As we all know, I’m all about being positive. However, there are times I just can’t be positive. Margaret Porwal has kindly provided me with one of those times.

After September 11th 2001 Britain offered an earthquake rescue team, who have travelled the world to haul people out of rubble and are welcome everywhere, except of course the USA, who didn’t want to know.
As for Hurricane Katrina, the USA’s initial response was to turn down experts in water-borne diseases from Britain, dam experts from Holland, transport planes from Russia and countless other offers from around the world. We do offer, you’re just too proud to accept.
And as for the perennial American bleat about the cost to you of aid to Europe after World War 2, ponder the following: might not the war have been shortened and the destruction therefore reduced had the USA deigned to help earlier?

Beware Americans, your pride will be your downfall.

So the short reply is: Riddle me this, Margaret Porwal, how much did you donate to the Red Cross? Don’t give me this, “Our government wanted to send five guys, but your government said no.” Line. We’re America. Guess what, we’ve got a couple dam experts here. We’ve got guys who can pull people out of rubble. I’ll need to check but, we might have a few transport planes stashed someplace we can use. We’ve got so many people from our own country streaming into the area, that we can’t even sort them all out. The last thing we need is a bunch of folks that sound like Jacques Cousteau or Boris and Natasha to add to the mix.

So, where did you give? When is Bono going to show up and hold a fundraiser? This is why you warm the bench, Europe. You’ve got it ingrained in your domes that only a government can do anything to help. What with your collective hive mind and your off the hook tax rates, the concept of “personally” donating is alien to you. After all, you did bust out what European governments were doing, and made no mention of anything organized at a grass-roots level.

I’ll explain it in some easy to understand words.

SHOW ME YOUR MONOPOLY-COLORED MONEY, EUROPE

I want to see your multi-colored fundage. Break out your Euros, and your pounds and whatever the hell you people still have left. I want to see your “Crayola Crayon 128 color box” of notes. Bust out the mauves, and the teals and the pinks, OK? Let me see your gigantic pictures of old women and men with greased-back hair and weird mustaches on your bills.

What is this, “Well, we were gonna send four guys and a shovel over. What more can you expect?” Attitude. How very Europe of you. If we private American citizens didn’t pony up for every natural disaster to hit the world, do you realize how screwed up the rest of the world would be? I know, putting some money down in a check isn’t as Eurotrash as listening to Elton John or whoever mewl at some Live 8 concert. By the way, wasn’t that concert free? So you people didn’t even put a couple francs or whatever into the jar to get in? You just mooched a concert for nothing, then got to feel good about yourselves for being “socially conscious”.

How very Europe of you.

The only person I’m holding exempt from this is Anthony Litton. At least when Anthony disagrees with me on Europe he still starts out with, “I want to thank those twenty guys in Philadelphia and Boston for personally bailing my country’s economy out in the ’50s.” Gratitude like that goes a long way towards keeping the anger sharks out of our national memory banks.

And as for the perennial American bleat about the cost to you of aid to Europe after World War 2, ponder the following: might not the war have been shortened and the destruction therefore reduced had the USA deigned to help earlier?

Now we get, “Why didn’t you guys save us from ourselves sooner in World War II?” Oh, and don’t forget the cost to us in men and money /during/ the war. Then again, that doesn’t count. After all, in Europe war is like a sport. It’s the nonviolent substitute for soccer riots. You people can’t keep things at least halfway civilized on your soccer-playing continent for more than twenty years at a stretch for the whole of the 20th century, then you bust out with, “Why didn’t you save us from ourselves earlier?”

Wow. If you could put that same set of stones in your culture and economy maybe you wouldn’t be free-falling into irrelevance. Good work, Europe. We sacrifice tens of thousands of our men and millions of dollars because a bunch of you folks got on a “rule the world and kill the Jews” kick and you couldn’t handle it in house. Your gratitude shows up with, “How come you couldn’t get here twenty-seven months sooner”? I guess this does show how Europe thinks deep down though.

Dear America,

We appear to be in a spot of difficulty. As soon as you can, please come running. We might hurt ourselves.

Hate,

Europe

Here’s your answer, Europe. Maybe that’s because we generally try to /refrain/ from going to war. I know that goes against the BusHitler meme but seriously, Hitler was Hitler. Oh yeah, he was one of your guys too. Like Mussolini, and Napoleon and Stalin and Milosevic. Maybe..and just try to follow me on this one, Europe..just maybe if you people stop putting bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs in charge, we wouldn’t be having this problem. Can you promise me you’ll try to work on that, please?

Here, I’ll even help. Put this in 18 point type on that Euro-constitution you’re working on. Page one, paragraph one: “Don’t start nothin’ and there won’t be nothin‘.”

One final point. I’ve always been very lenient with comments in the past. There is a rule for this post, however. If you are from Europe and you can’t start your comment with, “I’m from Europe, and I wrote a cheque for X towards relief work.” you don’t get to comment.