Intervention Needed?

Last month I wrote that Americans have a too-complex life:

We don't want to have to consider the implications of our actions when delaying even a brief moment might mean an interruption to our way of life. This is why Bush told us, right after 9/11 and once the massive airline disruption ended, to go shopping and live our lives normally. Granted there is some therapeutic value to doing just that, but in that single but profound act of denial that something is fundamentally wrong if Muslims want so badly to kill innocent American civilians, I think we set a dangerous pathology on course to cause massive, collective delusion. I think America as a country is suffering from PTSD! But the more we try to deny our malady by ignoring the means to get to the ends, the more polarized our country becomes.

Daniel Larison analyzes the tactics-over-strategy approach of the Republicans:

Republicans have been treating temporary, tactical political victories as if they were far more significant, strategic victories, when, in fact, they have no political strategy worth mentioning. This is how many Republican hawks have approached problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially in Iraq, the strategy has always been unclear, unrealistic or even non-existent, so there is great emphasis on finding tactics that “work” to make a basically incoherent policy seem successful on the surface.

But Andrew sums up the Republicans' delusional actions beautifully:

On every single major issue of the day, they are incoherent. They have no workable plans to insure the uninsured and no practical way to contain healthcare costs; most deny climate change even exists; most seek to prolong wars because ... er, we have to be tough; their response to the massive debt is to defend Medicare and call for tax cuts; their position on civil rights is that gay people need to go to Jesus; their position on terror suspects is to detain them and torture them, violating domestic and international law; their position on immigration is to round up millions and force them to go home.

Like Andrew, I am concerned that there are too many Americans who are resigned to living in a world devoid of contact with reality, so long as they get to shop, play golf, watch ESPN and reality TV, and rail against the "liberal elites" who are driving America straight to hell. They'll elect people to office who reflect their "values" so long as government -- or what's left of it -- stays out of their lives, and fuck anyone who can't make it on his/her own.

I think an international intervention is needed. We need the leaders and citizens of other countries, from Europe to Africa to Asia, to confront America, the (once) Land of the Free and (former) Home of the Brave, the (still) Beautiful land that I love. We need to be told how our actions (and inaction) is killing the planet, killing thousands/millions of people all over the world, and bankrupting other nations. We're addicted to power/oil/Jesus/debt/sex/food, we're killing ourselves, and we need help.

Save us from our selves. Someone please come up with a media solution that puts Fox News out of business. Someone promote and defend a political philosphy that makes modern Republicanism obsolete. Someone show that Jesus was just a Jewish carpenter, and that there is just one God that sees us all equally. And someone figure out a way to make money less important.