When you have been in the money game as long as I have, there is nothing really new to see. I have a very simple observation that will ring true but many will not heed. The belief in God is the route of all the problems we encounter. When you convince yourself, your peers and especially the children you raise that there is some external invisable and all powerful force that you must obey then you have lost your ability to see reality through clear and rational observations. When an entire nation does that, it has lost its way. The US must accept as a nation that there is no God and the only way to survive is through hard work and sacrifice.
The US has to accept a much lower standard of living, a universal health care system (people pray to the empty sky because they fear for their lives when they have no safety net to protect them. The "right-wing" fundamentalist know this and that is the main reason for blocking universal health care. Eliminate the fear of extreme loss by having a sharing and protective system, you eliminate the need to live in the world of fantasy. The US can change that quickly by preserving the separation of church and state and acting with purpose to cut away all the tentacles of religion from the decision making process. You eliminate the church in the discussion and decision making and even the major corporations in the military and the health industry will accept that there is lots of money to be made supplying their services to a humanist- secular society. If the act is too radical for the majority of the US, then start with simply acknowledging that if there was a man called Jesus Christ, he was simply a man with a refreshing humanist, non-diest philosophy. That would be the first truth many Americans will be able to embrace.
The US has dug itself so deeply into debt and has let so much of its production capacity go offshore or shut down, their ability to stop the quick decline is not possible in their current state. As Canadians we have real concern about being sucked into their abyss.
But we have a smaller population with much more natural resources. We also live in a pretty hostile environment that requires planning, central heating and a strong community that helps the worse off to improve themselves. We do that because unlike the US, if that safety net did not protect the homeless, the sick and the poor they would simply die by the thousands due simply to the cold weather. We know about cycles and how to prepare for them. We know that no matter how wonderful the summer is, it ends and the leaves fall, the ground freezes and death is only a few hours away if exposed to the elements. We have learned to live with the cold and the ice. Instead of fearing it, we know that if we have central heating, hot food and proper layering for clothing we can go out and play in this wild and dangerous environment. We learn that as kids when Mom bundles us up to spend hours in this deadly environment of cold and ice.
The rest of world saw this at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. We were dealt pretty devastating blows but we rallied and won. The US simply needs to take our lead and it too can find a way out of this very dark and seemingly impossible hell they are in.
