Jesusnomics

Never before in history have so many people had the ability to waste their free time and available resources sitting around feeling guilty because they have too much free time and so many available resources. From all accounts, most of these guilt-ridden souls live in the United States of America where the population is all rich, fat, lazy, and becoming stupider by the minute on a steady diet of new technology and mind-numbing entertainment. But as evil and stupid as Americans are, they also somehow manage to keep on being in charge and winning first place in just about everything that matters. Somehow that just makes them feel even guiltier.

I’ve never heard of a factory worker in Eastern Asia or farmer in Belize who spent a lot of time worrying about whether or not he’s morally bankrupt because he owns two pairs of shoes while someone over in the Sudan may only have half a pair that is the community property of an entire village. Mostly, folks in other parts of the world are too busy working and taking care of their own families to feel any sense of guilt for not shipping dollars across the ocean to folks whom they have never met. No, this type of guilt is a luxury mostly afforded to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who endure the obligation of feeling bad for the plight of everybody and everything in the world.

In the face of all this pressure to prostrate myself in penitence for my crime of existence I would like to make the following declarations:

• America did not get rich by stealing from poor countries; neither do I have a Western standard of living because I have stolen that right from someone else.
• Evil corporations are responsible for most of the jobs, products, and technological advances in the world. Ergo they are also responsible for most of the happiness in the world as well.
• Even though our processed, refined, cruelly caged and painfully slaughtered food is making us fat and killing us slowly, we are also inexplicably living longer than ever.
• We cannot save the planet. We also cannot kill the planet. The planet will be just fine long after we are all dead and gone.
• No matter what groups of politicians and international bodies may claim, America and America’s military are freedom’s last best hope. Without our blood, sweat, and money the majority of mankind would be in servitude to dictators and autocratic regimes.
• Technology is not making people lazy and stupid. People have always been lazy and stupid and many of them work very hard to for the right to be that way.

I believe that it is time for a small call to sanity for those of us who are fed up with constantly being told both explicitly and implicitly that we should feel horrible about being who we are and living like we do. It’s time somebody stood up and said “Enough!”

It’s time to start living guilt free.