That was the title of one of the funny songs I
used to sing with my children while they grew up. Well my dear
readers, if we read the news, it’s easy to conclude that right
now our world is turning upside down.
If not, look at the tragic earthquakes in Haiti,
Chile, or Indonesia; the extreme weather alterations with
flooding, unusual snow storms, the latest sun explosions, the
heat waves which are melting glaciers and snow mountains around
the world.
At the
same time, the terrible scenery of the United State’s, crumbling
economy, while its government continues to support two infamous
wars, unable to stop the criminal haemorrhage of money and
innocent lives. Never mind that on the other side of the street,
not far from the White House, hundred of its citizens don’t find
any jobs, loose their houses, or are left out in the cold forced
to declare bankruptcy, leaving only pain and despair among many
families.
Money
for the Wall Street war ‘hawks’ and the military apparatus. Only
bread crumbs to rebuild the country,, create jobs or improve the
health and education system. The world upside down:
A few weeks ago, watching the news, I was almost in
shock at the spectacle of hundreds of angry people in some
United States cities, marching against President Obama’s plan to
implement a Universal Health Plan, just in the middle of the XXI
century, lying to the public when they accuse the plan of plain
socialism, or too expensive for the United States’ economy,
while their country is spending 4 billion dollars a week to
maintain the Afghan and Iraq wars. The world upside down.
This mentality sounds almost obscene, especially if you
consider that the United States has been a beacon for some of
the most outstanding findings in medicine, not only regarding
the treatment of most illnesses, but the production of high
technology drugs, and sophisticated diagnostic machines. What an
irony, that all those modern advances are now limited to a few
rich people, like the Arab Princes, the members of Congress, or
the wall Street’ hawks, while the rest of the population suffers
in silence or takes Tylenol. The world upside down.
Another incredible fact, almost incompressible for
some of us in the rest of the world, was to watch some of the
same people marching down the streets to defend their
“Constitutional” right to bear arms. What an irony, that in the
United States’ children have the Constitutional right to buy and
use arms but don’t have the same constitutional right to have
decent health care. The world upside down, especially if you
consider that some of those legal arms, end up in criminal hands
to kill innocent people not only in the Unites States, but in
some Latin American cities.
No wonder that some of our Latin American Presidents,
following Mr. Bush’s militaristic policy, are using a big chunk
of their countries’ resources to buy the most sophisticated
weapons money can buy, to update their arm forces, ignoring the
fact that poverty, lack of jobs and education, and reckless use
of our natural resources are our biggest problems.
Quoting Violeta Parra, the Chilean poet:
“The laborers ask for bread. The army answers with bullets”
The world upside down.
Dedicated to my dear son Felipe, whose birthday falls today,
but is no longer with us.
