America, that joke isn't funny anymore

America, jesus, where to start? Where does it end? It's a place I've never been and my girlfriend says that it therefore is not a place I should really comment on as if I know all the answers. But we've got Hollywood, hamburgers and so much other trash that it's hard not to stare sometimes as if looking at a car crash, transfixed, sickened by this big brooding mess of landmass that sadly gets to affect us all.

In November 2004, when sensible people looked towards an era of President Kerry, the American public, if we are to believe the frightening poll results, gave Bush 4 more years. Four more on top of the illegitimate 4 he'd already had. The Americans don't seem to be able to distinguish between right and oh so wrong. They can't see a bunch of crooks despite all the evidence. Bush is a phony cowboy born way back east, a surrogate Texan who claims to know about oil but whose own oil company went bankrupt. And like the total disaster that Texas was when he was governor, they should've known what was coming if he became president. This man doesn't have a clue, but Americans just don't seem to care. And after those first four horrifically stupid years, what did he do that made him even more popular the second time round? Well, he cut taxes for the already stupidly rich, he built up a staggering deficit after the Democrats had spent the last eight years getting back to common sense after Reagan and Bush I's crazed overspending. Bush banished Kyoto and anything about the environment that made any common sense at all. In fact he gave the oil industry carte blanche to do what they liked, something which even Republicans were rightly shocked and embarrassed by.

And Iraq; GW Bush took America into Iraq on staggeringly lame false pretences, staggering lies. And now that the Americans have lost over 1,500 military casualties, and thousands more who have lost brains, legs and arms, the Americans still think it was a good idea. Not forgetting the 100,000 + Iraqis who have been killed in all of this. Not even Saddam could've got away with so much destruction. The reasoning and logic behind going to war were lame and still are; it was wrong and yet the Americans will never admit to it, much like not being able to admit to their Vietnamese genocide, for that's what it was. Agent orange, napalm; horrific realities that are with us today in Vietnam with children still born with deformities whose origins stretch back to America's vile ways of terrorising a largely rural population. But never will you see a shred of guilt, of shame. But shame is what they should feel. Only I suspect they don't and never will.

What else does America give the world? Well, Hollywood for a start, a place which churns out so many stomach churning mediocrities year after year. But amongst the drivel there are admittedly some shafts of light, shreds of intelligent film making in amongst the rot.

What else American do we get to feast on? Serial killers, McDonald's and other fast food trash, the cancerous Marlboro man, the tedious tripe that is baseball and American football, open plan offices that are reviled the world over for the noisy cattle markets they are, phony health fads and diets that endanger your health, the imbecility of 'have a nice day', a health system that wouldn't look out of place in Albania, a gap between rich and poor that resembles Brazil, 250 million guns, nasty corrupt christian fundamentalism that infects even their phony president, and 3.7 gormless citizens who wish to convince us they were abducted by aliens, as if the little green men are at it all night every night.

America; just the thought of it makes me angry that so much potential has generated so little good. And at the top of this stinking heap is a man of so little intelligence it's frightening, a man of so few morals or common sense that perhaps the world should put the whole of America on trial for stupidity. Yet when they could choose between the sensible yet dour Democrat and the half-wit cretin who was bankrupting the country and making it widely despised in the world, they chose the cretin. Nice one America.