Act Of Contrition

So, I may no longer live on Earth but I'm still an Earthling. I no longer live in the United States of America, either, but I'll always be an American and that's just fine with me. I'm just no longer proud to be either an Earthling or an American. That's all. But, out here on the red planet, none of that matters.

I can't blame two months of living under the Martian ruins for how I feel about good ol' planet Earth and its most powerful nation. Foraging for Martian food and water for the past eight weeks didn't make me bitter. I foraged like a rodent in the streets and alleys of America's biggest cities for a lot longer than that. Eight years, in fact. Long enough to know that living the American dream was only available to those who towed the line and kept their mouths shut. Those who married and reproduced like good little citizens. The happy consumers who bought a lot of American products and never complained about their quality or safety. Those who obeyed.

And now that the 7th Anniversary of 9/11 is over and done with, I'm emboldened enough to say that I feel more empathy for those in the so-called Third World countries on Earth than I do for anyone else on that backward and greedy planet. You know who I mean. The ones who eat a bowl of rice or eat mud pies or suck on stones for their supper. The hungry masses who have become the horrified masses when they learn about or see Americans dancing the jig while sucking down pizza and burgers on American television. And realizing that this is not their supper but their snack food.

Americans will never realize the real truth about September 11th, 2001. If they ever did, they'd probably never own up to it. The truth about 9/11 is that America put itself in the cross hairs of its enemies every time it squandered foreign lives to save a nickel on a gallon of gasoline, every time its companies made a thousand percent profit on a product by paying foreign workers next to nothing to make it, often in "sweat shops" that employed underage children and, of course, every time they danced the jig in TV commercials while sucking down pizza and burgers. While most of the Third World simply went hungry.

It's no way to run a planet.