#78. Who Is America?

Who Is America? Who are we? What do we care the most about? What are our core values? As an individual, who are you? As a nation, who are we? Does the nation we call America hold the same values as the individuals within the nation? What might people in other countries say about America?

Would you like a bowl of satire soup while pondering these queries about American’s image and its values … and about yours? Be forewarned – the soup is extremely hot!

My Bowl of Satire Soup

We place a high value upon fairness and equality. We believe in justice -- justice for all, if you can afford it. We care about punishing the evil-doers, even if they turn out to be innocent. We cherish the phrase, “justice has been served”, even if it results in destroying an innocent person’s life in the process. Justice often includes revenge, retaliation and, of course, getting-even! However, we avenge our enemies with fairness and equality. We only attack an enemy whom we deem to be treating us more unfairly than we treat them. Our motto is: “They can’t do that to us!” So, of course, war is fair game. 

We believe in honesty. We honor the truth. We speak the truth with respect, even if the truth is a lie. We care about truthfulness, even if we have to lie to achieve it. The truth is: we sometimes must proclaim over and over again that which seems more like a lie so that others will come to believe it to be the truth. This is because we place such a high value on truthfulness and honesty. 

We are proud to be on the side of rightness! Though we take great pride in being right, we take pity on those sitting on the wrong side of things. “We tell it like it is!” We are always right because we are never wrong! But being right makes no sense to those who are wrong – they are a lost cause. We are so convinced of being right that we sometimes have to turn our enemy into a monster for others to be convinced of our rightness.

We believe in education. Preparing our youth for the future is a number one priority. So we initiate the education process with preschoolers, indoctrinating them into the study of sex orientation and family structures. Learning to read and write in the English language is commonly emphasized for children in English-speaking families. We encourage everyone, including high school grads, to enroll in our prestigious colleges and universities in the hope that reading skills shall rise above those of a third grader. Money is no object when it comes to higher education; outstanding student loans reaching as high as $100,000 are not unheard of.

We care mostly about winning. We place such a high value on winning because winning is everything! Our greatest praise and accolades go to those who are winners. Good sportsmanship is displayed in winning the game – not in how we play the game. Winning means having great wealth and power, so we believe in winning at all costs, even if winning kills us. So, our allegiance definitely goes to being a winner.

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#40. Slice the Banana in Half

Two lesbians, Janet and Lisa, were married in Vermont in 2000 and Lisa gave birth to a child, conceived through artificial insemination. However, the couple legally ended their relationship in 2003. The birth mother moved to Virginia with the child, apparently to avoid giving Janet visitation rights. As a conse- quence of Lisa's contempt of court, the judge in the Miller-Jenkins v. Miller-Jenkins case has transferred custody rights of the now seven year old child to Janet. However, Lisa and her daughter seem to have disappeared, as no one knows of their whereab0uts.

WOW! What a sad story! The loser, of course, is the child. What are the rights of a child nowadays? Where are your thoughts on this matter and what are your feelings? You be the judge!

One day two women who were prostitutes came to Solomon. “Please, my lord,” one of them began, “this woman and I live in the same house. I gave birth to a baby while she was with me in the house. Three days later, she also had a baby. But her baby died during the night. While I was asleep, she laid her dead child in my arms and took mine to sleep beside her. And in the morning, I saw that it wasn’t my son at all.”

Then the other woman interrupted, “It certainly was your son, and the living child is mine.” “No,” the first woman said, “the dead one is yours, and the living one is mine.” And so they argued back and forth before the king.

Then the king said, “Let’s get the facts straight. Both of you claim the living child is yours. All right, bring me a sword. Cut the living child in two and give half to each of these women!”

Then the woman who really was the mother of the living child, and who loved him very much, cried out, “Oh no, my lord! Give her the child—please do not kill him!” But the other woman said, “All right, he will be neither yours nor mine; divide him between us!”

Then the king said, “Do not kill him, but give the baby to the woman who wants him to live, for she is his mother!”

-- I Kings 3:16-27