What's Wrong with America?!

What the hell is wrong with this country? The egos. That's what's driving me insane. America, our economy is in shambles, the majority of the world is pissed at us, we are incapable of manufacturing just about anything ourselves and we're so bad with money that we can't survive unless there are people (and countries) out there willing to lend us money. Oh, and we might as well add Property of the People's Republic of China to the Declaration of Independence.

Is this where we wanted it to go? Is this what our forefathers envisioned for us? Is this the freedom they envisioned when they fought and died to drag us out from under the boot of tyranny... that we'd just sell our souls to new debtors in a different foreign land? We're a bit like teenagers. No, strike that, we're exactly like teenagers. We're a nation of pimply-faced whiners who are bad with money, can't manage our debt, are dependent on others for just about everything we own and yet still run around with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and undeserved pride.

About the only things we as a nation have left to be proud of are our freedoms, our nation's natural beauty and the men and women willing to fight and die for us. And, folks, that's not enough! Why? Because our freedoms mean nothing if we're handing them away to foreign debtors. Our nation's natural beauty exists whether we're here or not, not to mention the fact that we're rapidly destroying what little of that beauty we have left. And the men and women of our armed services should NEVER be asked to sacrifice their lives if we're not willing to be responsible custodians of the very things they're fighting and dying for.

Now, maybe this isn't an appropriate post for this blog. After all, I'm a camping freak and that's what I intended to write about here, but I've come to realize that I spend more and more of my time outdoors not to casually get away from it all but to REALLY get away from it all. Away from the shame of what Americans are doing to this, the greatest nation to ever occupy space on a map. Away from the corporate world from which I hungrily lap up a paycheck twice a month doing a job for a company that doesn't produce any tangible product at the end of the day.

So, again, what's this post doing here in a site about camping? Because here, at least, is an area where we can do the right thing and that's to BUY AMERICAN! I know finding American made products in this day and age is a little like stumbling across aliens (the kind from space, not the kind our nation welcomes in abundance). But there are still a few hold-outs out there. There are still people and companys manufacturing products right here in the good ol' US of A. So before you even consider venturing out into the wild in a pair of boots made by somebody in Taiwan or sleeping in a bag sewn together in China, please, for the love of all of us, see if you can find some camping equipment made by some redneck (God bless all of them) somewhere on our home turf. Our economy will thank you and so will all of those who have died on foreign soil trying to keep us great.

If you want to support a country other than America, that's fine too. Just do it with your tourism dollars. Let's get back to what we once had a talent for - manufacturing hideous but utterly indestructable and exceedingly high quality goods that only Americans were able to afford in the first place. See the connection? One begets the other. Manufacturing here means the prosperity to afford our own product!