Thoughts on Reality

The fact that American citizens actually managed to get over their paranoia, their racial misconfiguration and their apparent fright of actual change and elect Barack Hussein Obama as their next president was very reassuring. I live in Norway but the times have shown that America has more influence on us Europeans than we would like to accept. The latest economic crisis is just a new layer of topping on the cake, but I never doubted that a McCain administration would’ve been able to top the last eight years of unbelievable stupidity emanated from the Bush administration.

I might seem like a hater when it comes to the U.S, but I am not. I like the country but I dislike what its people do to it and each other. I dislike patriotism when it’s all about creating mass hysteria without a sliver of truth to it. As an example, please compare the following to the amount of deaths based on terrorism:

Deaths from Heart disease: 725,192 annual deaths (NVSR Sep 2001); 30.3% of deaths
Cause of death rank: 1st leading cause of death in 1999 and 2000 (CDC).

These are statistics from wrongdiagnosis.com (this page) relating only to the U.S. For more detailed information on myocardial infarction (MI) and how i affects the U.S population, see here. Now look at these statistics on terrorism-related incidents:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/intlterror.html

Please remember that this is international terrorism, not only domestic. Also note that the Iraq war apparently counts as terrorism (by whose side is not so clear), and thus a tremendous growth in terrorism related deaths can be seen from 2004 to 2007, especially according to the U.S. NCTC figures in those statistics.

These statistics are probably far from correct in all aspects. But I am willing to assume that they are close. And if we can accept that they are good indications, we can also assume that heart disease poses as a far greater threat to the American population than terrorism ever has. Heart failure is not abnormal for humans (we usually die that way), but it is well known that MI (that can lead to death if not treated) is most commonly due to occlusion (blockage) of a coronary artery, usually relating to diet for young and middle-aged persons. According to the second link, we see that of the 128,328 people between the age of 18 and 44, 0.8% (or 1026) reported that they had experienced MI related illness with a 95% credibility. An argument I am expecting here is “but if we didn’t spend the money on resources to fight terrorism, it would’ve been worse”. That would be true if not for the fact that most of the money spent by the U.S on fighting terrorism is spent on international wars, not on the home front. If you go to the terrorists and die, that’s something entirely different. Pro-active as it might be, nobody could prove Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, for example. Even less proof (less than none?) existed that would indicate Saddam Hussein was going to point these weapons at the U.S. Most of the videos from Osama Bin Laden post 9/11 are widely believed to be false fabrications. I for one am of the opinion that terrorism is a word that has been used in the wrong setting for far too long. Per definition the word terrorism means “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”, and the word terrorist means “a person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims”. Tell me truly; isn’t the war in Iraq, per definition, terrorism?

What I hope is that Obama will bring the change he talks about. Pulling American troops out of Iraq is an obvious start that seems to have become reality already. The next is to change U.S foreign policy, improve healthcare, find a cure (or at least medication) for the fraudulent money market and to concentrate on healing internal illness. If the Unites States of America wants to be world police, they better be a good example. If they want to regulate who gets to have weapons of mass destruction and reserving that privilege to a few large countries (itself included), it better be a trusthworthy  country. As of today, it is not. I trust the U.S no more than I trust communist Russia. And as much as this statement would probably make a lot of patriots mad, it should be reflected upon. This isn’t only me; Europe in general doesn’t trust the U.S. The Far East even less. And let’s not talk about the Middle East, which has been almost generalized as terrorist territory altogether.

I sincerely hope Obama can steer that once great nation back on course, but it certainly won’t be easy.