250th Birthday

Like democracy and capitalism, the United States is the worst,* except compared to any alternative.** 

You don't have to like Bill Maher to benefit from the facts he lays out here. That's just some of what it was like in the U.S. fifty years ago. And that doesn't get into what it was like to be non-white or LGBTQ.

Or you can just skim this list from my life. 

Dying younger is not "The good old days."
See the rest of the charts here.

We don't have to lie*** about the past or the present to make the future better. Lying (and self-pity) distorts our thinking, actually making it more difficult to improve the lives of those acutely suffering right now. 

(And it isn't just the past that sucks; Abi Olvera: "I Was a Diplomat Where Being Gay Was a Crime.")

***Obviously, most people on the Left don't think they're lying - they are sure they are the only ones “seeing things clearly.” We all do!

**This isn't really accurate. If I were to be born at random, I would not choose the United States. But if I could be guaranteed to be born to parents in the top half of a county's income distribution, I would choose the U.S.

*From, of course, Losing My Religions:

F the Founding Fathers.

I understand wanting to feel special about your country. In the Bicentennial year of 1976, I celebrated as much as anyone.

But I have an excuse: I was eight.

We’re adults, not children. We must stop worshiping the “Founding Fathers.” What they and their contemporaries “intended” is simply irrelevant to the 21st Century.

More than that: Their intentions were actively immoral. They intended for people to be enslaved. They intended all the native people to be pushed aside. (At best.) They intended for women to be de facto property with zero voice in government. (“It’s 1800. Ladies: Tell your husbands Vote for Burr!”) They intended a shitty form of government that protected only white land-owning and slave-owning men. ...