Rot and Decay

Give me your best baritone voice, and chant along with me: “USA! USA! We’re Number One. We’re Number One.”

Now switch to a tinny falsetto, and let’s speak the truth: “No we aren’t.”

Although we cling to the certitude that we are the cat's meow of civilized societies, we are actually Number 11 in the rankings of the best countries in the world, according to a recent Newsweek report.

Newsweek measured countries on health, economy, education, political environment and quality of life in an attempt to answer the question: "If you were born today, which country would provide you with the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous and upwardly mobile life?"

Unsurprisingly, the countries faring best were the enlightened democracies, and highly regulated free market economies, of Northern Europe...Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway. You know, the countries the Tea Baggers refer to as the “socialist nations.”

So let’s examine several of Newsweek’s categories and see where we stand here in the good US of A.

Starting with health, we’re all the way down at Number 37, according to the World Health Organization. How is it possible that we rank below Oman, at Number 8? France (Number 1, those despicable Socialists) I could understand, but Oman??? Even Colombia, home of the Drug Kingpins, outranks us at Number 22.

I suspect our miserable ranking is connected to the reality that we spend more on medical care, but with worse outcomes, than any industrialized nation in the world.

Let's see where we stand in education. Ouch! Don’t we have Harvard and Berkeley? Oh, wait...We’ve starved our K-12 program so badly for the last 30 years that the most highly-qualified students for those lofty institutions are foreigners. Looks like our home-grown high school graduates are destined for careers at Taco Bell.

Isn’t anyone upset by this? This is our future we’re talking about here. We’re eating our seed corn, folks.

Political environment? We have become totally dysfunctional, with the Party of No obstructing every positive move our President tries to implement, just because they want to see him fail to further their own nefarious political purposes.

We have become an embarrassment throughout the civilized world. (If you don't believe that, get a passport and go see for yourself.)

But at least we still have Lady GaGa. Whoever the hell she is.