Land of the Free

What a country we live in, I declare.

Our land bursts with wealth, (relatively) low mortgage rates and a bull market.

Mere children carry credit cards, 22-year old college graduates walk into jobs making fifty thousand a year, and for a paltry few hundred dollars, your family can enjoy the wonders of a sparkling, clean, flawlessly-running Paradise, aka Disney World. For a day.

Are we blessed or what?

And it doesn’t end there. The cornucopia never seems to end, because we also live in a country in which you can stroll into a cardstore and plant yourself right in front of a display of greeting cards for - pets.

That’s right. You can rip two or three dollars out of your wallet and hand it over to the powers that be so you can purchase a card to a dog. Or from a cat.

The greetings congratulate the new pet owner and offer sympathy for the “parents” of the deceased. You can buy a card that’s ostensibly from a dog apologizing for wetting the carpet or a cat for tearing up the upholstry. Your pet can send birthday cards and receive congratulations (or sympathy) on being netured.

There’s dozens of them. What makes it even better is that when you’re home writing your cards to or from dumb animals, you can turn on the TV Food Network and watch a program dedicated to cooking for your dog, offering recipes you can whip up so Fido’s never lacking in tasty treats.

If this isn’t cool enough, I hope you know that you also live in a country where you can adopt whales, not speak of dolphins and other cetaceans.

The Whale Adoption Project offers you a choice of charmingly named real whales swimming out there in the sea: You can adopt Abraxus, who’s described as “Miss Congeniality,” or Sirius, “a whale with a sense of humor,” Nurse, the “caregiver,” Midnight, a “romantic,” or maybe even Scylla who, you’ll be inspired to know, is “curious and courageous.”

Another group, Save the Whales International, provides the same kind of useful service, in which “interested persons adopt a whale into their extended family,” as if Uncle Morty, beached in front of the television with his six-pack, isn’t enough.

It’s great to be part of such a compassionate society, in which the law books of every state warn of stiff fines for cruelty to animals. Here in Florida, you’ll owe $5,000 if you “unnecessarily mutilate or kill any animal.” In California, the stakes are higher. “Every person who maliciously and intentionally maims, mutilates or tortures any mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, or fish “ will be set back a cool twenty thousand bucks.

Material prosperity, personal freedom and unending compassion for animals. What more could a fat, happy citizen ask for?

Maybe this:

You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you, but a woman living on this particular patch of land called the United States also have, not the chance, not the opportunity, and not even just the carefully monitored option, but the right – get that word, the right – to have the babies dwelling within them killed.

I know you’re shaking your head in wonderment, but it’s true and pretty amazing. Say it’s a Saturday morning and you’ve just dashed off a birthday card to your brother’s puppy and sent in your check that will bring Fluffy the whale into your extended family. But there’s something else to do – oh yes – your friend is pregnant, and would rather not be. You said you’d go with her down to the clinic.

So there you go, down to a building you and a thousand other people pass everyday on your way to work, staffed by handsomely paid medical professionals.

All that needs to be done is plunk down some money – a few hundred dollars cash, put blinders and a gag on everyone’s conscience, and it will all be taken care of.

No worries about cruelty or maiming here. That little creature will be crushed and ripped out of its home, with not a soul involved harboring any fear about twenty thousand dollar fines, and not a sympathy card in sight, just a lot of profit and lawmakers always ready to protect this thing called the “right to choose.”

To cap it all off, when you survey the total scene, there’s one more matter to tend to and marvel at. There are millions – literally millions of people living in this country who’ll tell you they think, they really believe that what goes on in that clinic is wrong. They’re uncomfortable, uneasy and disturbed by it, and gawdalmighty, don't you dare show them the photographs. Way too upsetting.

But they let it go on. When they see bloody baby seals or birds tangled up in plastic rings, they demand legal redress, but not so with the dead babies. They keep driving by the clinics, shrink from legal constraints, and are too busy making money to spend on junk to construct a society built on any choice but death.

Like I said – is this a great country, or what?