The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members
by Bent Lorentzen
A Danish economist yesterday, August 1, calculated the amount of Yankee ingenuity, public health, social, educational and such programs compromised, which this blackmail Obama paid cost America by looking at the single most expensive project Denmark ever has invested for bringing commerce and people together, the huge bridge-tunnel system connecting the northern European continent with the Scandinavia peninsula (the Øre-sound Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmø, Sweden).
In the next ten years that calculates for America into a bridge from Denmark to New York City across the Atlantic, using the standards by which "Øresundsbroen" was built.
I understand that there are a couple of ways to interpret the above, in terms of tightening the belt. But my way of interpreting it is that America has been blackmailed by mostly one wing on Capitol Hill in a historically unprecedented manner. And some people in the world, like Putin, are currently using the whole US national debt debacle by twisting the international image of America as though it is a parasite!
What no one sees in this is that despite how huge the US debt is, much of that debt - and this isn't to deny how corporate America has received public welfare of an unprecedented type in recent years - grew from the way Americans have repaired the indescribable damage that Nazi Germany, Japan under some generals, Russia under some dictators, Africa & Asia starving/flooding/drying/dying due to anthropogenic-driven climate change and civil wars etc etc etc. encumbered the world community with.
Many people over the years have gotten upset at me for my sharp articles criticizing what's wrong in America... but let me tell you one thing very clearly. Were it not for America having invested world-wide over the centuries in the spirit of its Founding Fathers creating a Land of the Free, likely no one on this planet now would be able to be like the little Danish boy who one day had the simple balls to tell everyone what everyone dared not say: The emperor has no clothes!
What Obama and crew has now paid in blackmail to the Republicans will now make it much easíer for dictators in the making, like Putin or those brewing within the Tea Party, and nationalistic sociopaths like Anders Behring-Breivik, to more easily ravage the world with autocratic and mind-numbing might.
A good American friend, a former US deep-south cop and EMT and unable to get appropriate health insurance but creating incredible nature photography despite that, wrote me earlier today: "Maybe he [Obama] should have given the count of those of us on S.S. and Medicare who will die because we can't afford the meds to stay alive and afford a place to live...the Republicans are the death panel not the Health bill."
In the next ten years that calculates for America into a bridge from Denmark to New York City across the Atlantic, using the standards by which "Øresundsbroen" was built.
I understand that there are a couple of ways to interpret the above, in terms of tightening the belt. But my way of interpreting it is that America has been blackmailed by mostly one wing on Capitol Hill in a historically unprecedented manner. And some people in the world, like Putin, are currently using the whole US national debt debacle by twisting the international image of America as though it is a parasite!
What no one sees in this is that despite how huge the US debt is, much of that debt - and this isn't to deny how corporate America has received public welfare of an unprecedented type in recent years - grew from the way Americans have repaired the indescribable damage that Nazi Germany, Japan under some generals, Russia under some dictators, Africa & Asia starving/flooding/drying/dying due to anthropogenic-driven climate change and civil wars etc etc etc. encumbered the world community with.
Many people over the years have gotten upset at me for my sharp articles criticizing what's wrong in America... but let me tell you one thing very clearly. Were it not for America having invested world-wide over the centuries in the spirit of its Founding Fathers creating a Land of the Free, likely no one on this planet now would be able to be like the little Danish boy who one day had the simple balls to tell everyone what everyone dared not say: The emperor has no clothes!
What Obama and crew has now paid in blackmail to the Republicans will now make it much easíer for dictators in the making, like Putin or those brewing within the Tea Party, and nationalistic sociopaths like Anders Behring-Breivik, to more easily ravage the world with autocratic and mind-numbing might.
A good American friend, a former US deep-south cop and EMT and unable to get appropriate health insurance but creating incredible nature photography despite that, wrote me earlier today: "Maybe he [Obama] should have given the count of those of us on S.S. and Medicare who will die because we can't afford the meds to stay alive and afford a place to live...the Republicans are the death panel not the Health bill."
Lorentzen, currently a Jungian/shamanic mental health therapist and author of the Dragons of Nistala epic adventures, is a former newspaper journalist and cultural editor in the Washington DC area (including for the USIA). A biologist and cultural anthropologist, he has also worked as a natural history school teacher, Manhattan cab driver who nearly got murdered by a serial killer, and he draws his photojournalism, writing and videography from his international multi-disciplinary training and experiences. You can follow him at Facebook
