Deleted Scenes: An Open Letter

To all the nations on this earth:

America does not care about you. Your sovereignty, your rights, the fact that you exist and are the same species as its inhabitants. You simply do not matter.

Maybe America says it’s your friend, that it’s got your back in wars, bro, or that it really likes hanging out and being trade partners and whatever, but it’s not true. America is not your friend. It doesn’t like you. America doesn’t like anyone. It can’t. It’s a sociopath.

And while being a sociopath is a sort of mental deficiency, don’t let that fool you into thinking America would care about you if it could, because for sure it most definitely would not. Not even a little? Not even a little.

If by some bit of happenstance, pretending to care about you serves some American interest—even if it’s just making our inept left wing feel like it has a moral high ground; “Have you heard about the plight of so-and-so?” at the wine and cheese soiree—then America will do that, but only for as long as it needs to, and some part of you will always know it’s a lie. Like that friend who only ever hung out with you because you had the good toys. That’s America. It only wants your toys.

Especially if those toys are made of oil.

But if you expect things like basic human respect from America, like maybe not tapping your Chancellor’s cellphone for more than a decade, you can forget it. That’s not what America is about. It’s not a world and America’s a country in it: It’s America and there’s a world around it. We don’t have to justify actions. There’s no time for that silly crap. We’re America and we’re doing it. You want something justified? Call a philosopher.

This is a country that calls “It takes a minute” due process. That cuts education to spend money on wars in places most of its populace hasn’t heard of (these things are not unrelated). America doesn’t need to tell you what it’s doing, or when, or why, or how. It’s just going to do whatever it wants, whyever it wants, and you can either deal with it or you can try to bomb America, or invade America, or fly a plane into a building, or hell, drop a nuclear bomb. Go ahead. If you think America cares any more about its own people than it cares about you, ask a Black dude. Ask a Latin American immigrant. Ask anyone, regardless of their race or gender or anything else, who gets sick without insurance. Do whatever you want. There’s nothing you can do to threaten America, because it doesn’t have the capacity to feel a threat.

Rant and holler and bitch all you want. Be outraged. Call for this and that. Set up panels, tribunals. Talk until your face falls off. Do it.

See where you get.

America will bug your leaders’ phones, or bomb your citizens with robots so it doesn’t even have to get out of its chair. It will strip your country of its resources until you don’t have anything left. It will rape your women and make slaves of your men and burn, burn, burn everything in its path. Don’t think it won’t do this. It’s already done. You can smell the smoke.

And you can’t stop it, can’t kill it. Oh, America will get what’s coming, but not from you. You can’t do anything but sit there and marvel at the madness and the hubris, the wanton destruction and the way the saliva foams at the corners of America’s mouth when it starts thinking about the next want to satisfy.

Dear world: Lower your expectations for everything but violence. Raise those.

JJ Koczan

jj@theaquarian.com

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Marcia Wallace and the many underappreciated female comedians of her generation.