Momus aka Nick Currie writes:
For those of you thinking of leaving America today — and there are many, I’m sure — I’d say just do it. Walk away.
…
So just leave. America doesn’t deserve you. Walk away. America doesn’t need your talent, your creativity and your intelligence. Or rather, it needs them desperately, but it will never acknowledge that. It’s too stupid to understand that. If it calls for you, it will call for you for the wrong reasons. It will call you up as a soldier. It will call for you as canon-fodder in some spurious and unnecessary war that serves the interests of 1% of its population and an even smaller percentage of the world’s population. Even if it lets you live in relative peace as a mere civilian, it will force you to live in ways that destroy the world’s weather systems and its environment. It will use your tax to fund pre-emptive wars of aggressive imperialism against impoverished nations with energy resources.
Sarah Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies, dissents:
Ready to say screw this country and buy a one-way ticket north? Here are some reasons to stay in the belly of the beast.
1. The Rest of the World. After the February 2003 antiwar protests, the New York Times described the global peace movement as the world’s second superpower. Their actions didn’t prevent the war, but protestors in nine countries have succeeded in pressuring their governments to pull their troops from Iraq and/or withdraw from the so-called “coalition of the willing”. Antiwar Americans owe it to themajority of the people on this planet who agree with them to stay and do what they can to end the suffering in Iraq and prevent future pre-emptive wars.
Momus/Currie’s “Exit this Roman shell” post is worth reading in its entirety, and Anderson’s plea, called “Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada”, presents a number of cogent points.
On a much more lighthearted note, Paris Hilton appears to still be among the living despite:
- appearing in the whole “Vote or Die!” campaign and
- subsequently failing to vote
Was VOTE OR DIE too ambiguous, perhaps?