The United States of America must surely be the most dysfunctional and sick society the human race has ever seen. Yet again, there's been a massacre at a school, this time of primary school children in Texas, but it could just as easily have been at any school anywhere in the country.
But it's not only the shooting itself which marks the USA out as such an appalling place. This is a nation in which many still seem to believe they're living in the old "Wild West", and see carrying guns around as being a normal and acceptable thing to do. Where else in the world do the population habitually, and legally, walk around their streets with lethal weapons ? The arguments put forward about "Rights" and that its is people and not guns which kill, are specious and nonsensical. In order to bring the country into the real world of the 21st century, rather than having it languish in an imagined world in which Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid continue to hold sway, the ubiquity of guns has to end. Fat chance of that happening any time soon, though, so the killings will continue and the armed police will continue to shoot first and ask questions later, just in case.
At the same time, this nation is the most self-obsessed and vain on our planet while also sporting a vast number of grotesquely obese individuals. Financial inequality is huge, with the rich and famous living lives which are incomprehensible to most; worse is that the rich and famous are often even more self-obsessed and self-serving than the wider population - think only of Depp & Heard or the Duke & Duchess of Montecito and the message is loud and clear. American culture, if 'culture' is what it can be called has infected the rest of the world to such an extent that we are now all caught up in the abomination of 'fast food', ultra-glamourized, ultra-violent, crude and frequently highly offensive film and television while the people who star in, and make vast fortunes from, such rubbish can often be found lecturing the world on the evils of whatever is the latest fad, be it climate change, feeding Africa's starving millions, movements such as 'Black Lives Matter', or anything else.
In the United Kingdom we have recently been doing much navel gazing about our past and have been beating ourselves about the ears for our supposed shocking Imperial history. Is this not ridiculous, when our country actually spread civilisation around the world and brought an end to slavery almost 200 years ago, while the USA continued to treat its coloured population as little more than slaves into the 1950s and still sees them as second class citizens across much of its extent today. This also comes on the back of the virtual genocide of the indigenous population - the "Red Indians" - which is rarely mentioned.
The USA talks of itself as being the world's leader when it comes to democracy and human rights. In reality it is the home of self-obsession, brutality and violence, crudity, obesity and hypocrisy. In a country which parades its Christian beliefs for all to see, its adherence to true Biblical tenets is almost non-existent. Its jingoism is manifest at every turn and its inability to find a real leader who isn't either a septuagenarian or member of a powerful politcial or financial dynasty is a shocking indictment of its people, a people who are horribly divided by class, colour, celebrity, religion and wealth.
What a country. How proud its population must be.
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