The Deuce and Switzerland

Do you ever wish you were Swiss? Imagine, living in a country mostly untouched by wars, hot or cold. Free of racial unrest; factional politics driven by race, class, age, gender, environmentalism or political ideology; international hatred and jealousy due to imperial conduct; religious strife manifested by never-ending debates about abortion, gender roles, homosexuality, birth control, home schooling...and the list goes on and on.

Compared to America, Switzerland is the Garden of Eden; peaceful, prosperous, beautiful and homogeneous. I want that. I want what the Swiss have.

Every day in America is a fight. It's hard enough just to make a living and keep your family safe, but in America we add to those universal burdens by being constantly at odds with one another. Every day is another day in the Thunder Dome. "Two men enter, one man leaves." We're all in a metaphorical fight to the death, whether we want to be or not. And it's driving many of us crazy.

In America, we have people that believe that the life of a human being is of no more value than the life of a rat ( PETA ); that believe that a human being growing in the womb is either a person or a non-viable mass of tissue and you can choose which ever suits your needs at the moment ( pro choice abortion advocates ); that believe that humans are nothing but a cancer on Gaea the Earth Mother and should be exterminated ( extreme environmentalists ); that eating meat and other animal food products is murder ( PETA again, along with the Hollywood granola crunchers ); and most vitally, that all of humanity can be rendered equal in all respects if only humanity would embrace communism or democratic socialism or anarchism or Scientology or Catholicism or whatever the hell it is that they believe in.

Why is that? Do you ever wonder why America is so smothered in discord? Is there another country on Earth like America? Endless strife, endless conflict and endless rancor; ripping itself apart every hour of every day.

Americans have developed one character trait over the decades that has caused this strife. Americans have lost the ability to mind their own damn business!

What our neighbors do or don't do is somehow our business. What our extended family members do or don't do is somehow our business. What our co-workers do or don't do is somehow our business. What the family across town does or doesn't do is somehow our business. What goes on in the next state over is our business. What people eat or drink or smoke, and where they do it, is somehow our business. Even what people say is our business, to the point where we now outlaw "hate" speech. What people say is just the physical manifestation of what people think, and so with "hate" speech laws we have actually made it illegal to express certain thoughts and beliefs. So much for our vaunted freedom of speech!

Our inability to mind our own business extends to every square inch of the Earth. Is there anywhere that America doesn't have a "strategic national interest?" World War II ended 65 years ago, but we still have dozens of military bases and tens of thousand of military personnel in Europe, Japan and England, at a cost of trillions of dollars. The Korean war ended 57 years ago, and we still have bases and men there. Greenland? We're there. Italy? We're there. Iceland? We're there. Panama, Grenada, Samoa? There, there and there. According to the Department of Defense, we currently have 716 bases in 38 countries. We may not be an empire in the classic sense, in that we don't demand tribute from the nations we have "conquered", but we exert our military authority all over the world. Empire. No wonder we're hated, and envied, by so many.

America is inundated by immigrants, legal and not, every year.

How many are from Switzerland?