(I originally posted this article to another blog on October 31, 2014.  It belongs here.)

Two days ago President Obama proclaimed that the United States would lead in the fight against Ebola. That sounds nice, but the U.S. can’t even lead its way into the 21st century. America – the land of greed, stupidity and hypocrisy.

We have a Congress of do-nothings except for when they want to boost their own salaries, take extended vacations and so called business travel jaunts to exotic places, grant themselves benefits like generous health insurance and numerous freebies, give themselves the ability to engage in insider trading … and the list goes on and on.

We have a government where all Republican candidates for President proclaim themselves to believe in the literal interpretation of the bible at the expense of science based evolution. They’re a group of climate deniers who believe women have fewer rights than men and gays have fewer rights than anyone else and they make sure to put those anachronistic views into law by refusing to pass legislation that stops them dead in their tracks. As a nation, women’s rights to safe abortions and family planning are attacked daily. We have no Death with Dignity statutes. Our medical system sucks and is behind most technologically advanced countries. Our education system sucks and places close to the bottom as well.

Lead on Ebola? Just like our country led in Iraq and Afghanistan? Our government lost many millions of tax payer dollars (in cash) in Iraq and has never been accountable for anything. We fought the terrorist Taliban in Afghanistan, the very same people we supplied weapons to thirty five years earlier. But we don’t ever discuss that. And now we’re supplying weapons in Syria to people who will most likely turn around and use them against us some years down the line.

Our government has wasted millions of dollars in military equipment in those countries and we don’t really want to discuss that too much either although the excuse the military gives is that it would be too expensive to ship the stuff home. Our government didn’t have any problem shipping the stuff to those countries in the first place so how is it suddenly too expensive to bring it back home?  They would rather just leave equipment behind so our enemies can make good use of it. Perhaps the locals will turn the tanks and Humvees into porta potties or line them up end to end to create new bridges or maybe just rent them out to be turned into studio apartments. That’s only after the equipment becomes useless as weapons.

Why should the U.S. have to lead at all? If anyone should lead it would be the group Doctors Without Borders since they’ve been treating victims of the disease for about seven years now. Europe isn’t exactly broken. Let those nations take the lead on something, anything! Just send money? We always do.  Even when our own people go hungry, homeless and without medical treatment.  People in central California don’t even have water in their homes as a result of a 4-year long drought. Where is government planning when it’s really needed?

The hypocrisy of America is that we are a free nation where everyone prospers.  We like to think of ourselves as technologically advanced and yet we can no longer get ourselves to the International Space Station, instead, having to rely on the Russians. We are backward socially. We allow close minded morons to make decisions because majority rules and the majority appears to be close minded religious conservatives and those who think corporate interests and profits are worth more than any group of individuals who work hard and long to make those corporations profitable in the first place.

We don’t lead. We slack back and throw up our hands and say “Oh well” … and … “God bless America.”

Article by Ginger Marin. To learn about her acting, visit Ginger Marin’s IMDB page.