Stupid Americans!

I was watching an Oprah show where a 911 widow – Kathy Trant was defending her spending the $5m she was given as part of her settlement for the victim’s fund. Apparently, there has been a huge outcry that she has spent her money which has come from the government and various charitable donations on redoing her house - $250 000 on her kitchen, $120 000 on the pool, sports centre thingy, brickwork, and fence in the back yard, and at least one million on designer shoes, handbags, and dresses.

More power to her I say. If that is how she grieves, then let her do whatever she wants. Surely EVEN the Americans cannot be so arrogant that they believe they can tell people how to spend money they give each other?

Anyway.

Listening to her speak, I began to realise again, and still more how I just don’t understand how this event has had such a powerful effect on the psyche of America. She kept on saying that 3000 people were “brutally murdered” that day, and that their country did not protect them, and that they don’t even have a memorial. Blah blah fishpaste.

What I can’t reconcile is that 1000s of people die in African countries every day. Blown up by landmines, killed in ethnic cleansing, and even in our own ugly past, as South Africans…

And what about the Nazi holocaust? There are still people who refuse to believe it happened. What about the tens of thousands pf people who died there? What about the mass graves they have just found in Ethiopia? What about the Tsunami, and the flooding in the south of America? What about their own victims there?

But of course, this 911 crisis, (5 years later!) is still the main story on the lips of several Americans.

Maybe I am being mean and un-empathetic, but I fail to see why the Americans are so special that they are the only ones in the whole world that ever lost a husband / brother / father / mother / sister / daughter; and Oh woe is my, I will never be able to get over losing a loved one, and the rest of the world must somehow allow them to wallow in pity and grief.

I have never been a fan of America, and am even less of one now.

Uncle Sam wants YOU to take some responsibility for yourself you stupid rednecks! Get over it, get on with it, and leave everyone else alone.

And stop using 911 as an excuse to bully everyone. Learn from out history. Making something a law doesn’t make it right.