Why they hate us.

To preface this, I write a monthly column in my hometown. It would be an OPSEC fail to tell you which town, but if you want to search, be my guest. Some are pretty funny.  Anyway, please enjoy my March submission.


Seven billion people inhabit this planet. Well, maybe more if you ask my neighbors.  Their count goes up if you include the little green men that come from the sky.  These neighbors have objected to the new 200 MW solar collector plant nearby because the mirrors will blind and confuse the aliens and they won't land here anymore.  Regardless, there are over 7,000,000,000 people on this little rock and I'm starting to understand why the majority are pissed off at the 310,000,000 Americans.

A few weeks ago, Nike rolled out another shoe.  $250 a pair.  Of course they put them on sale at midnight, so people started to line up hours before so they could be the first.  Or just to buy them and sell them for a 1000% profit on eBay.  Either way, you know this won't end well.  The riot police were called to the Florida Mall to quell the rowdy shoppers and the event was cancelled.  Over shoes.  Overpriced shoes.

Now, if I was a human on this planet watching news, making $250 (half of the annual salary of someone living in Liberia or Zimbabwe) a year in a third world country, I would be pissed.  I would barely have enough to eat, clothes on my back, and my hovel would have a dirt floor and a thatch roof.  I wouldn't waste a year's pay to buy shoes, and be disgusted at the wealth of America because after all, they are fighting like little kids over shoes.

But it doesn't end there.  If I sampled the cable shows for an hour or two, I probably would hate us too. I'd strap a bomb to myself if I turned on the tv and saw that there was a country whose citizens spent all day worrying about nothing but Gym, Tan, and Laundry, while I worried about everything else.  Between "Jersey Shore", "Teen Mom", and "Real Housewives of <insert ritzy area here>",our nation looks like a place that wipes our butts with hundred dollar bills, drinks the blood of poor people, and mainly is the home of the 1%ers of the planet.

But we aren't all hated across the globe.  Look at our humanitarian efforts when we aren't carpetbombing your country or turning your piss-poor nation into a cruise ship stop.  For the price of a cheap cup of coffee (or the daily wage for a person living in either the Congo), I can act like I'm better than the rest of the world by donating it to help those that live in countries that lack oil reserves, diamonds, or some other resource that we are willing to invade to bring democracy, schools, Starbucks, and McDonald's to.  It's kind of like winning the "best personality" at a beauty contest.  No wonder the world hates us.