Wake up and smell the coffee, America.

By Anwaar Hussain, April 4, 2008

After handing over the reigns of their country to the most disastrous administration in the U.S. history, Americans went into an almost vegetative sleep. In all these years they remained impervious to the criminal policies their government was conducting in their name both at home and abroad. It now seems that America is finally arising out of its deep slumber.

In one of the most respected opinion polls conducted in the United States, sampling the opinion of nearly every demographic and political group across America — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of urban and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school, it has been revealed that Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s.

Hear this: in the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track," up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Pretty serious, eh? Good morning America. Wake up and smell the coffee.

The fact is, as one commentator to the article put it, "81% may think the nation is going in the wrong direction, but 100% of us are screwed."

Yes screwed. As screwed as a one-legged man in a foot race. In a very definite sense of the word: SCREWED.

Under the able guidance of the hard drinking frat boy of the 60s, George W. Bush, America has descended into a real royal mess. The man who most historians are likely to view as "a unique and unmitigated disaster", heading a team of 'crazies’ has delivered such crippling blows to this great nation that it will hemorrhage for decades before it recovers from its injuries.

Consider the following:

With a price tag of 3 trillion dollars, the cost of America’s Iraq and Afghanistan misadventures- not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War. This money, paid by the common American, has traveled on a straight path, the shortest distance between any two points, to the deep pockets of the fat, shrimp fed men most of whom sit in wood paneled offices in and around Wall Street.

In the same week as the conflict in Iraq passed its fifth anniversary, a big American financial institution, the Bear Sterns bank, went belly up on Wall Street and Nouriel Roubini of NYU’s Stern School of Business came up with a similar $3 trillion price tag for cleaning up the meltdown in financial markets. Three trillion dollars to save three trillion dollars, is rocket science beyond the grasp of us ordinary mortals.

Add to this the fact that Americans are incurably hooked onto a $9 trillion a year in consumer spending compared to a scrawny $1 trillion for the one billion-strong Chinese. Now the moolah has gone; there is no money and no credit. To compound it all, every thing is now made in China and no one wants the greenback any more. Even the scrawny looney from across the border has beaten the American dollar into a worthless pulp. All has been spent in chasing phantoms in the 'War on Terra’. The world’s favorite princes may soon be turning into paupers begging hat in hand.

We the world cried ourselves hoarse that imperial overreach kills, that the dream of empires is no more realistic and that the 'War on Terra’ is nothing but a commerce war to satiate the greed of a few, but in vain. The crazies now have the Americans in a bind of their own making.

I take no pleasure in bringing this omen to the Americans, for I am friends with some superb human beings among them, yet buckle up, dear Americans. The worst is yet to come. Before this Texas roughneck is through with you, you may be recycling your dental floss from nails in your backyards.

Pretty serious, eh?

Good morning America! Wake up and smell the coffee.

P.S. Above all else, Americans please wake up.