The United States: An Exceptional Country or a Miserable One?

In his message to the nation this past Sept. 10, President Obama placed emphasis on pointing out the exceptionality of the United States, an idea he reiterated not long after in front of the U.N. General Assembly at the inauguration of its 2013 session.

The idea that the powerful nation of the north is different than all the rest, that it supposedly embodies superior values and is destined to be the Supreme Being and fulfill a divine plan, is deeply rooted in the minds of the WASP elite (Whites Anglo-Saxon Protestants).

Maybe it is necessary to deploy a broad media undertaking that uproots this dangerous and damaging idea. The following are some 20 arguments to demonstrate that the United States is, on the contrary, an exceptionally NEGATIVE country:

1. The U.S. is the only country that has dropped atomic bombs over densely populated cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

2. The U.S. is the only country that has hundreds of military bases outside its territory.

3. The U.S. represents 42 percent of total global military spending, while only comprising a little over 4 percent of the world’s total population.

4. Comprising a little over 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. consumes 23 percent of the planet’s oil resources.

5. The U.S. is currently the most indebted country in the history of humanity: A few days ago Obama managed to (temporarily) get out of bankruptcy, and raised the debt ceiling to more than $14 trillion.

6. On the list of countries ranked by equality of income (based on the Gini coefficient), the U.S. ranks toward the end: 120 out of 160 countries analyzed.

7. Of the countries listed according to the Human Development Index (prepared by the United Nations Development Program and adjusted for inequality), the U.S. comes in behind Norway, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Slovenia, Finland, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic and Belgium.

8. The U.S., along with Canada, are the only two countries in the world that do not celebrate May 1, even though International Workers’ Day was born in 1889 in homage to the “Chicago Martyrs.”

9. The rate of infant mortality (deaths of children younger than one year out of every 1,000 born alive) calculated by the U.N. puts the U.S. behind Cuba.

10. The U.S. has the highest percentage worldwide of illicit drug users: 15 out of every 100 in citizens over 12 years old.

11. In the United States there are 1.5 million homeless minors.

12. In the 2010 UNDP report, the list of countries by literacy rate put the U.S. at number 119.

13. Many analysts deny the increase in racist sentiments in the U.S. — not only against the mulatto Obama (son of a white American anthropologist and a black Kenyan economist) and not only against Miss America 2013, both of whose parents were born in India.

14. The U.S. is the country with the most firearms in the world: 89 of every 100 of its citizens possess one (at least).

15. According to Amnesty International, in 2012 the U.S. was the only country on the American continent that carried out death penalty executions (43). The only executions in Europe were of three Belarusians.

16. The U.S. has 751 individual prisoners for every 100,000 inhabitants (almost 1 percent). This is the country with the most “civil liberties” in the world.

17. The U.S. is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol (an international agreement to reduce the emissions of gases that cause global warming and climate change).

18. Each year, since 1992, the U.N. General Assembly has massively voted for the abolition of the economic, financial and commercial embargo that the U.S. imposes on Cuba (currently 188 for & two against). Nevertheless, the U.S. does not obey.

19. The U.S. opposes the International Criminal Court (founded in 1998 by the Rome Statute) because it does not accept that its leaders, political or military, could be judged for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or crimes of aggression.

20. The U.S. proclaims its fight against terrorism, but it shelters within its territory recognized terrorists like Posada Carriles and, backhandedly, has taken revenge on the efficient Cuban intelligence agency, condemning those Cuban agents who discovered the terrorist plans of Cuban-American criminals in Miami to life in prison.