Dear America: Freedom doesn't mean you can kill your children
Dear America,
We hope you have enjoyed your 237 years of independence from British rule.
We were reluctant to see you leave but you did insist so it seemed to be basic good manners to let you give it a go.
And my, the things you’ve managed to do!
Nuclear war.
The abolition of slavery 90 years after we did it.
Frequent failed attempts to police the world which have left you with so many spare war machines you give machine guns and MRAPs to the local bobby.
Cheese in a can.
And now it’s the 21st century and you seem bent upon the slaughter of children.
This weekend a 12-year-old boy called Tamir Rice was shot twice in the chest by a police officer while playing in a park with an imitation gun.
Imitation guns shouldn't be sold in a nation where you’re likely to get shot for waving them about; they’re surely not even needed when you can buy the real thing in Walmart.
Eyewitness reports the gun was “probably a fake” did not get passed on to the cop, and obviously his parents did not explain to Tamir that armed policemen are a frequent cause of death for black males in your country.
Tragic: Tamir Rice was shot twice
On top of all this, a cop should not look at a 12-year-old boy mucking around in a park and see an armed black male who needs to have two slugs put in his chest.
Despite the fact all these things are illogical, bad, and deathly stupid your nation did them anyway.
You sold a fake gun that looks just like a real one, gave it to a boy who didn’t know not to wave it around, didn’t tell the cop it was fake and let the cop think shooting a child was the right solution to all of it.
And let’s be honest – that’s just this week’s atrocity.
In September two of your citizens were insane enough to take their nine-year-old daughter to play with an Uzi.
This decision was followed, not by straitjackets or parenting classes, but by the instructor having his head blown off.
This year alone you’ve had 40 shooting incidents in schools. They include Jaylen Fryberg killing four people and then himself at Marysville Pilchuck High School last month, and Elliot Rodger slaughtering seven and wounding 13 at Isla Vista in May.
It’s not even a modern phenomenon – you’ve been shooting teachers and children since the 1850s.
But what’s really sickening is it’s allowed in the name of freedom.
Not the freedom of children to be educated without fear, or the freedom of parents to think their children are safe at school.
No, the freedom of political cavepeople and religious fundamentalists to shoot whatever they like, when they like, which means those children become collateral damage.
That alone – that mind-boggling bit of bent logic uttered by so many of your citizens, promoted by your politicians and backed by so much cash that all your presidents are afraid to call it a lie – would be enough reason for the rest of the world to justify invasion.
But there’s so much else that’s gone wrong too.
You crow about winning the Cold War, when the economy run by Communists in China has overtaken yours.
You landed man on the moon, and then stopped bothering with it.
You shout about civil rights and Rosa Parkes, about having a black president, when you’re arguably one of the most racist nations in the world.
Black mothers are twice as likely as white ones to have their child die in its first month in the US.
Unemployment is at 8% among black graduates and 4.5% among whites.
Black people account for 10% of drug use but 32% of drug arrests
And of all the Oscars handed out for best acting since 1929, white stars got 96% and 4% went to black stars.
A white child with an imitation gun in a park might not have been shot.
You are the richest nation on Earth yet have some of the worst health outcomes of the developed world.
You take pride in having amazing teeth yet 89% of your diet is fat and carbohydrates and you have the same number of obese citizens as the populations of Australia and Canada combined.
You make a lot of money out of children the world over – theme parks, cartoons, movies, franchises, that damned Frozen song – yet find new and interesting ways to slaughter them every day.
Well, you’ve had 237 years. You’ve had freedom, and you’ve used it to justify killing, racism and greed.
If ever a nation needed to feel the civilising effects of colonisation it’s you, America.
I propose that for the next 100 years United Nations peacekeepers take over your country.
They will be tasked with introducing multi-party politics, humility, and the correct spelling of the word “aluminium”.
* Your military will be dismantled and retrained so that they know to shoot the enemy and not their allies
* Your police forces will be dismissed and new recruitment standards brought in so that cops all need to demonstrate an IQ of more than 72 and the ability to ask themselves if children in parks need to be shot dead
* All imitation weapons will by law need to be bright pink
* All real weapons will be confined to those who need them for work or food and require a court-approved licence
* The correct method of brewing tea will be taught in every school
* White people and black people will switch houses for two weeks every year
* Cheese will be explained to you, very firmly
* Weekly messages will play on TV and radio stating that someone else’s religion, or lack of it, is none of your business
* You will not be able to buy pancakes unless you can produce evidence of walking 10,000 steps a day
* Your beer will be corrected
After a century and a few generations there’s every chance you could be trusted to run your own country again, with a little more exercise, and a little less fat, racism, stupidity and slaughter.
No country is perfect and Britain certainly isn’t. But then we don’t claim it quite so often as you do, nor in the face of such overwhelming evidence that it’s not true.
Freedom isn’t free - and the price you pay for it is deciding where freedom ends and common sense begins.
I hope you figure it out before too many more children die.
