens into supporting you.
Couldn't happen here, right? Land of the free! Home of the brave! No! Of course not! Our government is generally good, we elect our leaders, voter fraud is rare. The press is everywhere. You can't get away with anything. Moreover, this is the richest nation on earth! You pay taxes out the whazoo! What is really broken gets gets fixed.
Then you watch and learn.
You find out that all that security at airports was just window dressing. A couple of religious kooks with box cutters can bring a superpower to its knees.
You discover that you live in a country that allows levees to rot, putting million of its own citizens in death's way, so that pork projects can have proper funding.
You learn that government agencies like the FAA have known damn well for decades that the archaic, too short runways at airports all over the country are disasters begging to happen. The richest nation on earth ignores the impending disaster (well, maybe some bureaucrat rubbed a rabbit's foot), waiting for the snowy night when a huge 737 aircraft skids off an inherently inappropriate runway and crushes a little kid singing Christmas carols and eating a Happy Meal in the backseat of the family car.
So much attention has been given to how we treat citizens of other countries. Were there really CIA torture camps in Poland? Nah! What about those guys held without trial for years at Quantamo Bay? Had to be done. The inexcusable treatment by American soldiers of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghurayb? A terrible, but one time only event. The Patriot Act, which suspends basic constitutional rights in an effort to prevent terrorism? A reasonable and necessary measure in war time, yes?
These days, I'm not feeling so confident getting in an elevator (is anyone really inspecting those things regularly?), driving under or over a bridge (Chicago has at least one motorist a year creamed by a huge chunk of aging overpass concrete), or even buying a steak at Kroger (do you really believe the USDA has the technology and drive necessary to know of the existence of every cow in the land, let alone the proper science to find the one bovine with Mad Cow's Disease?) Proper fire protection in Peoria? Frivolous. Civic Center expansion, muni band, flower baskets... Need. Lately, it seems that American government at all levels isn't merely unable to protect its citizens, it simply doesn't seem to give a shit.
The whining accusations of other countries against America gain merit when our government places so little value on the well being of its very own citizens. So, how long until the stars on Old Glory are replaced with a banana?
