So after the US Navy Seal group bust in and jacked Osama Bin Laden the other week, guns blazing and taking no prisoners, there were many different reactions to the news. All over the US there were scenes of fat drunk Americans partying and waving American flags, burning pictures of the dead dude, and of course the refrain:
“U-S-A! U-S-A!!”
Others were busy “getting involved” and “making a difference” by posting whiny Facebook status updates along the lines of, “I don’t think anyone should celebrate the death of another human being.”, etc. Others speculated that killing the guy while he was unarmed and probably sitting on the shitter would just martyr the guy and help with terrorist recruiting. Other more paranoid and conspiracy theory minded people wondered if it was actually Osama who was killed, with the lack of photographic evidence released by the Obama administration.
Now I don’t get involved in politics much. Spending a bunch of time, energy, and money choosing between two rich guys who have basically the same agenda of keeping the rich people rich and the poor people poor doesn’t seem to me like a good use of my very limited time here on Planet Earth. I prefer to be happy and have fun since I have basically zero ability to change the world from its current trajectory. Look at the entirety of world history. The rich guys always win.
I did have a reaction to Osama’s death, though. Watching all those drunk fat people in the Midwest celebrating the death of this guy with such patriotic fervor, even though the vast majority of them had no connection with anyone killed on 9/11 made me think one thing:
“Shit. This is not going to make it easier to get laid on my next trip.”
That’s pretty much my interest in politics: will this help or hurt me with the next exotic beauty who crosses my path on my next trip to Malaysia? It was a pain in the ass when Bush (the younger) was president, because he did so many “fuck you, we’re America, and we do whatever we want” moves that some places were harder to travel to. Especially in Western Europe (France was the worst) during that time it was hard to go out without someone saying, “You’re American? You guys are such assholes! You think you rule the world. Fuck you!” And all I was doing was trying to party and get laid, not rule the world. Fucking Bush.
It was better in Eastern Europe those days. Countries like Bulgaria where the government had until recently not even pretended to represent the wishes of the people were much more understanding of my suggestion that Bush did not represent my wishes either. Boris and I went to Serbia back and when he would meet people he would have the following exchange:
“Dude, sorry we bombed you.”
(Shrug) “It’s OK, shit happens. I know it wasn’t you and Charlie. Let’s have a drink.”
Interestingly, the Serbs still thought Bush was a douche, even though Clinton was the one who bombed them. People abroad generally think Clinton is OK. The only country I ever went to where someone said “We love Bush!” was Macedonia, or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM). That was because of the struggle of the people there to have their country called Macedonia instead of FYRM (Greece says Macedonia means the northern state of their country). Bush visited once and called it Macedonia, so for that alone they liked him.
Obama made it better for us single dudes – some people in the rest of the world think he’s just great – and electing a black dude makes us look less retarded and racist than we did before when we had white presidents bombing brown people in Iraq. Now that we have a brown president bombing brown people in Libya it’s obviously totally different. Nevertheless, some chicks are hot for American dudes because of him, and that’s why I’ll probably vote for him again.
But this Osama thing is bad for single dude travelers. All these celebrations make us look like a bunch of bloodthirsty jerks. I was at a bar in Florida recently chatting with a hot cougar friend of Raul’s and she said, referring to the Middle East:
“We should just nuke everybody there and start over.”
Really. Raul heard it too. My response was,
“But there’s a lot of hot chicks there! We can’t nuke them!”
Hotter than her, by the way.
Single Dude Travel urges our fellow Americans to consider how our government’s actions are perceived in the rest of the world. Do we really want to look like a bunch of revengeful jingoists? Do we want the hot chicks in Russia to think we’re all a bunch of shoot first, ask questions later bloodthirsty dudes? They already have enough of those guysthere.
What’s more important, getting even or getting laid? This is what Thomas Jefferson meant by the “pursuit of happiness”. Just ask Sally Hemings.
Sign me up for the Repoonicrats!
The post Osama and Obama, or The Politics of Getting Bush appeared first on The Single Dude's Guide to Life & Travel™.
