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Views from an Alien

Why does today’s United States of America worry me? As an Alien from Mars I can always fly back. But I have offspring here that like Earth, or rather, like the USA. It has been their country from birth. Proud members of a society that defied the British colonialists, assembled in the Boston Tea Party (when Boston was still “republican”), drew up the world-famous Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then established the most revered Constitution in 1789. “We the people”! Grew its economy through hard work, invention and prudent economic investment, based on faith in and respect for the Almighty. Restored peace in Europe and the Far East and beat Communism with the fall of the Wall in Berlin in 1989. Originated in 1942 the creation of the United Nations with its allies to assure worldwide political unity and peaceful settlement of conflicts, finally chartered by 50 Nations in 1958. “We the Peoples of the United nations”! Led the creation of the Bretton Woods Institutions in 1944 to strengthen fiscal security, and finance economic reconstruction and development.

Now in 2009, it looks as if the almighty USA, grown to its position by its conviction to pursue and maintain independence, fight for freedom and achieve prosperity for its constituents and those in destitute countries in the rest of the world, is abdicating all what it has been fighting for with one stroke of the pen.

Where have all the brave men and women gone? Why are people, who never fought for what these men and women earned while still benefitting from their hard-won pursuits, replacing them? Where do these woodworms come from? What’s in their minds? What do they want? Why are they destroying what was built as a nation of prudent, hardworking people believing in the American Dream into a nation of debt ridden followers forced to bow to new leaders whose only concern appears to submit them to their utopian beliefs at huge cost? Are these people not the new King’s Friends of the British eighteenth century? Is that the reason why the spontaneous Tea Party phenomenon of 1773 is rising up again in 2009? Are those who are despising today’s Tea Parties not reacting exactly the same way as the British King’s ministers and parliament in 1973, who considered them “lawless riots”? Don’t they say history repeats itself?

Yes, the mantra of the United Nations was to seek political harmony, but many of its new members that came on board after the early 50 signatories are still unwieldy nations with unstable governments, tyrannies or egocentric maniacs in power. Just look at the recent UN General Assembly. Giving the UN’s political (or rather politicized) bodies the power to rule over the USA? You want another 9/11? Go right ahead. These forces only want your destruction in favor of their despotism. Thinking otherwise is again…utopia. Believing that these other nations think the same as we do, that we should all live in peace and happiness just does not fit their mindset. The longer we have leaders who want to make us believe that, the bolder these other leaders will become in wiping you off the earth. Alas!  That’s the way it is.

Similarly, throwing your national future in the hands of those who want to destroy your freedom and pursuit of liberty and happiness, to your detriment and their glory, is a slow but surefit financial suicide. Socialism never worked in harmony. It has always led to dictatorial government because its policies, however nice they may sound in words (“equality, fraternity and liberty for all”) can only be enforced by a statist system, where few have corrupted power and the rests lives in poverty. It’s anti-economic because it refuses to accept the law of supply and demand, individual freedom to invent and produce, and the pursuit of gains for individual prosperity, which made the USA great. It has worked nowhere (Look at Russia, Cuba, some South-American countries, former Eastern-Europe, and many African countries). You say China is the exception. But China applies some free-economic principles in a statist regime and uses an artificially low exchange rate to export its goods. And the USA is selling them its debt and they buy it eagerly, and when you find out China owns your White House (its cyberspace technology stolen from the USA can already look inside), it will be too late.

Good-day, my friends. I’m not hopeful the way it looks. Better take care of your business. You bought a cat in the bag. Keep tea bagging. I’m flying off to Mars and hope to see you better off  when you come to your senses. Do it soon.

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Views from An Alien

Coming down from Mars where I was for a brief family stay, I saw Endeavour on my side going back to earth as well. I heard later they took pictures of me as they believed I was a UFO. Granted, I’m a rather minuscule space traveler and look rather bizarre with my wobbling antennas and wagging tail, so I can understand why innocent space travelers misunderstand what I am. But it gave me reason to think: I really am an Alien from Mars.

That’s why I upped the viewpoint of my blog another notch. As an alien I could not believe my eyes. While traveling down I noticed all over the flatland of the USA spots with fierce explosions. No, not that nuclear stuff, but town hall fireworks. In the air, I attributed this to what you tend to call outbursts of climate change, the like we take for granted on Mars but is made into a huge scam on Mother Earth. But leave that for another time. I saw it lightening everywhere from a cloudless blue sky (no ozone there).

Strolling back to my sunny hiding place (I can’t tell you where it is because one never knows with this “fishy mail”) I found that the American populace had a sudden fit of realism versus utopia that had reigned supreme during the last two years. Had they finally looked in the wordbook what that meant (“an impractical, idealistic concept for social and political reform” as adeptly summarized by your Webster’s) and had they finally concluded that they were being taken for a ride?

When I switched on the television, that impression was fully confirmed. Before I took off for Mars, your dear Lady Speaker had sent shrieking yells of Nazis and swastikas to the opposing crowds through her battered loudspeaker. But when I got back, heavens, in just a few weeks of absence, everything had gotten worse. Your dear Leader had joined her in telling the populace they were committing manufactured opposition. Did he ever follow a history course or read his Constitution twice? We on Mars know better. No wonder everybody lost their temper.

We on Mars have a holy suspicion of politicians, both would-be and incumbents. Sure, you need a government, a parliament that checks and a justice that balances. But we let them handle only star wars and the basic needs, the rest we handle ourselves. Here on earth, I get very weary of nice talking politicians that sweep you of your feet telling you they can do everything for you much better than you can do for yourselves. Remember that salesman on the village market standing high and making you buy that cooking utensil that did not work when you got home? Remember the guy next to him who had no audience because he did not speak so well, but had a utensil that did work and that you then went back to buy? And then that first salesman who tells you rudely you have no right to complain and ask for your money back?

America, you are sitting on the wrong edge of the ditch, and have a good chance of falling into it and drown. Utopia sounds good but does not work. It has been shown before so often: Marxism was utopia, Nazism was utopia, the French revolution was (how many heads rolled then!), and so on. The whole Third World is full of it. Thomas More himself, who wrote five hundred years ago the book about that lovely Island where everything works like clockwork, called it fiction. Well, that’s what it is. Thieves, murderers and politicians do still exist in the real world and you better watch out. They want your money and your power for themselves. Leave it to them to take care of you and you go broke. How come then that occasionally so many people get so entranced by how well they speak while not thinking about what they say?

You earthmen, especially young ones,  love to dream and swoon and when you find out your wallet is gone, you have no where to go but to the guy who took it. Next time (your health bill, your cap and trade bill,  2010, etc.) , think first. Better yet, think twice.  Best: Think  Alien.

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Views from a Foreigner 2

Last week I walked up Fulton Street in New York, crossed Broadway and stepped into the St. Paul’s Chapel. A board said it was part of the Trinity Church right across from Wall Street where I had just been meditating after doing research in the Financial District.

I gazed around the modest looking and quiet locale that had been in use since 1776, the official beginning of America’s nationhood, and noticed a table and walls full of pictures of fallen heroes rescuing victims during 9/11, which happened a little over 200 years later. I didn’t realize the Chapel had been a resting place for those brave men and woman who in heroic efforts saved other people’s lives from the ashes of what once were the heralded World Trade Towers, and lost their lives in doing so.

I then walked on to ground zero, with mixed feelings. I had been there years ago after it was first opened to the public. The same ugly depressing blue fence was still prohibiting a clear view. Works were going on now for the foundation of the Freedom Towers. We are almost ten years later and the only thing visible was a huge crater where bulldozers and scrapers rolled in the deep like Lego pieces.

An eerie feeling crept up my stomach. What I had been seeing in the USA for the last few years was anything but the remembrance of what had hit it in 2001. The euphoria about chasing the crazed culprits from Afghanistan and giving these miscreants their deserved come-uppance has ebbed away and made room for apologies to those same origins of evil. Bowing to sheiks. America’s “intolerance”. Islam is peace. Just this week some well-known high ranking socialist politicians were calling protesters “un-American”. Earlier in the week they had compared them with Nazis wielding swastikas.

As a foreigner, having lived through World War II, this got me really upset. I did see Nazis killing relatives, laughing at their wounds or cut off limbs; stealing Jews, – men, women and children –  from their homes and sending them to gas chambers. I did see swastikas on the sleeves of these dreaded Gestapo men, who ruthlessly shot people in their face or dumped them alive in mass graves. I know what Nazism is. Do they? I have lived it. Do they have a clue? Do you realize you pay these people their expensive salaries, perks and healthcare plans that you can’t afford?

How can a Speaker of the House, third in line to the Presidency, say such things unpunished? Nobody in the press reacted (think what would have happened if Boehner or John McCain would have made such comment!) What has happened to the United States since 9/11? How come you Americans voted for this administration and its congress? Did you realize what you were doing or have you changed so much that you don’t even care? Why does the great USA have a President who condones such insane language? Aren’t you at fault yourselves?

As I see it from my Mars vantage point, you are going through very bad times. I am appalled about where these human beings come from. Nazis? Swastikas? Un-American? Are you going hopping mad?

It is a somber realization. I don’t recognize you anymore. In 1776, a great nation was born. In 2009, 236 years later that great nation is crumbling from internal strife. You think the civil war was bad. True, it’s not civil war yet. But it’s heading there: it is a very uncivil strife and could get worse. This is not leadership of the greatest free nation on earth. This is selling it out to evil doers, inside and outside. That is not what these brave men and women at ground zero gave their lives for.

Although as a Mars man, I cannot be but politically neutral in the USA, I cannot be neutral where it concerns the universal basic human rights of freedom of speech, freedom to earn, freedom to pray, freedom to choose and defense of the nation and the unborn. Those are principles that any rightful nation considers basic rights, and worth defending. Looking around there is only a handful of nations that appear to have achieved these wonderful rights, totally or at least partially. Many peoples are still under the thumb of thugs and thieves. However, if you yourselves start calling your own Nazis, and there is no word from the top or the press – leave alone the voters – that this is way beyond the pale, this nation’s hard-won freedom is crumbling, I tell you, and its principles are going down the drain. Take my word.

Folks in the street, tea parties and the like, take it from the Mars Man and unite to defend what you have before it is too late and throw the bums out asap.

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Views from a Foreigner

You call me an “alien” here, as if I am from Mars. You remember, that little E.T? So be it, I’ll be from Mars. Even the folks of the national census bureau had trouble planting me in their various boxes. No, I’m not illegal. Far from that. I’m a guest .

Well then, as a guest I must watch my words. A guest dare not make bad comments to his host for fear he be thrown out of his house. So my “free speech” is constrained by that very fact: I don’t have a vote so I can’t claim the first amendment either.  However, I do live here with my eyes wide open and do observe events with my alien view.

After some 35 years, I almost feel American because your lifestyle is so contagious. It’s still the place where everyone wants to live. Many of you don’t understand why, but if you’ve been in Calcutta in India, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Lagos in Nigeria, or Mexico City, you do.

But America has changed in the years since World War II. You liberated Europe once again after losing many splendid men and women. I remember the endless flow of aircrafts coming in from England in 1945 to drop bags of food on the bare tulip fields, after we’d been eating bread made from those same tulip bulbs during the famine of 1944-’45. Many trucks came in to protect us from these dirty nazis, sometimes with no one behind the wheel because you couldn’t see them through the window screens as the drivers were black.

That’s the USA we remember, the proud and strong USA of Eisenhower that began to change in the sixties. Euphoria and decadence took over at the same time, with one exception and that were the Reagan years that did Russia in. The urban mindset in East and West turned soft, dropped its values and became complacent. Not that we in Europe did any better, to the contrary, but because America held the compass we always felt safe.

Now, we’re not so sure anymore. Oh yes, we still live and take it easy, but we’re selling our soul for Russian gaz, neglect the threat of Islamic extremism for fear of reprisals, and compromise with Iranian thugs. Because one day when you’re not there anymore to protect us, we want to be on the safe side…

See you next time.

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