Well, I don't want to dwell on this too much. I don't want to swamp myself in negativity after the most amazing thing to happen to my wife and I occured on October 7 with the birth of our daughter Paolina. I'd rather just concentrate on raising her right rather than think about what other people in the world think of Americans. And all the crap those kinds of thoughts might lead to, like the flying of jumbo jets into tall buildings and killing thousands of innocents. Nothing justifies that, not even hatred of a culture.

But, I was reading Joe User this morning while catching up with some blog reading and came across this articla about the eating habits of Americans and the effects those habits have on our health. It turns out that we are a bunch of diabetic fatties, a big cause of which is our collective love of "vegetables" like french fries and potato chips. Two thirds of us are overweight and the health care cost "is 117 billion annually." Whew!

This got me to thinking about some poor guy in a third world country who is hungry and reads about the fat cat Americans in the newspaper. What is he going to think? What would I think if my daughter was living in hunger? I'd be pretty pissed off. Why is this such a hard thing for some people to come to grips with? When your belly is empty, you are not going to be thinking about the good things America does and has done in the past. No, you are going to be thinking about how empty your stomach feels and the bleak prospects for your future. Then you see this article where you find those fat ass Americans are wasting 117 billion dollars a year treating disease brought about by their own selfish habits. It would be hard not to pass judgement. I'd even go so far as to say it would be impossible not to pass judgement.

And here we are in the U.S., asking these people not to pass judgement and not to hate us. We want them to take the moral high ground. We tell them, just work hard, embrace capatalism and eventually you too will be middle class and fat and diabetic and your society will be burning billions a year treating the diseases your behavior begets.

I want to emphasize that I don't think killing us is the answer to these problems. But by the same token, I don't have an answer for that hungry guy with his new baby. I want to scream at all the fat asses I see around me, "Stop eating, you dick." I want us to just stop wasting that 117 billion a year. Maybe then, even if that other guy was hungry and his baby was crying, he wouldn't feel that he wanted to kill me. Maybe he'd even embrace my way of life because doing so wouldn't lead to a situation that was morally repugnant to him.